Team Group shoves two 250GB SSDs into single enclosure
By Darren Murph 
posted Jun 3rd 2009 10:27AM
posted Jun 3rd 2009 10:27AM
posted Jun 3rd 2009 10:27AM
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The Holy Grail??? ...already?
Don't get too excited yet mate, yes we all want to see big capacities and ever-improving sequential read / write. BUT there are some VERY important factors in what makes an SSD eligible for "Holy Grail" status.
These include RANDOM read / write performance -
It is RANDOM read / write peformance that affects how "snappy" the end user feels that their system is running. It affects things like how quickly programs load... SEQUENTIAL read / write is only really important for transferring large files like DVD / BD backups.
and
TRIM / Cache / other equivalent method of counteracting SSD slow-down after it's received a lot of use.
One thing I like about this setup is that it's two in one, not one massive one. That, to me, carries a hint of redundancy and also means that one drive will not suffer the entire slowdown so if data is sent entirely to one drive, the other is untouched and so won't deal with it.
Other than that... the freaking size is AWESOME! (I had an 80GB drive in my last comp so a 500 would be O_O)
This means NOTHING.. We don't know anything about the architecture, controller, or firmware... These could be totally rotten or very good. With SSDs you have to always wait to see the benchmarks..
Oh and I forgot to mention, "internal RAID 0" SSDs are nothing special. A bunch of them were made using dual NAND controllers in RAID 0 because the JMicron controllers many of the manufacturers were using were just plain terrible and basically unusable. And even with dual-controllers, these drives still sucked terribly in random write performance..
cant wait for ssd's to get alot cheaper
I would imagine that products such as this will be in the $250 range within 2 years.
Soooo fast, lasts forever, you can hit it with a hammer while it's writing and not damage it. I like.
RAID 0 eh?
Double the chance of failure.
I don't know anything about SSD failure rates but this does seem a little scary.
Sir.Welly, thats not a holy grail.
This is a holy grail :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs
On a serious note, this sounds good. Sounds expensive too...
Yes, the cost may be prohibiting, but the very fact that this is technologically achievable is incredible. SSDs have caught up with hard drives for every practical use, other than backup purposes, and it happened faster than I expected. Don't worry, prices are going to fall exponentially from this point.
Doesn't that say it's a 2.5, so technically it is a first?
Do SSDs fail often? I don't think so, right?
They fail in sectors, so data loss isn't as bad as a full fail on a hard drive... I just wonder how recovery works though.
That is some serious Team Group effort
I didn't know SSDs could only get maximum write speeds of 160mbps... let alone 2 of them put together.
/sarcasm
pretty slow for raid0, much be using that crappy controller the other cheap ssds are using. If this was based on the indilix chip, it would be around 400mbps.
Actually it depends how they've tweaked the controller chip / firmware:
Some manufacturers have made the big mistake of squeezing every last drop of sequential read / write performance so that they've got a "wow" factor to help them sell units.
They then receive bad reviews because some of these drives perform WORSE than regular HDD's - some are even worse than 5,400rpm HDD's.
Some manufacturers realise that it is random read / write performance that will make a system run quickly and so they'll use the controller chips / firmware in order to achieve lightning-fast drives. This has so far meant a slight hit in sequential read / write - something which will get ironed out more and more with each generation of drives.
Intel got the balance right ages ago with the X25-M - a very hard drive to beat (pun intended /sigh)
Now I can upgrade from my 8GB
I realized that whenever SSD is mention, there will never be a price.
Why sandwich two 2.5s into a 3.5 enclosure couldn't they just design a bigger more efficient 3.5 design?
One OCZ Vertex by itself is faster than this. This isn't impressive.