Netbook SSD

[bubba]

Ok, been doing some shoping and not to many people have speed tests on these things to show how they perform in the wild (so to speak).

Looking to get a new one for my EEE 900 and was looking at a Super Talent FPM32GRSE 32GB it says that it has 90mbs read and 55mbs write (Sequential Access) and its only $86 so it wont cost a small fortune to get and gets me the space that I want.

anyone else messed with these things? any suggestions?

[Alathald]

I'm wondering the exact same thing. Just got my 900 in and was looking at that very drive...won't be buying one for a few weeks though until I get a few more hours at work.

[baius]

Someone with a similar name to mine posted some info on this at HP2133guide.
(Edit: This link may take you directly to the post.)

Sorry to link to other forums as a new user.

To summarise, "baius" (yes, me) thought SSD was an improvement on his 2133 MiniNote.

The massive improvement came after I switched from Vista to XP. Going from XP & 5400 HDD to XP & SSD improved things further (but not to the extent that the OS change did).

I haven't "noticed" an improvement in battery life, but I haven't timed it either. (I should have done that before swapping disks. D'oh!)

[FZ1]

I haven't looked at that drive but my suggestion would be to get a drive that either has built in RAID (i.e. GSKILL Titan/OCZ Apex) or one that has a newer controller & a decent cache (these are going to be pricier though). The older SSD's tend to have stuttering issues and although they can be mitigated with some tweaks, they will probably annoy the hell out of you - especially on a netbook with no easy options to write cache/temp files to a secondary drive.

[baius]

Agree with FZ1.

I chose the Intel X-25m which seemed to be the best performer. It was costly, though.

OCZ's Core v2 are said to be above-average performers, for most tasks, and cost less than Intel's option.

One of the posters on the thread I linked to cited this article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ssd-jm ... ,7057.html

(Sorry if posting a link to Tom's is cardinal sin #2.)

The essence of the article was: Check the controller of the SSD you're buying. (In particular, if it's a current gen' JMicron controller... AVOID.)

[Skippman]

Has anyone done testing to find out which SSD increases battery life the most?

[baius]

It's not massively scientific, but if you note how many watts the SSD uses at idle and load you should be able to see what (minimal) extra it would add to your netbook. (Most SSDs have similar idle and similar load readings.)

Also not using scientific language, user rlarson_mn @ HP2133guide reported getting "double" battery life, upon installing his SSD (Patriot Warp 128gb).

Say a whole system uses 25 watts. Say the HDD adds 4-5 watts. A SSD typically uses <1 Watts. So, I can't personally see how the battery life doubled, following a (estimated) drop from 25w to 21w. However, it's his netbook - he'd know.

[Skippman]

My thinking behind getting a SSD and a netbook in general over a full bore desktop is battery life.

[bubba]

Well where would one look to see what controller the SSD has? I can't find a place that has anything but the stock images from ST, and that area of the drive is blurry, and no one (that I can find anyway) has reviewed a mini PCI-e SSD.

[Apoptosis]

Super Talent Controllers:

UltraDrive ME = IndiLinx Barefoot + MLC NAND
UltraDrive LE = IndiLinx Barefoot + SLC NAND
MasterDrive RX = 2x JMicron 602B + JMicron RAID controller + MLC NAND
MasterDrive OX = JMicron 602B + MLC NAND
MasterDrive PX = JMicron 602B + SLC NAND
Mini PCIe = JMicron JMF601 + MLC NAND

And shane just remember high performance notebook hard drives perform faster than the Super Talent Mini PCIe drive and won't stutter... This article has 7 notebook drives benchmarked in it: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/955/2/

The 7200.3 and 7400.4 will be over 90Mbps read and write, which is better than the 90Mbps read and 55Mbps of the Mini PCIe SSD. Even the Scorpio Black is ~80Mbps read/write, so don't ignore the hard drive. Honestly I'd go hard drive for those speed ratings and price.

You can get a 250GB Seagate Momentus 7200.3 hard drive for $59.99 plus shipping, which is what I suggest. Huge storage capacity, higher performance, lower cost... Only negative battery life and you're talking minutes, not hours. With Windows XP and Windows Vista being very un-SSD friendly I can't see a point paying more for a product that can't run TRIM or any other key features needed by SSDs to be fast. That 55Mbps read rating will be down to 40Mbps after a day of use... trust me.

[bubba]

I would go with one if it would fit. I'll pop the back off and snap a pic.

edit: Here we go, mini PCIe on right, SODIMM on left.

[Skippman]

With Windows XP and Windows Vista being very un-SSD friendly I can't see a point paying more for a product that can't run TRIM or any other key features needed by SSDs to be fast. That 55Mbps read rating will be down to 40Mbps after a day of use... trust me.

So basically if I plan to run XP on a Netbook/Notebook I'm probably better off with a HD rather than a SSD?

[Illuminati]

With Windows XP and Windows Vista being very un-SSD friendly I can't see a point paying more for a product that can't run TRIM or any other key features needed by SSDs to be fast. That 55Mbps read rating will be down to 40Mbps after a day of use... trust me.

So basically if I plan to run XP on a Netbook/Notebook I'm probably better off with a HD rather than a SSD?

*Pst* Read Nate's last couple SSD reviews and then you can answer your own question.

[Apoptosis]

I would go with one if it would fit. I'll pop the back off and snap a pic.

edit: Here we go, mini PCIe on right, SODIMM on left.

so you have no choice other than to go with a mini PCIe SSD...

[Skippman]

With Windows XP and Windows Vista being very un-SSD friendly I can't see a point paying more for a product that can't run TRIM or any other key features needed by SSDs to be fast. That 55Mbps read rating will be down to 40Mbps after a day of use... trust me.

So basically if I plan to run XP on a Netbook/Notebook I'm probably better off with a HD rather than a SSD?

*Pst* Read Nate's last couple SSD reviews and then you can answer your own question.

Reading is hard.

[bubba]

I would go with one if it would fit. I'll pop the back off and snap a pic.

edit: Here we go, mini PCIe on right, SODIMM on left.

so you have no choice other than to go with a mini PCIe SSD...

Glad you're enjoying my pain LOL

Looking at a Runcore now. Its a 16GB version, but SATA not PATA, and still in my price range(ish)

http://www.runcorestore.com/ProductDeta ... 1234904508

Reading is hard.

That is funny right there

[hnzw_rui]

Say a whole system uses 25 watts. Say the HDD adds 4-5 watts. A SSD typically uses <1 Watts. So, I can't personally see how the battery life doubled, following a (estimated) drop from 25w to 21w. However, it's his netbook - he'd know.

Laptop hard drives don't use a lot of electricity. Iirc, even 7200RPM 2.5" hard drives only use at most 2.5W and they idle at less than 1W. 5400RPM drives use only ~2W during read/write. The advantage of SSD is it has no moving parts, meaning it's silent and it can withstand being moved around better than an HDD would. Random access is also faster than HDD. I don't see any way replacing HDD with SSD will double battery life.