Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

I love the Intel X25-M SSD, but recently I’ve been having problems with applications stuttering, freezing, locking up, and not responding to input. Mouse cursors will hang, application don’t respond–essentially nothing works. I tried updating to the latest drivers, etc, but no luck. For informational purposes, here’s my system info:

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
System Model D975XBX_
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 11 GenuineIntel ~2430 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Intel Corp. BX97510J.86A.1487.2007.0902.1724, 9/2/2007
Total Physical Memory 4,096.00 MB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
I/O Port 0×000003C0-0×000003DF NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512
Model INTEL SSDSA2MH080G1GC

I think I’ve found two things that helped:

1. Not running Mozy Backup
2. Turning off virtual memory page files on non-SSD drives
3. Move Google Chrome’s profile to a hard disk

If anyone has other tips on getting rid of SSD stutters, let me know.

I’m a huge fan of the massive (but slow) bulk storage devices made by Drobo. I own two of the Data Robotics Drobos. They’ll save you from losing data if a single drive fails, and a single enclosure can hold 4 drives for up to 8TB of storage. Sure, they’re relatively slow compared to a single drive, RAID, or an SSD, but they’re perfect for an external hard drive for home storage.

And now they’ve upped the ante with the Drobo Pro, an 8-bay enterprise version of the Drobo.

There’s a new “Dual Disk Redundancy” option will spread the data out such that the Drobo Pro array can suffer two simultaneous drive failures without any loss of data or interrupted service. You can even toggle this option on and off without having to rebuild the array. There’s also new connectivity via gigabit ethernet (iSCSI) as well as the older FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 ports. Linux, Windows, and Mac are supported, on NTFS, HFS Plus, EXT3 and FAT32. For more details, check out the data sheet.

You can buy one now for $1,300 from the Drobo store, or $900 if you exchange two old drobos for the new shiny model, something I’m horribly tempted to do right now.

Intel, hands down, makes the best solid-state disk drives you can buy. They offer two products, X25-M and X18-M, which offer up to 80Gb of SATA storage in a 2.5″ form factor–perfect as a notebook drop-in replacement. The drives support Native Command Queuing, and are rated to perform 3.3K writes per second, and 35K reads per second. They use very little power, and generate almost no heat.

Intel X25-M 80GB MLC Solid State Drive (SSD)

This is the result of benchmarking the Intel X-25M SSD with HD Tach. Notice that the sequential read speed is 220 MB/s, and that random reads take just 0.1ms.

This is the result of benchmarking the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s, an older 7200 rpm drive. It only attains 65MB/s sustained read, and 13.4ms random reads. The Intel SSD can read small bits of data over 100x faster than a spinning hard drive, and sustain a constant read rate over 3x the seagate. It’s those small reads & writes are what typically slow down home computers, as they need to constantly write small file for the operating system, file system, virtual memory, etc. With a hard disk, those writes impact the reading of other files, as the disk heads have to seek back and forth across the surface of the disk. With an SSD, there is no physical movement, and reads and writes don’t interfere in the same way.

If you’re interested in reading more, The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ not just compares all the SSDs on the market, but also goes into some detail about the underlying technology powering SSDs. They conclude that Intel’s SSDs, which offer incredibly low-latency random writes, offer the best value.

You can buy the Intel SSDSA2MH080G1C5 X25-M 80GB MLC 2.5-Inch 9.5mm Solid State Drive on Amazon for just $343!

Update: If you don’t understand how much better the Intel X25-M is than the competition, carefully looking at this just off the press benchmark against the new Corsair model should tell you. Why do you buy SSD? For fast random writes. Something the other SSD manufactors just do not get.