The folks at Kingston were very kind to send me two 30GB Kingston V Series SSDs. SSDs are like flash drives, only much much faster and expensive. I was positively salivating at the idea of running the SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration. The SSDs I received are 2.5” in size and come with a 3.5” conversion kit. To remind you non-techie types out there, a laptop usually takes 2.5” drives and desktops usually take 3.5” ones.
Testing:
I tested the SSDs in a variety of configurations.
1. On a netbook. With Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Windows 7.
2. In a RAID 0 configuration on a desktop.
I measured the startup time as the primary indication of the SSD’s performance. I define the startup time as the time from POST/BIOS logo until a usable browser screen pops up.
Netbook specs: Dell Mini 10V 1011, Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz and 2GB RAM
Ubuntu Netbook Remix[UNR] on a netbook:
I used EXT2 for the UNR since it was a non journalled FileSystem - minimizes number of writes compared to journalled FS’es like EXT4. I actually came across an article that explained making the EXT4 FS non-journalled but I decided that it made the whole exercise needlessly complex and my commandline-fu is less than adequate.
I measured the startup time as the time from POST/BIOS logo until a usable browser screen pops up.
Ubuntu takes a pretty decent 22.9s to startup to Firefox. It is not the sub 10s times you’d see on instant on OS’es like Slashtop or Latitude ON. The response was very snappy but since I do not have a similar experience on a HDD based UNR install, I cannot compare them objectively.
Windows 7 Ultimate x86 on a netbook:
The SSD was formatted as NTFS during install. I disabled unnecessary services like Windows Search and Desktop Window Manager Session Manager. I also adjusted the appearance for best performance. It took the Windows 7 install 35.911s to boot to a usable FireFox tab.
RAID 0 SSDs on desktop:
Let me give you the bad news first: The TRIM command cannot be passed on to RAID volumes. Even with a TRIM compatible OS like Windows 7 or on a Linux kernel of 2.6.28 or above. TRIM is a command that a compatible OS passes to a SSD to use blocks which are no longer use. If the TRIM command is not passed, the SSD will slow with use. There are tools like SSD Tweaker from Elpamsoft that help with the absence of TRIM but the performance will definitely degrade over time.
With all the above mentioned drawbacks, you’d wonder why a sane man would run SSDs in a RAID. RAID 0 stripes the data across multiple drives and increases the disk performance by two fold. SSDs already have a crazy fast read speed compared to conventional HDDs. With RAID 0, the performance boost is almost explosive.
I installed Windows 7 on a Dell Vostro 430 with a Intel Core i7 860 2.8GHz processor and 4GB DDR3 RAM. I enabled RAID 0 on the SSDs using the onboard hardware RAID controller.
Here is the performance data:
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 350.03 MB/s
Write: 103.57 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0.427 ms
Write: 0.755 ms
In contrast, the OEM HDD from the desktop clocked much slower:
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 108.37 MB/s
Write: 103.89 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 20.473 ms
Write: 2.931 ms
As you can see, the RAID 0 SSD configuration excels at read speeds and at access times. The read times are almost 40 times faster than a conventional 7200rpm HDD. The write times are almost 4 times faster than a HDD.
The startup times are pretty good too with 11.31s for the SSD as opposed to 24.414s for the HDD. That right, it more than halved the boot time.
Windows experience index for PC with the SSDs in RAID 0
Windows experience index for PC with a HDD installed
Cost
Now, SSDs are expensive at almost Rs. 125 per gig. The Kingston 30GB V series SSD drives are priced at about Rs. 3500. This might be expensive compared to a conventional HDD but I believe that the SSDs are not for everyone. They probably suit gamers with their fast read speeds and access times.
Also an option is to use the SSD as a boot disk. 30GB is more than enough for the Windows 7 install [17GB for the Ultimate Edition]. You could then add a HDD to the PC and install non-essential programs and the page file[Frequent writes are not good for the SSD’s life] to it.
Conclusion
SSDs are pretty fast but are expensive compared to conventional HDDs. While this could slow down mainstream usage, performance seeking users like gamers or those who need extremely fast read times are already adopting SSDs as a standard.
Testing:
I tested the SSDs in a variety of configurations.
1. On a netbook. With Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Windows 7.
2. In a RAID 0 configuration on a desktop.
I measured the startup time as the primary indication of the SSD’s performance. I define the startup time as the time from POST/BIOS logo until a usable browser screen pops up.
Netbook specs: Dell Mini 10V 1011, Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz and 2GB RAM
Ubuntu Netbook Remix[UNR] on a netbook:
I used EXT2 for the UNR since it was a non journalled FileSystem - minimizes number of writes compared to journalled FS’es like EXT4. I actually came across an article that explained making the EXT4 FS non-journalled but I decided that it made the whole exercise needlessly complex and my commandline-fu is less than adequate.
I measured the startup time as the time from POST/BIOS logo until a usable browser screen pops up.
Ubuntu takes a pretty decent 22.9s to startup to Firefox. It is not the sub 10s times you’d see on instant on OS’es like Slashtop or Latitude ON. The response was very snappy but since I do not have a similar experience on a HDD based UNR install, I cannot compare them objectively.
Windows 7 Ultimate x86 on a netbook:
The SSD was formatted as NTFS during install. I disabled unnecessary services like Windows Search and Desktop Window Manager Session Manager. I also adjusted the appearance for best performance. It took the Windows 7 install 35.911s to boot to a usable FireFox tab.
RAID 0 SSDs on desktop:
Let me give you the bad news first: The TRIM command cannot be passed on to RAID volumes. Even with a TRIM compatible OS like Windows 7 or on a Linux kernel of 2.6.28 or above. TRIM is a command that a compatible OS passes to a SSD to use blocks which are no longer use. If the TRIM command is not passed, the SSD will slow with use. There are tools like SSD Tweaker from Elpamsoft that help with the absence of TRIM but the performance will definitely degrade over time.
With all the above mentioned drawbacks, you’d wonder why a sane man would run SSDs in a RAID. RAID 0 stripes the data across multiple drives and increases the disk performance by two fold. SSDs already have a crazy fast read speed compared to conventional HDDs. With RAID 0, the performance boost is almost explosive.
I installed Windows 7 on a Dell Vostro 430 with a Intel Core i7 860 2.8GHz processor and 4GB DDR3 RAM. I enabled RAID 0 on the SSDs using the onboard hardware RAID controller.
Here is the performance data:
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 350.03 MB/s
Write: 103.57 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0.427 ms
Write: 0.755 ms
In contrast, the OEM HDD from the desktop clocked much slower:
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 108.37 MB/s
Write: 103.89 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 20.473 ms
Write: 2.931 ms
As you can see, the RAID 0 SSD configuration excels at read speeds and at access times. The read times are almost 40 times faster than a conventional 7200rpm HDD. The write times are almost 4 times faster than a HDD.
The startup times are pretty good too with 11.31s for the SSD as opposed to 24.414s for the HDD. That right, it more than halved the boot time.
Windows experience index for PC with the SSDs in RAID 0
Windows experience index for PC with a HDD installed
Cost
Now, SSDs are expensive at almost Rs. 125 per gig. The Kingston 30GB V series SSD drives are priced at about Rs. 3500. This might be expensive compared to a conventional HDD but I believe that the SSDs are not for everyone. They probably suit gamers with their fast read speeds and access times.
Also an option is to use the SSD as a boot disk. 30GB is more than enough for the Windows 7 install [17GB for the Ultimate Edition]. You could then add a HDD to the PC and install non-essential programs and the page file[Frequent writes are not good for the SSD’s life] to it.
Conclusion
SSDs are pretty fast but are expensive compared to conventional HDDs. While this could slow down mainstream usage, performance seeking users like gamers or those who need extremely fast read times are already adopting SSDs as a standard.
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