just bought this 40gig drive (show and tell thread)

[Isaac]

It's not really cheap for what it is, but I wanted one that looked the most dependable.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167046

[Krom]

Moved to Tech.

I have a 320 series drive myself, however it is the 160 GB model, they are very nice and reliable drives.

A word of caution though since 40 GB is quite small for a modern OS: SSDs start to perform poorly as they fill up past about 75% capacity. If you can keep your SSD at or near 50% free space, it should always operate at or very near its maximum performance. But otherwise if you fill the drive up, expect a significant drop in performance and a equal increase in write amplification (which increases the wear on the drive).

One way you can guarantee you won't fill the drive past 75% capacity is to leave the other 25% of the drive unallocated when you partition it. The drives controller will still use all the memory, but partitioning it that way gives it a much more comfortable amount of spare area to work with, which helps keep performance and write amplification at optimal ranges.

[Isaac]

I didn't initially post this in Tech? Where did I post it? Sorry about that.

Thanks for the warning, but I'm not terribly worried. You see, I currently have a 16 GB SSD which I use comfortably. My only OS is Ubuntu 10.04 (runs the best on my netbook), which is a very light little distro that I use for everything.

I'm glad to hear you have the same series and think they're reliable.

[Krom]

It was in the gallery, one click down, easy to miss...

Aye, I figured Linux would fit a bit more comfortably than more recent editions of Windows. With a compact OS like that, the only real drawback to the 40 GB model is the sequential write speed, at only 40 MB/sec it is quite a bit slower than even most hard drives these days. So basically not a good drive for big sequential file writes, but at only 40 GB capacity it isn't much of an issue anyway.

[Isaac]

There will be no complaints from me, regarding speed from this new drive. My current ssd is a first gen 16GB cheapo that registeres as an ATA, even though it uses an SATA connection, and says SATA 2 on the drive... Talk about ghetto tech.... According to Internet people it reads at 85MB/s and writes at 45MB/s.... and I've been pretty satisfied with that low level of "speed". Anything faster is more than welcome, but there's a chance it wont be that big a difference. edit: actually, read speed is much faster in the Intel 320, so loading time should be quicker. editedit: they don't even sell the samsung um410 any more...

[Isaac]

SHAMELESS BUMP!!!! SHORYUKEN!!!


The drive came and it starts Ubuntu so much faster than the last SSD I had. I thought my last SSD was fast enough, but everything now loads instantly. I'm very happy.

[Krom]

Your last SSD was probably little more than a beefy USB thumb drive controller with a SATA bridge chip. The new one may be low spec, but it will still annihilate a typical re-purposed USB class flash controller.

Although it might pull more power as well (the 320 series isn't particularly strong on that front).

[Isaac]

You have no idea how correct you are. I opened up the old ssd.... the pcb board is not even half-way used. It's got four chips on it. All of this could have fit on a thumb drive. well, that's linux for ya; it can run fast off a USB. Tons faster on a real drive.

[Krom]

The physical size of the device doesn't mean much, see: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6725/the- ... 0gb-tested

[Isaac]

Though, I'd suspect that it means something, because those pcb boards are filled, while mine is not even half used.

[Grendel]

I bought a Samsung 840 128GB for $85 of Amazon not a week ago... Be carefull w/ the 320 drives -- they do have a bug where they will loose everything on them in an instant. Out of the 9 320's I installed (40-120GB range) 8 did this. I replaced all with Samsung 830 or 840 drives, not a problem so far.

[Isaac]

This was due to the firmware update? Also, I did a sensor scan. Are there no temp sensors on the 320s?

[Grendel]

No, not due to the update. The update fixed actually some other problem that caused the same thing. Nobody but Intel knows what the underlying problem really is. Don't know if there are temp sensors in it, never had one that got hotter than lukewarm so I never had the urge to check.

[Isaac]

Code: Select all

Device Model:     INTEL SSDSA2CT040G3
Serial Number:    BTPR2474044B040AGN
Firmware Version: 4PC10362
User Capacity:    40,020,664,320 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is:    Fri Feb 15 08:28:18 2013 CST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Well, it appears that my drive came with the latest firmware, 4PC10362, according to http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... ldID=18455

So, I think I'm safe.

[Krom]

I've been using that same firmware version on my 160 GB model since December 2011 with no issues.

[Isaac]

That's good to know.

I just downloaded all my stuff; my apps are installed and my backed up files are copied to my home folder... df -h says i've only used 4.8GB of my 36GB partition... I don't know what to do with all the extra space. Maybe I should pick-up video editing again. /first world problems