mothergoose729

I just recently got a 64gb Super Talent Ultra Drive ME. It boasts a 64gb capacity, with a barefoot indilinx controller equipped with 64mb of device cache. The drive is rated for up to 260mb/s reads and 70mb/s writes with an access time of approximately .01ms. I put it to real world tests installing real applications. Primarily the focus is on boot time, and common application load times (windows media player, Microsoft office, and web browsers, ect).

In my tests I don't do much measuring of raw output or performance numbers in benchmarks. Plenty of review sites have documented this already. My goal is to put my SSD through testing in real world situations, using popular operating systems and software mostly likely to be loaded onto this drive by other consumers. It doesn't help the average person to know that this SSD scored so many point in 3d mark, but it can help to know how fast it can load common apps many of us use every day.

It took many hours, but I finally have put together enough data that I think people can now draw their own conclusions. I tried to be as imperical and consistent as possible and I think for the range that I convered I did a good job. I will have my own conlusion at the end, but I am interested in what people reading this think about he worth of these drives. Please post in the poll if you think SSD's are worth buying over regular hard drives!


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Testing Hardware And Methodology


I tested the SSD in two different machines. The first a Asus EEE PC 1000HE Netbook, with Windows XP SP3 x86, upgraded with 2gb of RAM versus 1gb stock. I pitted it against the drive it came shipped with, a 160gb Seagate Momentus 5400rpm.

Installed software and relevant OS tweaks
The second is a custom built, relatively high end build:

AMD Phenom II x4 940BE @ 3.00ghz (stock)
4gb G skill PI Black DDR2 Memory @ 800mhz CAS 4
Foxconn A79A-S 790FX AM2+
850 Watt North Q Black Magic Power Supply
Auzentech X-FI Prelude PCI Sound Card
Asus HD 4890@Stock
320gb Western Digital AAKS 7200rpm
Secondary Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB (Storage/without OS image or program files)
Dual Monitor Display

Installed software and relevant OS tweaks
To test the impact of the SSD in each of these computers I used Norton Ghost 14 to create an identical back up to the main drive in each machine. I then loaded this on to the SSD, booted up and allowed windows to install device drivers as necessary, the booted again, and resumed testing. The time on each was tested from the moment the action (ie boot, application launch) started until it fully appeared or ended. All timed tests were run at least twice, and the most "typical" score was selected for the result. Throughout the tests I was pleased to see that there was very little variance, results were consistent each time.

Synthetic Benchmarks - HD Tune

Just as a reference here are the HD Tune scores for each drive that was tested. Each were put through the benchmark included in version 2.55.


The original drive in the custom PC


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The original drive in the netbook


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The SSD Drive


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Write Tests (General Performance)

SSD boast some impressive write speeds for sure. However, even in daily use, I couldn't really notice the difference. Windows XP installed in approximately 15 minutes, accounting for shut down times, somewhat faster then on a typical HD.

Microsoft office Enterprise Installed in about 9 minutes, while Viso took approximately 4 minutes.

The Super Talent Ultra Drive is not particularly strong in write performance, the OCZ Vertex and Intel drives are leader in that. You only write an application once, from then on it is all about read speeds.

Read Performance

It is really very difficult to describe what the difference is between and SSD and a regular HD in terms of application load times. Firefox showed little or no benefit for some reason, I take this to mean there are some mandatory timeouts within the code that limit its performance.

The whole Microsoft office suite though, including word, power point, excel, and visio all loaded in less then 1 second flat. Before on my netbook there would be a pause lasting approximately three seconds or more for each of these. The "snappiness" feeling is really wonderful switching between different applications seamlessly.

The effect the SSD has on the custom PC was even more pronounced. Apps that used to load "fast" now loaded instantly. Testing on my regular HD convertXtoDVD took about 5 seconds to load, with the SSD it took approximately 2.

The wake time on both the desktop and especially the laptop was greatly effected as well. My netbook, if allowed to sit for ten minutes would wake ~3 seconds after the keys were touched with the Seagate Momentus, with the SSD it was nearly instant. If allowed to go into a deep sleep (about 30 minutes unattended) my laptop HD would take about 8 seconds to kick up, my SSD would take between 5 and 6 seconds.

Game load times were effected too. S.T.A.L.K.E.R took 13 seconds to load from desktop to full screen, with the SSD it took 7 seconds. Level load times dropped from 39 seconds (HDD) to 31 seconds (SSD) as well. For those who play S.T.A.L.K.E.R you know that there is the occasional stutter moving about with view distance set to high, this was experienced with both the HDD and SSD playing this game so neither helped that much.

The overall snappiness feeling of any SSD is great, and I noticed less pauses and stuttering doing the same things on my PCs that i did before with standard hard drives. Does the justify spending hundreds of dollars for one of these? Read on and decide.

Boot Time:

An OS boot time can be a tricky thing to test when comparing two drives. How fast a computer boots is not directly dependent on how fast the hardware or the HD is. There are parts of the windows kernel and certain drivers, in particular the network drivers, which take longer then others to fully load. When your OS seems to have "booted" often times there are still applications, drivers, and pieces of the windows kernel still loading and initializing. What makes one PC boot faster then another is more complicated then a simple mating of the HD read speed and the processor clock speed.

As I said in the testing and methodology section, to test this I created an image of each OS, and loaded this on to the SSD. This means the software and OS being tested against one another were completely identical.

In my netbook the POST time (power on system test), or the time it takes for the HDD to turn on and start loading the OS, was 7 seconds with the HD, while with the SSD was 9 seconds, so keep that in mind. POST time is counted as part of the boot. The custom PC, with so many peripherals, had a POST time of 34 seconds all by itself. To get an idea of how long the "boot time" is, or when the HD kicks in and starts performing, subtract POST time from the listed boot times below.

There were initial Start up items in every test. These are applications that automatically add themselves to the boot order in the OS in order to function properly. These items were loaded in every boot, and therefore had an effect on every test, so keep that in mind as well:

Netbook: AVG antivirus, uttorrent, Asus Super Hybrid Engine, CCC codec pack

Custom PC: uttorrent, Daemon Tools Lite, CCC codec pack

Cold Boot

I timed this test by starting the timer as soon as I pressed the power button, and stopping as soon as the desktop became visible

Netbook with HDD booted to desktop from a cold boot in 1min 6 seconds total, 59 seconds after POST

With the SSD it booted in 45 seconds. This is 36 seconds after POST.

On the Custom PC the HDD booted in 1min and 6 seconds. This is 32 seconds after POST.

The SSD booted the same OS in 55 seconds. This is only 21 seconds after POST.

Cold Boot + Firefox Load Time

I noticed during my testing that while the desktop would load within a certain amount of time, it was often took significantly longer for the all parts of the OS to actually become usable. To test the difference I added firefox to the windows start up. LAN drivers are often the very last thing to fully get up and going, and it is a good benchmark of a systems "actual" boot time. These were timed from the moment the power button was pressed until firefox fully loaded the default web page (google).

The netbook with the HDD took 1min 35 seconds to do this, or 1min 28 seconds after boot. This is much longer then the boot time alone.

With the SSD things were noticeably quicker. It loaded the same things in 1min 4 seconds, or 55 seconds after post.

It was must of the same with the custom PC. The HDD took 1min 19 seconds to get firefox going, or ~45 seconds after post.

The SSD did it in 1min 1 second, in just 27 seconds after POST.


Boot Over Load


I had a theory that, while the SSD was thuroughly out shining the HDD in each of these tests, that there needed to be something more intense to really show the difference between the two. After testing by adding firefox to the startup menu, I went nuts and added just about every program and each oS to the startup menu.

For the netbook these programs included:

23 different applications all at once

For the custom PC I loaded these:

Total of 19 apps

Here is how they did.

The netbook with the HD took a full 2min and 1 second to load all of this, or about 1min and 54 seconds after post. During the time all of these were loading the desktop was pretty much inaccessible too, it kept the whole computer busy for that long.

The netbook with the SSD loaded all 21 of these in 1 min 17 seconds, or 1min 8 seconds after POST. Perhaps even more impressive was that even while all of these apps were popping up allover the place, I could still interact with the desktop with pausing or stuttering.

Much of the same on the PC, loading those 19 apps the HDD took 1min 42 seconds, or 1min 8 seconds after POST, and everything locked up while it worked.

With the SSD it was a smooth 1min 3seconds, only 37 seconds after POST. This is less then half the time of the HDD, and only 10 seconds longer then it took to load firefox by itself in the previous test.

Conclusion:

So after all of that, is the cost of an SSD worth it?

There performance of the Super Talent Drive was very impressive. In real world world use it cut boot time and application load time significantly, in some test cleanly in half. Using my computers with SSD inside was smooth as butter and very pleasant. Something I would be reluctant to give up.

The problem is, with the way your computer work, the SSD rarely has much of a job to do. Windows automatically loads most of the data for an application into system memory, and tools like prefetch can help a slow HDD seem faster by caching data for your most used apps. I leave my PC on nearly a 100% of the time, so the boot speed of a drive is doesn't mean a whole lot to me. If an application or a game loads in 2 seconds or 5 I can't say it really matters. The help in gaming performance for S.T.A.L.K.E.R was great, but the drives are too small to fit many good games. Even with the games on the faster drive, you are still going to be spending much larger chunks of your time actually playing the game, and an SSD has little effect over that. For the super high end user with all the latest and fastest hardware a SSD can be a satisfying upgrade. For most of us though, a faster processor or better graphics card will help us a lot more.

On my netbook, however, the SSD is a godsend. I am able to load my netbook with all the office and programming apps I need and not have to worry about horrific boot times. Since I shut down and turn on my nebook a lot during class and work I need the extra pick up and go to stay productive. The ability to switch quickly between traditionally very bloated apps like microsoft office and visual studio so quickly is great. My netbook with an SSD feels faster then a much more expensive laptop with a standard HD.

The bottom line; is it worth it? Yes and no. If you go out and get an SSD right I can guarantee you will notice the difference. The problem is the price and the capacity on these drives is still very horrible. I have seen the Super Talent ultra drive ME on the internet for as low as 209 dollars after tax and shipping, for 10 more dollars on newegg you can get two 500gb 7200.12 drives and a 1tb 7200.12 backup. Put these in a RAID 5 array and you get a similar level or read and burst performance with 30x the capacity and a level of redundancy; if you are a professional that is a no brainer. However even the fastest HD drives would still feel slower then a SSD because of the high burst speeds, incredible IOPs and low access time. People looking for the best thing in data storage need look now further then a good SSD, and like everything else in life, the best stuff often comes at a steep price

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06si

Can you add additional hard drives without get the BSOD? I'm asking because my Corsair p256 ssd gives me BSOD when I install additional hdd.

-iceblade^

what a helpful review - really useful in showing how an SSD can benefit a netbook.

would you say it is worth the cost?

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mothergoose729

My netbook only has room for one drive. I used an external drive to get my drivers on there though. And that acted fine for me. Not sure if that helps or not.

I want to do a little more playing with it before I do my conclusion. So far I would say yes, for a mobile computer anyway it makes sense.

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-iceblade^

if you don't mind me asking, how much was it?

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ErBall

SSD's are worth their weight in gold.

I've owned 4 now, and doubt I will ever have a regular hd for my boot drive.

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mothergoose729

I bought mine used for 150. They generally go on newegg for about 250 after tax and shipping. I am currently making use of only 8.2gb worth of space though, so using it the way I do I probably could have gotten away with a 32gb drive.

EDIT: I researched the price on my drive and I have actually seen it as low as 209 after tax and shipping.

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mothergoose729

Ok, review update. I did a complete overhaul here, lots more data and I tested my sig rig as well as my netbook.

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ritchwell

@mothergoose729 your hdtune of your SSD results look like it fragmented, run the wiper program. This is my ultradrive me 64 gig(paid $139 during newegg shell shocker) on my gateway fx7811 lappy.

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eflyguy

Nice review but poll is useless.

SSD's are worth it *in some instances* but are not for everyone.
..a

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