64GB SLC SSD for £115

[jason]

try a BIOS update

[Critters]

Thanks Jason, I was just about to when Sencerd came to the rescue and told me that in the bios (hidden under 3 clicks) you have to enable each port that has a drive on it for raid, otherwise it can not be seen by the raid controler.

I raid 0'd all 3 and installed Vista (still had some long pauses when installing) but it booted fine and is installing updates now, all 76 of them!

[Critters]

Success! (results using 8meg block size)



And random reads

[Critters]

After running more benchmarks using PCMarkVantage, HDTach and a few others I have come to the conclusion that most benchmarks are either a bit random or can't cope with SSDs. I see figures ranging from 250MB/sec to over 500MB/sec. Some real world tests I have done:

Copying a 1.7Gig file from the raid onto the raid (so reading and writing at the same time) = 11 seconds (154MB/sec)
Loading a level in Cod4 = 6 seconds, which I am pretty sure is almost 3 times quicker than usual, need to confirm.
Vista booting in just under 3 animations of the moving bar.
Instant access to programs after logging into vista
Gimp shop loads in 3 seconds (need to install photoshop)
The HDD light no longer flickers, it stays on when loading L4D and CoD4 levels.
Everything feels more instant.

Time will tell if it keeps in shape, no reason to think it wont as there is no penalty for filling up an SSD drive.

[blade]

So, do you think these are the disks to come/of the future ?

Is it worth waiting and the price will go down or just get some now as I am having some slow down issues, I got a bigger Hdd (250g sataII to a 500g sataII) but it only made a small amount of difference, I am using 2 external hdd's for music movies etc and its just windows and install files on the main hdd, sizes are getting a bit big, GTA IV is 14gb after install, and then theres all the other games at about 4-7gb each and it all adds up .

[Critters]

Yes, it's the future. I would imagine we will see 1TB+ SSD drives by the start of 2010 and prices will of course be coming down, right now you pay a premium to be the first. A couple of velociraptors in Raid0 will come very close and cost a lot less, may be worth looking into that.

[H@WK_EYES]

What raid card you using Dave?

[Critters]

Motherboards onboard one. Asus Striker Extreme.
Sencerd benchmarked 1, 2 and 3 drives and they scaled perfectly so we are not hitting the limits of the raid controller with 3 drives.