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Fastest SSD

P

percival504

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 10, 2009
104
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The X25-E saturates the SATA 3.0/II bus at 270 reads per second and 210 writes (according to a quck Quickbench). I know that it is saturating the bus because it reads consistently at 270 MBs from 2MB to 100MB. It reads (and writes) 1024K blocks at 243 MB/s.

The XBench disk test = 348.99, full test = 253.57:

http://db.xbench.com/comparesubindex.xhtml?machineTypeID=40&sort=score&minVersion=1.3

Just got my 17" 2.93 (glossy -- not bad) today and threw the X25-E in quick and 8GB of RAM from OWC. So far I couldn't be much happier.
 
Not really, seems kinda reasonable. 3 gigabits/sec equates to about 0.375gigabytes/sec. And if you take into consideration overheads and all, 270 sounds quite reasonable. Although it could prolly go alittle higher.
 
X25-E 32gigs for $411 from Newegg, way to small of a drive for me, but I'm not seeing any larger capacity up for sale.

Nice speed though, I'll hang out a few months till I see some good 512gig drives, do it once and be done with it is my thoughts.
 
bossxii said:
X25-E 32gigs for $411 from Newegg, way to small of a drive for me, but I'm not seeing any larger capacity up for sale.

Nice speed though, I'll hang out a few months till I see some good 512gig drives, do it once and be done with it is my thoughts.
Click to expand...

Just ordered a 32GB SSD. I think its a totally acceptable size... for me anyways.
 
Tks bitesize (3 GB/s is the theoretical limit) 243 MB/s @ 1024KB; - 270 at 2-100 MB

a flat line from 2 - 100 MB (in intervals of 2, 4, 8, etc) -- the exact same speed at each interval, leads me to conclude that either (i) the drive's limit is 270 MB/s and it is able to sustain that maximum speed over those chunks; or (ii) the drive's speed is being limit by the mode/medium of transfer. Since I find it unlikely that any drive could be that consistent (w/in 1-2 MB/s) over that many chunks, I believe that it is saturating the bus.

Edited to say 3 Gb/s. BTW: bitesize, I'm sure you're right but I just gave it one quick run while I was installing applications and migrating some other applications and files. I'll try it again after I've tweaked it a little bit (just got it this A.M.).
 
I believe one of the fastest is a Samsung 256GB. It sells for 900 smackers a pop, so there must be something unique about it. :)
 
emt1 said:
Just ordered a 32GB SSD. I think its a totally acceptable size... for me anyways.
Click to expand...

I hear ya, and agree these are awsome I just know I'd be kickin my own a$$ in a few months when the larger one's come out heh. Not to mention sales are down and the play fund is getting lower everyday lol. I look forward to getting a SSD but just have to tell myself to wait for the larger size.

The 256gig would probably work fine but I only want to have to do the upgrade once and be done with it. The Samsungs on ebay have been very tempting even at the $950 price.

Good luck with your SSD! :)
 
bossxii said:
I hear ya, and agree these are awsome I just know I'd be kickin my own a$$ in a few months when the larger one's come out heh. Not to mention sales are down and the play fund is getting lower everyday lol. I look forward to getting a SSD but just have to tell myself to wait for the larger size.

The 256gig would probably work fine but I only want to have to do the upgrade once and be done with it. The Samsungs on ebay have been very tempting even at the $950 price.

Good luck with your SSD! :)
Click to expand...

SHH!!! I don't want to her about that!!! I need to internally rationalize my decision. :D

Actually I really don't think it will be an issue for me. I am limited to SATA 1.5 speeds on my early 2008 MBP and I'm just a student. 32GB will be plenty. I'm only using 15GB as it is and I have everything on my MBP.
 
LOL sorry, I'll not speak of my rational anymore :D

I just know I enjoy keeping all my photo's and the bulk of my video files with me to show family and friends. I have the stock 320gig HDD and could fill it with what I had on my previous machine with a 500gig drive. I could put it all on a external but just not how I like to do things. I do have it all backed up, but I spend alot of time out of the house where having it all with me is just what works. ;)

BTW taking the leap is a good thing, you can probably always upgrade later and as prices creep down you can still do one of two things, sell it and get some of your money back, or move it to the optical bay as a 2nd drive. While you may think your settling, I'm still jealous of people with SSD's! I've used a MBA with the 128 SSD for nearly 45 days and going to this 17" was tough just due to that fact, I loved how responsive it all was, but the MBA just didn't cut it for me. I'll honestly be lucky if I make it a month and not break down and buy a 256gig SSD rofl.
 
The x25-e specs at 250MB/s sustained read speed. I believe that SATA II is 8 bit in a 10 bit wrapper.

My guess is that you have simply maxed the drive. It would be far more consistent than a disk drive as you do not have the high linear speed variation when going from outer tracks to inner tracks.
 
The performance of this drive is really making me rethink my storage design. I asked this in another thread but not much response.

So - can this drive be placed in a standard 2.5" SATA II external enclosure and then connect to a MBP via an ExpressCard/34 SATA II ????
 
Apple Corps said:
The performance of this drive is really making me rethink my storage design. I asked this in another thread but not much response.

So - can this drive be placed in a standard 2.5" SATA II external enclosure and then connect to a MBP via an ExpressCard/34 SATA II ????
Click to expand...

Yes but you will suffer a performance hit vs. putting it into your laptop.
 
Apple Corps said:
Why would that be?
Click to expand...

Double check the speed limit on the enclosure. Some eSATA interfaces, especially the combo eSATA/USB ports used in 2.5" enclosures, cap at speeds lower than the SATA II 3.0 Gb/s limit. Most are limited to 150 MB/s.
 
I think the 64GB X25-E has already been released and is for sale (check Amazon).

I'm thinking about buying another 32GB, though, and striping them for the IOPS. I'm trying to convince my wife that it'll just be cheaper to get it over now ("the greedy man pays twice...")

As regards the 8 adversus 10 thing - bitesize is right: 1 gigabit is 8/10 of a gigabyte (thus 8 in a 10 wrapper) and, in any event, SATA 3.0 refers to 3 gigabits not gigabytes.

As regards the 250 MB/s "spec" for the X25-E, I can only rely on my actual experience -- and I just tested it again and bitesize was, again, right; this time its 272.

A bus with a theoretical max of 3Gb/s is highly unlikely to ever actually transfer 3 Gb/s. My conclusion is based, in part, on the fact that running the same tests on my MBP 17" 4,1 (SATA 1.5/I) gave me the same kind of consistent results at 137 MB/s -- both MBP(s) were tested under real world conditions (read: tests running in the background while I was doing real work). Coincidental... perhaps. But I would like to see a single drive put 1.5 Gb/s through the SATA 1.5/I bus or 3 Gb/s a second through the SATA 3.0 bus. Let me know if you have any examples.

Whatever the case, the sequential reads and writes are not critically important to me -- IOPs are what I 'm after and the X25-E beats my four disk, RAID 0, array of 320GB Scorpio Blacks by an embarrassing margin. Reads per second: 4 disk array 7-800 -- X25-E 7500-9000; writes per second: 4 disk array 65-100 -- X25-E 3 -3200 writes per second (again, all under real world conditions). Check that random disk test score on XBench -- I think it was in excess of 800. That seems pretty good to me. But back to the actual topic (i.e. not whether the X25-E is saturating the bus, about which I might have been wrong, but whether it is the fastest SSD), if you know of a faster SSD (that is in 2.5" form factor, e.g. not the almighty Fusion IO), please, please let me know. If you haven't gathered, I'm a speed freak.
 
I think Thiol is dead on. Check Diglloyd. I can confirm from personal experience

that JMicron, at least, is limited to 140-150 MB/s; the Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro, which is, according to Sonnet and OWC at least, the only Marvell chipped esata ExpressCard/34 adapter available (to consumers?) caps out at 200 MB/s. The other cards all use JMicron (bootable) and Silicon Image (not easily , if at all, bootable) chips. I have a JMicron card and the Tempo Sata Pro and the assertions seem accurate.
 
Most of my external HDDs have the data cable going DIRECTLY from the drive - through a hole in the external enclosure - to a SATA card in my MacPro. There is no "chipset" on the enclosure.

So - it would appear that any 2.5" SATA enclosure would do the job for one of the new 2.5" form factor SSDs - Yes?
 
Apple Corps said:
Most of my external HDDs have the data cable going DIRECTLY from the drive - through a hole in the external enclosure - to a SATA card in my MacPro. There is no "chipset" on the enclosure.

So - it would appear that any 2.5" SATA enclosure would do the job for one of the new 2.5" form factor SSDs - Yes?
Click to expand...

I don't see why not.
 
Call Sonnet - they're going to tell you the Tempo Sata (non-pro) is limited to 140

Apple Corps said:
Most of my external HDDs have the data cable going DIRECTLY from the drive - through a hole in the external enclosure - to a SATA card in my MacPro. There is no "chipset" on the enclosure.

So - it would appear that any 2.5" SATA enclosure would do the job for one of the new 2.5" form factor SSDs - Yes?
Click to expand...

You said you were considering that card -- if you use any esata ExpressCard/34 you'll be using a "chipset".
 
Understood - I was confirming that an external enclosure would / should be a simple straight through connection to the ExpressCard/34. The external enclosure would provide physical protection, power and maybe cooling.
 
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