16th Sep 09Even for a 2.5" drive it's very small, almost looking out of place amongst regular HDD's. This is most welcome though as it blocks the airflow from the front case intake much less than a normal HDD. Running so cool means it heats the air flowing past much less as well which is another welcome change.
All testing was done on the following:
Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5 motherboard using the ICH9 South Bridge Chipset with a Q9450 @ 3.56ghz (445mhz x 8.0), 8GB or DDR2 RAM running at 900MHZ tight timings and the Pagefile was set to a fixed 4GB on each drive.
The Falcon 64GB SSD was compared to a WD Caviar Black 750GB. Each HDD was first tested with no data and no partition on it, following that a fresh install of Vista 64bit SP2 was put on each drive.
On each install the latest drivers were used, primarily consisting of the Intel Chipset Drivers (I found zero initial, real world difference between the Universal Microsoft drivers and the Intel drivers so I went with the Intel ones). With the move to Win 7 shortly I'll be using the Universal drivers though.
OCZ & G.Skill currently recommend the following regarding drivers (Both the Falcon & Vertex series drives use the new Barefoot SSD controller from Indilinx along with a 64MB DRAM cache):
- Intel chipset IDE mode = Intel driver
- Intel chipset AHCI mode = Microsoft driver
- Intel chipset raid mode = Intel driver
- AMD chipset IDE mode = Microsoft driver
- AMD chipset AHCI mode = Microsoft driver
- AMD chipset raid mode = AMD driver
- NVIDIA chipset IDE mode = Microsoft driver
- NVIDIA chipset AHCI mode = Microsoft driver
- NVIDIA chipset raid mode = NVIDIA driver
But as mentioned above I have found no performance or reliability difference between them on either AHCI or IDE mode so I went with the Intel Drivers for the testing.
Facts that need to be considered, both good and bad:
Right from the word go there are issues that need to be considered. Here are the main issues, facts, possible solutions and my take on them.
Partitioning & Formatting - If you're not using Vista or Win 7 then you'll need to align your partition suitably (head to the relevant forum for the details for your OS) then format your SSD with either 4k or 8k block size. Should you use Vista or Win 7 then the alignment is done correctly using the partitioning tool during setup and they should both format using 4K block size by default.
IDE vs AHCI - Something you'll find scattered all over the internet. The facts in short are:
- The manufacturers suggest AHCI as the preferred mode to run your SSD in.
- Testing across many forums and sites yield a fairly even mix of better results on both AHCI and IDE, largely due to the driver issues that different SSD drives and South Bridge chipsets suffer from at the moment.
- AHCI has better power management and drives like the Falcon and Vertex are programmed to take advantage of this.
- All Firm Ware updates need IDE mode at the moment.
- Lots of reported data corruption and stability issues under IDE, although often better synthetic benchmark scores.
- Many motherboards and BIOS versions do not support AHCI and will have to be run in IDE mode.
- Windows Vista and Win 7 both offer AHCI support but earlier versions do not.
I ran most of the tests in both IDE and AHCI mode which is explained a bit more further down, basically my testing showed no real difference between them though.
TRIM - It's something essential to SSD's and a good explanation can be found at any of these links:
[/COLOR]
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=10[/COLOR]
http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/101966/q-what-is-the-trim-function-for-solid-state-disks-ssds-and-why-is-it-important.html[/COLOR]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM_%28SSD_command%29[/COLOR]
On any OS earlier than Win 7 there is no OS level support for TRIM and you need to do it manually via the running of Wiper.exe. As the program itself warns (see below) Wiper.exe is currently still in beta, data loss may occur especially with a 64bit OS, and RAID configurations are not supported.
Wiper.exe is only available on the Falcon and Vertex SSD's, again this is because of the Barefoot controller.
Firmware version 1571 is highly recommended and although they shipped these drives with TRIM support from the beginning, it's meant to offer a number of bug fixes and performance improvements. My falcon shipped with Firm Ware version 1571 and it's been smooth sailing.
As of Wiper version 0525 I have not had a single issue on Vista 64 and I have to date run over 80 passes.
WIN 7 - As mentioned above TRIM is included right out of the box in Win 7 and will run automatically if a SSD is detected. As of the current Firm Ware version (1571) Both Falcon and Vertex drives are meant to support Win 7's TRIM feature but I haven't tested this yet.
Under Win 7 SSD support is implemented properly and isn't just limited to TRIM, Win 7 will automatically disable Superfetch, Prefetch, Defrag, Ready Boost and Ready Drive on its own providing the SSD identifies itself properly, this is something you should check before purchasing a new SSD.
Other - Free space, due to the nature of how a SSD writes compared to how they erase there is naturally going to be potential write bottlenecks. The on disk cache that these new gen SSD's have helps this but doesn't in any way cure it. Having a large amount of empty space to act as write cache is the only real solution at the moment and the general rule seems to be a minimum of 30GB - 50GB, which in the case of the 64GB drive means never fill it more than half way.
Potential loss elsewhere, while most of the services turned off for a SSD to reduce small writes have no noticeable effect on performance, many people are concerned that having Superfetch (or the Prefetching system as a whole) turned off will actually have a counter affect on performance. My testing (and testing conducted by most people) certainly indicated that this was simply not the case and as a whole load times and responsiveness across the board improved far more than they might have decreased.
Firm Ware updates are listed as "regularly needed" from many manufacturers as bug fixes and performance improvements continue to be ironed out. Again this is often not a problem for enthusiasts, but it will be for the majority of users. Regardless of who does it though, there is still a very real risk of data loss or bricked drives.
Silence, it should be obvious with no moving parts that there will be no noise but I was still surprised when the PC booted up in absolute silence. This has been both the noisiest and slowest part of most modern, quality builds and it's about time we had some good progress from the platter style HDD's in both departments.
Recommendations from Manufacturers and my take on it:
There are numerous recommendations out there from manufacturers and enthusiasts alike on how to best maintain the initial performance offered from an SSD. I've listed a few links and some of the key items.
All manner of things were suggested such as moving the Pagefile and all Temp Folders to another HDD, performing registry tweaks to disable things such as Superfetch, Prefetch, Last Access Time and much more.
I tested all of these and found there to be no measurable effect on performance on the majority of them. I did end up using a select few though and I do recommend at least trying them to see if it makes a difference for you.
Prevent Windows moving operating data to Virtual Memory:
By default windows periodically checks and moves its essential drivers and kernel files to the Pagefile, with a moderate amount of RAM this is simply unnecessary.
System Restore disabled:
I have my own data backup and systems in place that are far more efficient for how I work, it's simply redundant for me. You might very well want this in place though, it's completely up to you like all of these tweaks.
Defrag disabled:
You simply don't need to defrag a SSD, ever.
Boot Defrag disable:
The same as above.
Superfetch disabled:
With load times so fast there's no longer the need to have programs pre-emptively loaded into RAM and it saves more small file writes.
Prefetch disabled:
The same as above.
Search Indexing disabled:
Speed is just not an issue so it's just more small writes. It's even more redundant for people like me, with well organised data you shouldn't need to search too often.
Drive Indexing disabled:
the same as above.
The general recommendation was to move the Pagefile to another HDD, due to the nature of the Pagefile I didn't see the need for this and my tests showed no affect on performance by leaving it on the OS drive.
Microsoft Engineering had the same consensus about the Pagefile and SSD's, you can read more on that from the link below:
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx[/COLOR]
Here are just a few of the suggestions for both the Falcon and Vertex series to give you an idea of the trouble they suggest you go to in order to keep peak performance. As explained most of it's not needed though.
http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=913[/COLOR]
http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=675[/COLOR]
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=186[/COLOR]
My Testing Both Real World & Synthetic:
I tested real world situations, synthetic benchmarks, both IDE and ACHI mode and an empty and used SSD. Below are my findings.
Both drives were tested without a partition on them using HD Tune in IDE mode just to see what the theoretical best performance could be.
READ Speeds:
WRITE Speeds:
All testing from here down was done using a fresh install of Vista 64 as mentioned at the start of the article. The WD Black tests were done in IDE mode as were one set of Falcon tests, the other set and the Used SSD tests were done in AHCI mode.
Crystal Disk Mark (AHCI - IDE - WD):
HD Tune (AHCI - IDE - WD):
ATTO (AHCI - IDE - WD):
Real World Results Table including testing done with a Used drive as explained below:
The real world Used tests are above, what I did for this was simply use a combination of 5MB, 50MB and 700MB files to fill the drive completely then deleted them, I didn't run TRIM though.
The Synthetic Tests (When Used):
Finally after a single pass of TRIM I ran a quick pass of Crystal Disk Mark just to check speed was looking ok again:
As you can see it returned to practically full speed with a single pass.
Conclusion & My Recommendations:
Well there you have it, the results from all my testing and the facts and opinions on all the issues I discovered along the way.
So do I think that this new line up of SSD's are worth getting? The answer is generally yes, but you must be prepared to suffer some potential data loss. Although I didn't encounter any the manufacturers all warn about this while things are still in beta stages.
It's also conditional on using Vista and the manual running of Wiper.exe until Win 7 hits the shelves, without this there's just not much point. Without having tested how affective Win 7's built in TRIM feature is I can't say whether this is going to maintain peak write performance or not, it's something I'll be testing the minute retail Win 7 hits the shelves and I'll post up my findings on that, along with whether any additional tweaks are needed or if the default settings are enough.
Right now if you have a laptop and want to boost performance then at around $220 a 64GB SSD is a fantastic choice, taking into consideration the above points.
For a desktop it's still a decent choice and one I'd suggest, but the 64GB drives just don't offer much of an improvement in the write department over desktop HDD's and the space might be an issue for many people. The 128GB drives have much better write speed and will accommodate the desktop needs much better but at around $440 it's allot of money for a HDD and therefore can only really be recommended in situations where fast HDD's are needed such as photo, video and audio editing, or in a high budget desktop build where the rest of the rig is offering great performance.
Gamers will be disappointed at the moment as the cost per GB is far too high to consider for more than a few titles and is plain out of reach or just bad value in this situation, for the money you could get a beastly new GPU which will offer a greater boost across the board when gaming.
The great news is that the prices are falling fast and as Windows has proper support and more people look to adopt this technology things will only get better.
As for the review process, I've been doing this for a long time out of personal interest but never actually published the findings. I have to say I've enjoyed it and if people find the review useful or worth reading I might start doing a few more of these.
| PC 1 of 5 on 8-Port LAN | Q9450 @ 3.56GHZ | TRUE Black | 5850 iCooler V | Xfi Gamer | 8GB CAS 4 & Tight | 24'' Dell Ultra & 26'' ASUS VK266H | GB X48 DS5 & Tight | HX 620 | CM 690 | Falcon SSD | Velociraptors RAID 0 | 2GB RE3's | G15 & G5 | AT ADH700's | Huge Custom Stereo |
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