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Computers Blogs
Mar 2009
Brand-Name SSD Drives vs OEM-Rebranded Disks
Mar/31/09 21:27 Filed in: SSD Hardware
On Monday March 30, 2009 - Western Digital acquired solid-state disk drive maker SiliconSystems for $65 million. WesternDigital - the current market leader in 2.5-inch computer disk drives now has a way into the growing SSD market. SiliconSystems makes SSD products for communications, industrial, embedded systems, medical, military, and aerospace. SiliconSystems' acquired product lineup includes solid-state drives with a variety of interfaces, including SATA, EIDE, PC Card, USB, 2.5-inch, 1.8-inch, and Compact Flash.
There was a time in the traditional hard disk drive industry when there were many players: Kalok, Quantum, Maxtor, Micropolis to name but a forgotten few that vanished, were acquired, or simply became a leveraged brand name. Spinning platter drive companies have been basically reduced down to the Big Four: Hitachi, Western Digital, Seagate and Samsung.
In the Solid-State Drive market you have very different players: the few MEMORY and CONTROLLER CHIP manufacturers around the globe where the guts of what's inside SSD are spec'd by a hanful of companies Intel, Micron, Samsung, and Indilinx. In exemplum, Samsung seems happy to OEM to lesser but recognizable brands. Intel SSD's are being rebranded by Kingston Memory and A-Data - but it's moot if they don't have a lower street price than Intel's. So what's the point there?
There'll be ruthless fallout and consolidation to come, great SSD's, mediocre performing SSD's, grey-box generic SSDs with the same guts as 'The Brands You Know - And Trust". And the difference between the OEM SSD and the Popular brands may only be in the packaging, marketing, and depth and length of warranty. The solid-state disk market is like it's hard platter drive counterpart - SOLID-STATE STORAGE ALREADY IS AND WILL BE A MASSIVE COMMODITY MARKET - that will inevitably have razor-thin margins but become a billion-ssd-drives-per-year industry where there's plenty of razor-thin slices of pie to go around.
There was a time in the traditional hard disk drive industry when there were many players: Kalok, Quantum, Maxtor, Micropolis to name but a forgotten few that vanished, were acquired, or simply became a leveraged brand name. Spinning platter drive companies have been basically reduced down to the Big Four: Hitachi, Western Digital, Seagate and Samsung.
In the Solid-State Drive market you have very different players: the few MEMORY and CONTROLLER CHIP manufacturers around the globe where the guts of what's inside SSD are spec'd by a hanful of companies Intel, Micron, Samsung, and Indilinx. In exemplum, Samsung seems happy to OEM to lesser but recognizable brands. Intel SSD's are being rebranded by Kingston Memory and A-Data - but it's moot if they don't have a lower street price than Intel's. So what's the point there?
There'll be ruthless fallout and consolidation to come, great SSD's, mediocre performing SSD's, grey-box generic SSDs with the same guts as 'The Brands You Know - And Trust". And the difference between the OEM SSD and the Popular brands may only be in the packaging, marketing, and depth and length of warranty. The solid-state disk market is like it's hard platter drive counterpart - SOLID-STATE STORAGE ALREADY IS AND WILL BE A MASSIVE COMMODITY MARKET - that will inevitably have razor-thin margins but become a billion-ssd-drives-per-year industry where there's plenty of razor-thin slices of pie to go around.
Best SSD Drive Prices: Rebates For Cheap-Skates
Mar/15/09 21:45 Filed in: Cheap SSD Drives
As this site matures, www.solid-state-drives.com will be tracking SSD prices and new and ongoing SSD rebates a bit more clearly on the main page. Rebates are a great way to buy the best performing SDD's at the lowest cost per gigabyte.
These days SSD rebates are often very short lived, have a narrow range of purchase dates that may be limited to a singe week, and must be mailed in and postmarked rather shortly after purchase as well. And many rebates and their forms are Retailer specific. They're literally 'banking on' and hoping you WON'T submit your rebate properly, won't provide the right form and proofs of purchase, and won't do it within specified time limits. So beat 'em at their own game, read the fine print, and double-check everything before mailing it in.
Currently, rebates on SSD disks are ranging from $10 on 30gb/32gb SSDs up to $50 on the latest high-capacity 256gb SSDs. The savings can lower your solid-state drive cost from 15%-20% per gigabyte with good timing. Middle of the pack performing MLC-type SSD's are now easily had for about $2/gig with careful rebate shopping and timing. Higher performing and higher-capacity MLC SSD disks are still in the $3-$6/gb range. And the top Read/Write benchmarks you can only achieve with single-layer SLC SSD's still command $10 or more per gigabyte.
These days SSD rebates are often very short lived, have a narrow range of purchase dates that may be limited to a singe week, and must be mailed in and postmarked rather shortly after purchase as well. And many rebates and their forms are Retailer specific. They're literally 'banking on' and hoping you WON'T submit your rebate properly, won't provide the right form and proofs of purchase, and won't do it within specified time limits. So beat 'em at their own game, read the fine print, and double-check everything before mailing it in.
Currently, rebates on SSD disks are ranging from $10 on 30gb/32gb SSDs up to $50 on the latest high-capacity 256gb SSDs. The savings can lower your solid-state drive cost from 15%-20% per gigabyte with good timing. Middle of the pack performing MLC-type SSD's are now easily had for about $2/gig with careful rebate shopping and timing. Higher performing and higher-capacity MLC SSD disks are still in the $3-$6/gb range. And the top Read/Write benchmarks you can only achieve with single-layer SLC SSD's still command $10 or more per gigabyte.
G5 iMac Cheap SATA SSD Disk Drive Upgrade
Mar/13/09 21:57 Filed in: Apple SSD
A 1st-generation Apple G5 1.6ghz iMac makes a good candidate for a Solid-State computer disk drive upgrade. As the original model - the lowliest and slowest of the iMac G5 family, Mine was beginning to show it's age. An upgrade from it's original 80gig SATA drive to a 250gig 7200rpm 8mb cache drive helped, but now with smaller capacity 30-64GB SSD disk prices hitting new bargain lows it deserves one last breath of new life.
These early generation G5 iMacs are a breeze to upgrade. 3 screws and pop off the back lid. A few more to remove and swap the SATA drive takes mere minutes. Finding an ICY DOCK MB882SP-1S 2.5" to 3.5" SSD & SATA Hard Drive Converter
to fit the 3.5" drive bay was easy enough, and barely cost $25 shipped using competitive priced 3rd-party sellers at Amazon
Taking advantage of OCZ's current SSD rebates - I found a dirt-cheap low-cost OCZ 30gig Solid Series SATA 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive
that cost $75 after rebate.
Granted, 30GB isn't much drive space these days, and the "Value priced" Solid Series from OCZ is only a respectable middle-of-the-road performer for an MLC SSD in 2009: 150mbps peak Reads, 90mbps Writes. For this backup Mac I keep on-hand, truly bleeding edge SSD speed doesn't matter. And is well matched to the SATA I controller chip of those iMacs anyways.
A clean OS X 10.4 Tiger install on an SSD takes much less disk space than 10.5 Leopard, and all I really need from this system is occasional access to web, email and Microsoft Office. It's also used a test-bench Mac for starting up other G3-G5 Macs in an emergency using FireWire target mode, remotely running disk diagnostics and system updates. An SSD and it's high read speeds is PERFECT for quickly running installers and applying updates.
Long story short, this cheap little bargain SSD drive UTTERLY REVITALIZED an aging Mac: Startup speed, app launching, and switching programs feels nothing short of amazing. It's still easy to push the old single G5 processor to 100% CPU utilization on some tasks, but at least now the drive is no longer the sluggish bottleneck it once was. Total project cost: About $100 - and well worth it.
These early generation G5 iMacs are a breeze to upgrade. 3 screws and pop off the back lid. A few more to remove and swap the SATA drive takes mere minutes. Finding an ICY DOCK MB882SP-1S 2.5" to 3.5" SSD & SATA Hard Drive Converter
to fit the 3.5" drive bay was easy enough, and barely cost $25 shipped using competitive priced 3rd-party sellers at AmazonTaking advantage of OCZ's current SSD rebates - I found a dirt-cheap low-cost OCZ 30gig Solid Series SATA 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive
that cost $75 after rebate.Granted, 30GB isn't much drive space these days, and the "Value priced" Solid Series from OCZ is only a respectable middle-of-the-road performer for an MLC SSD in 2009: 150mbps peak Reads, 90mbps Writes. For this backup Mac I keep on-hand, truly bleeding edge SSD speed doesn't matter. And is well matched to the SATA I controller chip of those iMacs anyways.
A clean OS X 10.4 Tiger install on an SSD takes much less disk space than 10.5 Leopard, and all I really need from this system is occasional access to web, email and Microsoft Office. It's also used a test-bench Mac for starting up other G3-G5 Macs in an emergency using FireWire target mode, remotely running disk diagnostics and system updates. An SSD and it's high read speeds is PERFECT for quickly running installers and applying updates.
Long story short, this cheap little bargain SSD drive UTTERLY REVITALIZED an aging Mac: Startup speed, app launching, and switching programs feels nothing short of amazing. It's still easy to push the old single G5 processor to 100% CPU utilization on some tasks, but at least now the drive is no longer the sluggish bottleneck it once was. Total project cost: About $100 - and well worth it.
New OCZ Apex SSD Speed-Ups Via Raid 0
Mar/01/09 09:24 Filed in: SSD RAID
To get to the next level of performance in its SSD disk line-up; the new Apex series SSD is using two JMicron JMF602 Flash controller chips along with a JMB390 RAID chip. The Apex series is effectively a pair SSDs in RAID 0 "Stripe" configuration across the 2 banks of MLC flash RAM. At the top end you’ll see that the RAID setup helps the OCZ OCZSSD2-1APX120G 120GB SATA 2 Apex Series Solid State Drive
and 250GB models attain a Write speed of "up to 160MB/s". But note in fine print the 60GB model has a Write speed of "up to 110MB/s" so there's a bit of an overall performance ding with the low-end, most affordable Apex model.