Intel X-18m SSD + migration kit $189.99 at newegg

It's just the Newegg daily thing, not really a great deal imo. It is def the older model without trim, and even the newer ones they recalled the new firmware with trim for now.

PJK said: ........I bought one to stick in a HTPC.

May I ask why?

Sweet! Can you share next weeks episode of Heroes, Mr. Space and Time?

napDaddy said: Newegg noticed the traffic increase and bumped the price to 239.00

Promo code EMCMMMV43 should fix that

PinwiZ said: I've used an SSD with and without TRIM support, and there really is a major difference in write speed over time. I'd highly recommend not getting the G1 drive and either waiting for a deal on the G2, or find some other SSD that supports it (I currently use a Super Talent 60gb that I'm very happy with)

We don't know it's a G1 drive. We only suspect.

TRIM only makes a noticable difference AFTER you've completely filled up your drive one time over. That's where it improves over a non-TRIM SSD. If you don't expect to be filling up your drive with large files then a non-TRIM drive might make sense. Worst case you can simply do a clone backup of your drive, zero out the sectors, and restore back. Poor man's TRIM.

MandyT: transfer speed. SSDs vary wildy in read and write speads. cheap ones have slow write speed and you'll have to set up the OS to handle that (turn off indexing, move pagefile to other drive, etc)

delete

goat6500 said: PJK said: ........I bought one to stick in a HTPC.

May I ask why?

Sure: 1.8" and you can mount it anywhere. Plus, SSD's are silent. To a much lesser extent, the power usage is a bit lower since the HTPC is always on this is a very small factor. I use SSD's in almost everything now except the 4U servers that have the raid cards + spindle drives for storage.

The G1 suffers from no trim, which is a bummer as you can tell the difference between drives that have it (or garbage collection) and those that don't. This specific application is not going to do a ton of writing as I'll map all folders to the servers, I'll keep browser cache in ram, and etc.

I would never get a G1 drive at this point for a main system, but for something that just plays media, given the home network resources the box has, I'm not too worried about losing performance.

Also, the SSD boot times on the Intel/Indilinx/Samsung drives are great. My Gateway notebook previously sported a 7200rpm notebook drive. Once it moved to an Agility the Win 7 Ultimate boot time went down to about 23 seconds from hitting the power button to ready to use (clean install).

Also @ Mandy: The Kingston V series is based on a Toshiba controller (see SSD controller-drive list) that is a rebadged JMicron JMF602 controller with allegedly updated firmware. The V series doesn't have trim and is based on a really bad controller design that is basically not used anymore because of stuttering problems. Being fair, Toshiba/Kingston allegedly have a workaround, but it is a last generation SSD that is nowhere near as good as the X-18/25 first generation drives.

factory said: I believe this is the same unit at Microcenter for $199? If you have one local and prefer them for some reason.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_...

My experience with returning stuff back to Microcenter has been top notch, unlike my experience at Best Buy which includes being accused of lying and trying to con them, which I wasn't. Microcenter even took back a hard disk that I had put data on which didn't fix a problem I was having - no questions other than is the hard disk good or defective.

The wiper.sh tools only works with indilinx based controller SSD's. It's based on the wiper tool utility for windows that OCZ released a while back for OS without trim support. This tool does not work on intel SSD's or any other non-indilinx based SSD. It is a shame that intel is unwilling to release a G1 trim enabled firmware. I know that with cost reductions now being a big factor it is unlikely we will ever see one. It just really bites for the early adopters who shelled out $400+ for the G1 80GB drive and are now orphaned as far as a trim solution. The only way to restore full performace on a G1 drive is to do an ATA Secure Erase. This entails imaging your drive, secure erase, then restore.

geowrian said: I think you don't quite understand what exactly "TRIM" does. Filling the drive, then zeroing it won't do anything but use up a write cycle across the drive. The drive doesn't know if the data you are writing (even a zero format) is actual file data or unallocated space in the MFT/FAT/etc. It *must* assume the data might be usable or it might corrupt your data. However, that assumption means it must still do the read-erase-write cycle whenever it does a write - hence the drastic performance loss once all the sectors have been used at least once. The zero format doesn't change this in any way.

TRIM allows the OS to tell the drive what is and is not in use. The data no longer in use can then be utilized more effectively, and the read-erase-write cycle can be cut down to just a normal write - with nearly identical performance as when the drive was new. The non-TRIM drives, or a TRIM drive in a non-TRIM OS (only Windows 7 supports TRIM), can still do something similar, just not automatically. The Intel SSD Toolbox fills the void between the OS and drive, allowing it to tell the drive what sectors have no meaningful data and can therefore be wiped - making them like new again. This can be put on a schedule to run daily to make it appear, to the user, nearly identical to a TRIM-enabled drive. Other brands have their own tools for doing very similar tasks.

That's not true what you said about zeroing the drive not having a positive effect on performance by returning the drive to it's native state. The problem with SSD is that it first has to clear the cluster (or whatever) prior to rewriting to it. That's what slows a write down to a sector that already has data which has been marked as deleted.

ob said: Here is a good article about the different between the Generation 1 and Generation 2 (G1 vs G2)

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=11

Now here is what I sorted out about trim, though I may be wrong.

Only windows 7 has trim support. Not vista or xp.

It has come to my attention that the following probably is NOT ACCURATE. Thanks oldfartgamer. See following post. [[ Linux users right now have a cludge for not having full TRIM which I suspect will work fine on the G1 and G2.[[actually it doesn't work with this hardware ]] It is a script that can be run once a day in a crontab(wiper.sh). There may be something similar for Windows. ]]

though the vast majority of references of wiper.sh are with OCZ, here is a reference with x25-m and wiper.sh

http://blog.patshead.com/blog/2009/11/cheating-to-trim-my-intel-x25-m.html

You are correct - only Windows 7 natively supports TRIM right now. That said, Windows XP and Vista can use manufacturer optimization tools (such as the Intel SSD Toolbox) to wipe the unused sectors in the same way TRIM does. It's not automatic like TRIM in Windows 7, but run on a schedule daily, it has the same overall effect.

whateveryouwant said: Thinking to get an SSD for my PS3. Would this be a perfect candidate?

well i've never heard that before. why put an SSD in the PS3? you can't have a low power or silent PS3, SSD ruggedness would not be a benefit, and the bulk of the data from games is loaded from disc.. so the higher read speed (compared to hard drive) will be of little benefit.

os10 say, "when time come to choose storage for PS3, wise man use hard drive, skinny-wallet man use SSD"

colebert said: geowrian said:
Correct - that is the cause of the slowdown. However, the drive doesn't just "know" that the sectors are not in use, so it still must read them, then wipe again, then write. That's what TRIM does - it tells the drive that the sectors don't need to be read, and wipes the unused sectors so they can be written to as if it was the first write.

Edit: The data has not been marked as "deleted" to the drive. It doesn't know "zero format" = forget all sectors. It just sees normal data being written to the drive.

Edit 2: Apparently, the tool referenced on the following URL does a special zero format that does tell the drive that the data is not meaningful. Actually, it's doing a "secure erase" function - this just happens to be a nice side-effect.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=11

Look, I'm not going to flame you. You make some good points. But my original statement still stands. The drive is a decent deal if you aren't going to write alot to the drive and/or don't mind doing a manual wipe with a secure-erase/zero-out type procedure. It's basically a poor-man's TRIM. I don't see how what I said was inaccurate or wrong in the spirit of helping people assess the deal.

There's more information going on here about TRIM and how drives with TRIM are naturally faster. TRIM drives are only naturally faster the SECOND TIME through the write process of a drive.

Nobody's looking for a fire.

I like this deal...I'm debating if I should get it or not. Yes, TRIM only helps the second time writing a drive, but that doesn't take very long on an 80GB drive, even under light usage. We're talking weeks to months to a year until a noticeable slowdown, not several years. This is within the typical usable lifetime of the drive. Anyway, let's drop TRIM from this completely - it's not relevant since this drive does not support it.

I was also helping users asses the deal - a "format" won't help the user at all, as was originally stated. A special procedure using a special tool and a boot disk is needed, and knowing that said tool exists. If you know about that tool, and use it when you start experiencing slowdowns, it's merely an inconvenience. However, that tool was not mentioned until my previous post, so any other talk about formatting resolving the long-term performance issues does not help the user asses the deal - it's inaccurate information that may give users the wrong idea on how to fix the problem.

I don't think there is anything else I can add that I have not already stated with regards to this topic, so I'm out.

austonia said: actually... if you're just using the SSD for the OS, apps, and maybe a few games... 80gb will go a long way. i have a cheaper 64gb SSD in my HTPC, loaded with win7 and all my usual junk and it's only half full. the swapfile, media, games, etc are all on regular hard drives. that's pretty typical when using an SSD for the boot drive, i beleive.

Good point. I would add that even if only 50% of the drive is full, but well over 50% of the sectors will have been used at least once. Having the page file and applications on another drive does significantly help, but temporary files, browser caches, system restore points, registry changes, MFT changes, and normal application usage (even if they are installed on another drive, most programs still use the boot drive for some items) will write enough data to get to that 80GB point even with light usage. On most laptops, only a single HDD is used, so the ability to move as much as possible to an alternate drive is limited.

On a desktop, this can be limited severely with proper care. Along with the secure erase tool, it's possible to get significant use out of the drive.

I'm too lazy to maintain my drive and wipe the data so often - I'm going to hold off until the 80 or 160 gb g2 versions come down in price. The 160gb g2 has 40% increase in sequential write with the newest firmware (temporary pulled from Intel's site), which is nice (if only for bragging rights).

Thanks, austonia. I use currently just use sdelete for individual items, and a more robust tool for DOD-level wiping of an entire drive. I've seen eraser mentioned before and looked at it and it looks pretty cool. However, my concern is with the SSD-specific part of this - namely the degredation of performance due to the read-wipe-write cycle after a sector has been used once before. Eraser (and other general secure deletion utilities) won't do anything for that. The G2 series, even without TRIM support, fair well long-term. G1 remains decently fast, but there is a very significant drop compared to the "new" state.

austonia said: whateveryouwant said: Thinking to get an SSD for my PS3. Would this be a perfect candidate?

well i've never heard that before. why put an SSD in the PS3? you can't have a low power or silent PS3, SSD ruggedness would not be a benefit, and the bulk of the data from games is loaded from disc.. so the higher read speed (compared to hard drive) will be of little benefit.

os10 say, "when time come to choose storage for PS3, wise man use hard drive, skinny-wallet man use SSD"

I've only upgraded one from 80GB to 320GB because I had one laying around and increasing storage capacity is about the only utility I can think of for performing any upgrade to the PS3 in the first place. For bragging rights on how fast your game saves will load perhaps? Watch that sub second time drop down to even less sub second load time.

Who's this os10 character? He is quite wise. Listen to him lest one wishes to become "a fool who is about to part with his latinum."

**NM, didn't see that this was a Dane Electric kit that included adapter kits before I posted.

if you have a notebook that uses 3.3V 1.8" drives - its okay - the gen2 X18-m are in full stock now 160gb and 80gb. i've had my mitts on both in the last week - VERY fast - very small (5mm deep for both sizes) - trim. oh yeah.

gen 1 are fast but no trim - not going to happen - but if you have a 3.3v 1.8" device (keep in mind the fitment is uSATA because its only 3.3v on power; the data is standard sata but spaced closely).

i would just spend the $$ and get an x25-m if you do not really have a need for a 1.8" drive myself.

be careful most uSata to 2.5" sata converters make the device too long to fit in a notebook and don't have quality power regulators to push 5V (sata) to 3.3V that this drive needs.

extra parts add extra points of failure as well.