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SSD Questions

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Hey guys,
So I've been doing a lot of reading lately on the evolution of SSDs. I read 4-5 articles on Anandtech's website starting like 3 years ago with the Anthology, then his sequel, and multiple reviews of more current drives. But still, much information is outdated that I find.

A few things like to know is:
  1. Are there any RAID controllers that can pass TRIM command to a RAID 0 or 1 array of SSDs yet? Honestly, despite Anandtech's middle-of-the-road opinion here, for the longevity of any computer I build (at least 3years, preferably 4), not having TRIM is not an option for me. The last article I can find toward development here is dated March 2010. I'm hoping that in the course of a year, at least one RAID controller has been programmed adequately.
  2. It seems to me that OCZ is on top right now with Vertex 3 IOPS, Patriot mimicking their exact tech with Partiot Wildfire, then Crucial with same SF controller but slightly less performance, then Intel & Corsair kinda behind right now, but more reliable. Does this seem accurate?
  3. I am definitely going to have SSD in my new build toward the end of this year, and I'm really considering OCZ Vertex 3 IOPS or Patriot Wildfire, but I'm also seeing that it has serious reliability issues, with a large number of BSOD/freezes/stutter issues currently that have not been resolved for a few months (and the attempted firmware fix messed up data rates taking away the substantial lead that OCZ had). Any word on when this will get resolved? I'm going to wait this mess out before I push forward with the new tech.
  4. Any other suggestions/notes for SSDs since I'm new?

Thanks Guys!
 

TheLostSwede

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Intel's RAID drivers have supported it for quite some time and there have been a lot of driver revisions since then http://www.techpowerup.com/118152/New_Intel_Chipset_Drivers_Bring_TRIM_Support_for_RAID_Setups.html

To quote the last post from that link, which mirrors my research as well:
This is simply NOT true. I know you guys are excited about this, but if you read the tech notes and FAQ on the intel website, they give you specifics.

The trim will work for drives setup through a raid controler that are NOT part of the raid members. Meaning that you can have two hard drives set up and a third non raid member drive. The non member drive will be detected and able to comunicate through the controller.

Those disk in RAID will not be trimmed.

Sorry to burst you guys bubble.
But again, that was as of May 2010, well over a year ago. Anything new since then?
 
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But again, that was as of May 2010, well over a year ago. Anything new since then?

No

Here's a review of a handful of the faster drives at the moment. The bottom line is that there isn't much real world difference between them. Also missing from your list is the new Kingston Hyper X series. Right now Corsair and OCZ's reliability are a bit questionable. No one anywhere has confirmed this, but both of them using the SF 2200 controller and having similar issues leads me to believe that controller has issues.

The newest SF controller currently is the 2281 which the Kingston Hyper X, Adata, and Mushkin Chronos Deluxe use.
 
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These questions still get me. I understand how everyone is upset about TRIM not being supported in RAID arrays; however, if you choose the right drives, this is not an issue at all. I personally have a pair of Patriot Inferno SSD's in RAID-0 and have no issue whatsoever. Any SSD that uses a Sandforce controller has what they call "Background Garbage Collection". This is feature is identical to what TRIM does except it does it on a controller level as opposed to an OS level. In my opinion, I would rather have the controller perform this function anyway.

Here are some resources for your enjoyment/education:

Recycler, which intelligently performs garbage collection with the least impact on flash endurance.
Source

Intelligent “Recycling” for advanced free space management (Garbage Collection)
Source

If the controller were to background garbage collect all of the spare blocks, new data written from the host could be written without having to move any data in advance, letting the performance operate at its peak speed. The trade-off is that some of those blocks of data are actually not needed by the host, but the controller is unaware of that information. The result is that the data is rewritten to another location in the Flash memory increasing the write amplification and at some point the host will tell the controller to delete that data (or TRIM it). In some of the SSDs from OCZ the background garbage collection only clears up a small number of blocks then stops, thereby limiting the amount of excessive writes.[11] Another solution is to have an efficient garbage collection system which can perform the necessary moves in parallel with the host writes. This solution is more effective in high write environments where the SSD is rarely idle.[16] The SandForce SSD controllers,[14] and the systems from Violin Memory have this capability.[10]

Source
 
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Get an Sandforce based drive and you don't need TRIM. don't RAID drives based on any other controller. That's the only solution. Or, you can opt for not RAIDing. Why do you want to RAID if you are buying new? The only reason to RAID SSDs is to make it a bigger volume, not for the speed gains. You cannot notice the difference in performance unless you copy data back and forth to another volume capable of same or better read/write speeds of your SSD RAID volume.

and fyi,
Crucial doesn't use Sandforce right? They use Marvell controller. So is the intel 510. Intel 320 uses their own controller, but it also has the 8MB bug (which is not resolved yet?). OCZ, Corsair, Patriot, newly announced Kingston Hyper-X drives (and a few others maybe) uses SF controller.
 
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Here's a review of a handful of the faster drives at the moment.
...
The newest SF controller currently is the 2281 which the Kingston Hyper X, Adata, and Mushkin Chronos Deluxe use.

2 parts -
1) Thanks for the link to the review, it's very cool, and parallels other reviews such as anandtech that I've read. Very good - makes me semi-set on the Vertex 3 (maybe IOPS) again.
2) What does thew new controller do that the old one doesn't (besides not crash/bsod lol)? I haven't seen any reviews of Kingston Hyper X? How does it stack up?

Interesting to see all these RAM companies getting into the Drive sector now. Makes perfect sense, but it's just interesting to see them come into the market one by one now.
 
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