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Wow. AnandTech has always been great, but this was especially well-written and informative. If you think 31 pages is too long, well, it's worth it. The article

by sqs 18y ago

Wow. AnandTech has always been great, but this was especially well-written and informative. If you think 31 pages is too long, well, it's worth it. The article gives really good technical explanations of how SSDs work and how they compare to disk drives, tells about an interesting back-and-forth with OCZ (a Taiwanese SSD manufacturer), and gives you the info you need to make an SSD purchasing decision. And it's a shining example of tech journalism at its best (which we rarely see).

gnaritas 18y ago
Agreed, I'm getting ready to buy some SSD's for my production servers, and after reading this I know exactly what I want to buy and why and what to avoid. This was a great article. I wish I'd read this before buying my SSD for my workstation, an impulse buy while at Fry's with my boss. I've largely avoided the write stuttering that is problematic for these low end MLC SSD's by using my old HDD for all my data and the SSD for OS/Programs so writes are fairly rare to the SSD; it still kicks the shit out of the old HDD. For a database server however, buying a non intel MLC SSD would have been a huge mistake that I'm now well informed enough to avoid.
- hboon 18y ago
  There was a blog post recently about the performance improvements of using the very same SSD drive for Gemstone/S http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/approaching-the-speed-of-light-ssd-drives-for-gemstones/ http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/approaching-the....
  - gnaritas 18y ago
    Yea, that's the post that made we get the SSD to begin with.
vinutheraj 18y ago
Yea but I didn't see him mentioning the ioDrive at all, or did I miss it in the haystack ?!
- blasdel 18y ago
  The ioDrive is targeted at people who already have a million+ dollars invested in their database servers. Nobody's going to use it in their workstation, much less one running Windows, and there's no way to stuff it in a laptop.
  - catch23 18y ago
    The ioDrive isn't that expensive though... you don't need a million dollars. Their 80gig model is around $2500 so anyone who is building one of those "ultra-fast" gaming rigs probably wouldn't mind dropping $2500 to speed up the slowest part of a computer (usually)
    - stcredzero 18y ago
      How big is the build directory? You can get a ANS-9010 and 8 gig of DDR RAM to put in it for something like 1/3rd that price. Plus, it will never slow down on you.
      - lasthemy1 18y ago
        You also have to consider tools used to build and test, and any DLLs used. Theoretically for something used frequently, it should stay in memory, but I have no idea how well that works in practice when doing a large build.
        stcredzero 18y ago
        ANS-9010 is a RAM drive, that presents DDR RAM as a SATA drive. You can configure it up to 64 gigabytes, but at that price it's prohibitive. You can buy its little brother, the ANS-9010B, which only has 6 slots for memory and tops out at 24 GB. Many shops will be able to fit the most frequently used 20% of their toolset onto a small disk drive like this. if the most frequently used 20% of their toolset represents 80% of their development wait, this is still a big win.
    - wmf 18y ago

by sqs 18y ago

gnaritas 18y ago

Agreed, I'm getting ready to buy some SSD's for my production servers, and after reading this I know exactly what I want to buy and why and what to avoid. This was a great article. I wish I'd read this before buying my SSD for my workstation, an impulse buy while at Fry's with my boss. I've largely avoided the write stuttering that is problematic for these low end MLC SSD's by using my old HDD for all my data and the SSD for OS/Programs so writes are fairly rare to the SSD; it still kicks the shit out of the old HDD. For a database server however, buying a non intel MLC SSD would have been a huge mistake that I'm now well informed enough to avoid.

hboon 18y ago
There was a blog post recently about the performance improvements of using the very same SSD drive for Gemstone/S http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/approaching-the-speed-of-light-ssd-drives-for-gemstones/ http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/approaching-the....
- gnaritas 18y ago
  Yea, that's the post that made we get the SSD to begin with.

vinutheraj 18y ago

Yea but I didn't see him mentioning the ioDrive at all, or did I miss it in the haystack ?!

blasdel 18y ago
The ioDrive is targeted at people who already have a million+ dollars invested in their database servers. Nobody's going to use it in their workstation, much less one running Windows, and there's no way to stuff it in a laptop.
- catch23 18y ago
  The ioDrive isn't that expensive though... you don't need a million dollars. Their 80gig model is around $2500 so anyone who is building one of those "ultra-fast" gaming rigs probably wouldn't mind dropping $2500 to speed up the slowest part of a computer (usually)
  - stcredzero 18y ago
    How big is the build directory? You can get a ANS-9010 and 8 gig of DDR RAM to put in it for something like 1/3rd that price. Plus, it will never slow down on you.
    - lasthemy1 18y ago
      You also have to consider tools used to build and test, and any DLLs used. Theoretically for something used frequently, it should stay in memory, but I have no idea how well that works in practice when doing a large build.
      - stcredzero 18y ago
        ANS-9010 is a RAM drive, that presents DDR RAM as a SATA drive. You can configure it up to 64 gigabytes, but at that price it's prohibitive. You can buy its little brother, the ANS-9010B, which only has 6 slots for memory and tops out at 24 GB. Many shops will be able to fit the most frequently used 20% of their toolset onto a small disk drive like this. if the most frequently used 20% of their toolset represents 80% of their development wait, this is still a big win.
  - wmf 18y ago