SanDisk launches 64GB solid state drives

I originated my posting about my new SSD over at phoronix...........

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3424 I have alot of good information posted.

What it is, is a UDMA/66 supporting compact flash card; Sandisk Extreme IV . Fairly new on the market. And it's very fast. But the drawback is you can only get them in 4 and 8GB sizes. But 'so what?' is what I say, I run linux. I don't need the size. I need the speed.

And it was only $99 dollars. How can you beat that? There's other benefits too. No heat, and uses less power(for all you laptop users out there) and it's silent. I like it's silence. :-)

I'm still trying to get some pics up, should have them up soon.

I have pics up now for those curious.

That's interesting - I'm curious about the need to boot without ide dma - can you show some hdparm results?

For reference here are some hdparm results from my boxes here, from puniest (P3 500Mhz) to most powerful: (2 X quad core xeon 3Ghz)

root@libby:~> hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda: Timing cached reads: 544 MB in 2.01 seconds = 270.61 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 66 MB in 3.05 seconds = 21.67 MB/sec

root@toro:~> hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda: Timing cached reads: 830 MB in 2.00 seconds = 414.25 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 146 MB in 3.01 seconds = 48.57 MB/sec

lucy: /home/jjs (tty/dev/pts/3): bash: 1103 > sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda: Timing cached reads: 1884 MB in 2.00 seconds = 942.32 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 136 MB in 3.01 seconds = 45.25 MB/sec

root@maia:~> hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda: Timing cached reads: 3024 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1512.21 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 396 MB in 3.01 seconds = 131.51 MB/sec

I'm not sure what the issue is; why I have to boot with a kernel command ide=nodma in order to get proper booting. That's part of why I've posted this in so many places. I'm hoping that someone with development skills will peek under the linux hood and fix it.

I've got several hdparms over in the phoronix forum(with different command extentions), here, I'll cut and paste one for you.

# hdparm -Tt /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc: Timing cached reads: 788 MB in 2.00 seconds = 393.17 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 20 MB in 3.10 seconds = 6.45 MB/sec

I have HDparms for the Extreme III card as well as the Extreme IV card over there. I think whatever is limiting my EX4 card is/was also limiting my EX3 card, because the results were virtually the same when I ran them.(compare the results)

Regardless, even with my low 6.5mb /sec bandwidth benchmarks, this is still way faster than my hard drive, which put out numbers around the 40's.

It's all about access times. This EX4 card is rated for around 25-35 MB/s data transfers, which would be phenomenal when coupled with SSD access times. If only someone would open the flood gates. *sigh*

:-)

Here's "proper" benchmarks. http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-7896...

Has everybody in this thread seen this comment thread:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070526142455986#c...

It is rather long, but starts out with a response from a design engineer who opines, "Don't wast your money on these. In a year or so, when they start to fail, you will see why."

A very long debate ensues. My conclusion: Not worth it, unless you need one for your spacecraft.

Debunking Misconceptions in SSD Longevity

http://www.embeddedstar.com/weblog/2007/05/21/ssd-longevity/

They last a lot longer when you do not define a swap partition, as I do.

As long as I get around 3 or so years out of this, I'll be happy.