HDDs Disappearing

[tek_heretik]

You didn't select capacitor aging, a PSU slows and weakens a little over time, regardless, even without the capacitor aging, you still should have some breathing room between what the calculator said and the top end, meaning you should have at least a 600W or higher, preferably a 'gold' or higher since you say you pay your own electricity. As for the apartment thing, that was just an EXAMPLE (re-read previous post carefully), it is quite common HERE for electricity to be included in the rent, as is heat, water and hot water.

As for the wire splicing in a fan, if you are not completely sure of what you are doing, not a good idea to be taking anything apart and messing with it, you could get a shock or cause a fire, I hope you don't leave your system running when you go out, lol.

As for the motherboard type, anything that will support an i7 is pretty much 'high-end desktop", 'regular' was wrong, sorry.

Although a lot of people here probably have much experience with hardware, myself, personally, have 15 years experience from low to high-end and in between, I've been at this forever, I could build a PC blind folded, with my hands tied behind my back and have an OS loaded within the hour, lmao.

Btw, Intel SSDs are sloowwwwwwww, you might want to check the read/write specs before you purchase your next SSD. Don't get me wrong, I love their CPUs and chipsets, just not a huge fan of their slow SSDs.

[oshunluvr]

That's a great tool Tek. Newegg said 725 but the extreme power site said 773 for my setup. Capacitor aging is an interesting addition.

I agree with you also on the Intel SSDs. Honestly though, for most end users the specs of the drive are less important than the bang for the buck. I think if you reach into the upper tier of performance, say the top 10 drives, the biggest difference then is cost. I have 3 SSds in use and bought them all on sale. I killed the HDD in my wife's laptop so I decided I could sneak in an upgrade to my desktop. I slid my 128GB Adata XPG SX900 (way more performance and space than she needs) into her little Dell and bought a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro. both drives are great performers but even in SATAII mode the Samsung shows about 12% faster in hdparm.

[tek_heretik]

That's a great tool Tek. Newegg said 725 but the extreme power site said 773 for my setup. Capacitor aging is an interesting addition.

Wow, 773W! That's quite a bit of juice you are using, that must be one monster machine! See, for a rig like that, I would have just went all out and got a 1000W 'Gold'.

[oshunluvr]

I did!

[Xplorer4x4]

You didn't select capacitor aging, a PSU slows and weakens a little over time, regardless, even without the capacitor aging, you still should have some breathing room between what the calculator said and the top end, meaning you should have at least a 600W or higher, preferably a 'gold' or higher since you say you pay your own electricity. As for the apartment thing, that was just an EXAMPLE (re-read previous post carefully), it is quite common HERE for electricity to be included in the rent, as is heat, water and hot water.

As for the wire splicing in a fan, if you are not completely sure of what you are doing, not a good idea to be taking anything apart and messing with it, you could get a shock or cause a fire, I hope you don't leave your system running when you go out, lol.

As for the motherboard type, anything that will support an i7 is pretty much 'high-end desktop", 'regular' was wrong, sorry.

Although a lot of people here probably have much experience with hardware, myself, personally, have 15 years experience from low to high-end and in between, I've been at this forever, I could build a PC blind folded, with my hands tied behind my back and have an OS loaded within the hour, lmao.

Btw, Intel SSDs are sloowwwwwwww, you might want to check the read/write specs before you purchase your next SSD. Don't get me wrong, I love their CPUs and chipsets, just not a huge fan of their slow SSDs.

That's why I posted the screen shots. As for breathing room, the Newegg calculator said I was asking 540w if memory serves me right. This is why I don't tend to use these things. I thought about it way sooner in my post. I was thinking that exact same one. Plus it wouldn't surprise me if the Newegg calculator is cranked up a few notches to get a few extra bucks out of customers. Re: Electricity : You Canadians always were odd.

When it comes to the wiring splicing, I know exactly what I am doing. That's the thing, I triple checked the wiring after the magic trick and it looked right. I was splicing the wire to fit back on to a molex adapter btw. As for leaving it running, I am 100% confident. It's been months with out a hick up.

Motherboard, I suppose your right. I was just thinking that it was lower or mid end 1156 mobo.

I been at this for about 4 years, although not so much these days.


As for Intel SSDs, I will take a bit slower drive in terms of reliability. Look at the failure rates of similar SSD drives to the 330. Since Intel went to the Sandforce controllers, I believe they have a much smaller failure rate then the competition. The same holds way more true on the x25M-G2 since Intel was using the home grown controller. Plus, if memory serves me right, they were using higher quality NAND then the competition as well.

[oshunluvr]

Re Intel SSDs: In 2010 I might have agreed with you.

All the SSDs I buy have sanforce controllers so I can't see how that makes Intel better. I suspect they changed to sanforce because their SSDs cost nearly twice as much as the competition for about 1/2 the performance. All SSD makers publish their specs including which NAND they use so same goes there - how is Intel using the same components making them better? Intel's performance got better when they dropped their controller but they're still much more expensive and not in the top ten performance wise. Intel has zero models on the top ten recommended SSD list on Tom's Hardware and I trust their opinion over most other web review sites.

Besides, SSDs are one of the fastest developing sections of the PC market. Last year's info, heck last months info, is way out of date. I believe most of the statistics you might be relying on are several years old.

Finally, all the top tier makers have at least a 3 year warranty - same as most hard drives. Like I've said before, most people look for bang-for-the-buck. If you want to spend $500 for a 200GB Taylorsville Intel SSD at 3/4 the speed and capacity of my $200 256GB Samsung 840 PRO, well that's your right. Personally, I'd advise against it. For half the money get the Samsung PRO, Mushkin Deluxe, OZC Vertex 4, or half-a-dozen others and a small hard drive and make a backup. Or what the heck - get TWO SSDs and run RAID0 for real security.

BTW, I backup up important data on my hard drives too so what's the difference if I'm using an SSD? - SPEED! Therefore speed is what I'm buying. Cost/MB per sec. is far and away the most important number. The last thing I would buy is a slow SSD for twice the money on the off-chance it might last a year or two longer. Besides, by the time any of these SSDs fail, I'll want a faster one with more capacity anyway.


:cool: <Stepping down off the soapbox!>

[Xplorer4x4]

Re 2010:
Performance wise, Intel was King: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2808/4
Price wise Intel was King according to: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2806 (Note: Part of articles in the URLs below seem to contradict this, but this was what I found at a quick glance.

All the SSDs I buy have sanforce controllers so I can't see how that makes Intel better.

Firmware strategies. This is like saying a McLaren F1 is no better then a BMW since they both use BMW engines.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6710/i...5-review-240gb

Like the 520/330/335 that came before it, Intel’s SSD 525 uses a custom SandForce firmware that’s only available on Intel SSDs. SandForce doesn’t give Intel access to its firmware source code, however any bugs and fixes found as a result of Intel’s own validation are incorporated into the Intel firmware. Intel retains some period of exclusivity on the features included in its custom SandForce firmware.

Now I realize this does not exactly say that it is better, but let's keep reading:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5817/t...-120gb-180gb/9
I really wanted to quote the whole page but for the sake of being brief..

Of the available SandForce drives, I've felt most comfortable recommending Intel's own. The pass through Intel's validation labs provides that extra peace of mind that hopefully translates into a better overall experience. In the past Intel has been a reliable option in the market but not necessarily the most affordable. The 330 attempts to correct the latter. While other drives are cheaper, the 330 does give you a unique combination of an Intel validated drive at a competitive price point.

While reading up on Taylorsville to see if the MLC-HET nand vs Samsungs simple MLC nand is the reason for the difference in cost, I also saw this:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage...Force-Steroids

I guess a good question to answer up front is - What took them so long?!?! The answer is a bit complicated. Intel has actually been working on getting the 520 out the door for over a year now. They had to start with the same base SandForce firmware but accomplish two things for their version to be successful:

Optimize to perform better than other equivalent SandForce models (from competitors).
Pass Intel's stringent validation testing.

They didn't say so directly, but I can only imagine Intel's process was plagued by multiple 'back to the drawing board' moments. Trying to one-up competition like OCZ can't be easy as they've been tweaking SandForce firmware since the very beginning. There's also those nasty bugs that would cause random BSOD's or even permanently brick the drive. Such failures have no place in an Intel SSD. Intel's upper limit for each SSD line is a 0.75% annual failure rate, and we've seen SandForce SSD's failing at a higher rate than that this past year.

With each tweak made, Intel would have to once again pass their drives through another round of full validation testing. This is no small task for Intel. As an example: It took Intel just a couple of weeks to recreate and correct the long-term performance issue I discovered back in 2009, but despite mountingpressure, they could not release the updated firmware until it had successfully passed their validation a full three months later. Intel takes this testing very seriously, and that's what leads people to trust their reliability.

From the sounds of it,
1. Taylorsville is a Enterprise class drive.
2. Been in development for a long time(probably part of the increased cost).
3. They have brought double the capacity to the table brining enabling 800GB SSDs in a 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s form-factor. The only other SSDs I know reaching this capacity are the RAID drives packaed in a PCI-E interface.
4. The MLC-HET flash offers far more endurance in an SSD - Like you said, the endurance might not matter much to consumers but this is an enterprise grade drive. I think you know as well as I do longevity is very important in the enterprise sector.

So really trying to compare a Taylorsville to your Samsung is comparing Apples to Oranges. Two different types of the same product aimed at 2 totally different markets.

Re Warranty: Seriously? I mean warranty is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but I would rather spend a bit more and be less likely to utilize the warranty then to spend less and have to RMA the thing every 6 months(Not saying you do, but just throwing out a random example). Even if that extra bit meant having no RMAs for 3 years, vs having to RMA the competitions product(not just talking SSDs here) 1 time in 3 years, I would rather pay a little extra. Would I pay $100 more, probably not as money is very tight, but will I pay $10,-$20 more for proven reliability if it means a small hit performance wise? Sure.

Re 2012/2013 SSD Prices:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5817/t...gb-120gb-180gb
This is a little aged but I think it proves my point.


Tek: Here is the PSU calculator update. I went for 30% aging because I run my rig 24/7.
http://i.imgur.com/GTJiw0g.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HMuXr20.jpg
Looks like it made a big difference..

[oshunluvr]

I see your point IF it's only $20-30 dollars, but it isn't - that's my point. As far as warranty: If you make consistent backups, warranty means quite a bit. It means I can replace my drive with only a little annoyance and little or no loss of data. In your example the warranty makes even less sense. Why would you pay more betting the drive is more reliable yet only get the same warranty? Seems counter-intuitive to me.

Interesting to note: according to industry reports for 2010/2011 (ancient in PC terms) the span of reported SSD warranty returns was roughly .45% for Intel (the best) and 3.25% for OZC (the worst). During that same time Intel SSDs were (from memory only) about 33% more in cost. I'm sorry, but here on my spreadsheet it doesn't add up. The failure rate advantage adds up to about a $5 value and that's over the worst failure rate - not the overall average. $100 to buy $3 in security just doesn't make sense to me.

I still think you're betting a considerable amount of dough on an un-quantifiable chance that your SSD might fail. Argue (good-naturedly of course ) all you want but the Intel drives are not on the radar for most end-users because the don't match specs-for-dollars.

While I'll totally agree there might be a place where the mission requires the most reliability with little regard for cost, but this is the opposite of most (again - obviously my opinion, no surveys taken) day-to-day computer users. Most of us have budgets and very few of us rely on our home PC's for little more than communication or entertainment. A 33% price difference for most of us means no SSD at all and a third more cost for a 3% upgrade in reliability just doesn't compute.

We can throw numbers back and forth all day and we'll never agree. What I think we're really comparing our personal level of fault tolerance. Yours is obviously much lower than mine. That's not intended as any sort of insult at all - just an observation. To you, clearly the extra $100 means less to you than the 3% reliability. On the other hand, I would accept a 10-20% reliability gap to save that much so 3% is just about the same as free money. That means out of 100 SSDs I buy I'll have to exchange 3-4 of them. For $10000 savings ($100 price difference times 100 drives) well worth it.

[tek_heretik]

Tek: Here is the PSU calculator update. I went for 30% aging because I run my rig 24/7.
http://i.imgur.com/GTJiw0g.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HMuXr20.jpg
Looks like it made a big difference..

Wow, there ya go, now if that were my situation, I would get a 700W 'gold' or higher. Then you could use the PSU in the next machine you build, buying all new all the time gets nasty on the wallet.

[tek_heretik]

Guys guys, the MTBF is insane on those anyway, the average user could get at least 5 to 6 years out of an SSD, bottom line, stick with a quality name that offers speed too. When I have a great experience with any particular hardware brand, I stick with it until it lets me down.

Edit: When I am ready for my dual SSD purchase (for a Raid 0, >1GB per second read/write), I will be buying a pair of Kingstons for several reasons, the first is they make great memory sticks, they take a lot of abuse and are as solid as a rock (sounds like a Chevy truck commercial, lol), the second reason is, they come with internal 2.5"->3.5" bay adapter brackets! Very few SSD makers offer that. :-/

[Xplorer4x4]

Correct me if I am wrong, but is your entire money argument(like you said, good natured here - enjoying a friendly debate) based on the Intel Taylorville vs Samsung 840 PRO? Because I feel I have already managed to disprove your claims with hard evidence. The only place I see a huge price difference is Taylorville vs the 840 Pro, and weather or not you care about the extended life nand is irrelevant in the pricing because Intel is bringing new technology to the market. Taylorville is more then just a reduction in power or how many nanometers the components are. It is about long term reliability that can actually offer performance comparable to that of the short term storage SSDs on the market now. I am not talking longevity in terms of how many years it will last, but rather how many write cycles the nand can take. Furthermore, it is allowing Intel to push their SSDs to new capacities that other manufactures are unable to reach yet. Your Samsung 840 Pro looks like a bad @$$ drive, but there is nothing revolutionary about it. It uses the same style of MLC nand most SSDs are using already. The triple core controller looks evolutionary as I have not heard of any one else boast about cores in their controllers so this sounds like something unique to Samsung. However, I say evolutionary as it was a logical step to add more cores to the controller. Samsung produces some of the best SoCs on the market right now moving toward octa core SoCs so adding cores to the SSD controller is logical. Intel has brought new technology to the market and as with all new technology, it costs a premium. If Samsung begins offering MLC-HET SSDs, then let's see how much they cost compared to Taylorville.

Now you seem to say I spent a high premium for my drive. Check this out:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5817/t...gb-120gb-180gb

Although SSD pricing is extremely volatile, Intel's SSD 330 tends to be among the cheaper solutions. The 60GB drive is just as cheap as the competition at $70, and the 120GB model is only $5 more than the chepaest alternative here. The 180GB drive is an interesting point below $200 if you need just a little more capacity than a 120GB drive would afford you. You pay a small price per GB penalty (~6%) but if you need capacity at a specific budget, it works. The newly announced 240GB drives were either backordered or not listed at many vendors.

I went ahead and priced them myself since the article is a bit dated now. I looked for prices on Newegg of a few drives listed on that chart. I rounded to the nearest dollar.

Intel 330 60GB SATA III - $85

OCZ Vertex 3 60GB SATA III - $70 (So $15 more for the Intel - Which you seem to agree is reasonable)
OCZ Vertex 4 64GB SATA III - $85 (Same price as the Intel 330)
Intel 520 60GB SATA III - $105 (I believe manufacturing costs were higher)
Crucial M4 64GB SATA III - $80 ($5 less and 4 extra GB of space)
SAMSUNG 830 64GB SATA III - $80 (Again $5 less and 4GB extra)

So Intel seems pretty competitively priced in the 60GB range. Maybe that would change If I went higher up the scale in capacity,and I will be happy to the leg work to compare the ~180 GB SSDs if you want. It sounds like once we get over the 180GB mark, premiums kick in, but not below.

The failure rate advantage adds up to about a $5 value and that's over the worst failure rate - not the overall average. $100 to buy $3 in security just doesn't make sense to me.

To me it looks like $5,on average, for $3 in security. Nothing in this world is free.

So in one case, Apples to Oranges, there is a significant price difference. Once we get over 180GB it sounds like there may be a bit of a premium, but that's based on what anandtech said and as you mentioned, the PC hardware market evolves like wild fire.

We can throw numbers back and forth all day and we'll never agree.

With all due respect, the only number you have thrown out were failure rates(which was an interested read), but that is only half of the debate. You claim the Intel SSDs cost a premium and with the exception of Taylorville, which was not intended to be part of my argument, and really has no place in this argument no matter how much you try, I feel I have disproven that with evidence from respected tech hardware reviews blogs, and even current market value prices according to Newegg.

What I think we're really comparing our personal level of fault tolerance. Yours is obviously much lower than mine. That's not intended as any sort of insult at all - just an observation.

No insult taken.From what I can see our fault tolerances are indeed different, but not as much as you think.

Re Backups: I think you are over looking the real part of a RMA that is the inconvenience(depending on the OEM), packing up the dead product, taking it to the post office, and then waiting for the replacement to come. Backing up and restoring is the easy part.

[Xplorer4x4]

Wow, there ya go, now if that were my situation, I would get a 700W 'gold' or higher. Then you could use the PSU in the next machine you build, buying all new all the time gets nasty on the wallet.

Yeah it's on the list to do ASAP! My current PSU has been with me for 4 years so I may go a bit over 700w gold like you said.

Guys guys, the MTBF is insane on those anyway, the average user could get at least 5 to 6 years out of an SSD, bottom line, stick with a quality name that offers speed too. When I have a great experience with any particular hardware brand, I stick with it until it lets me down.

Edit: When I am ready for my dual SSD purchase (for a Raid 0, >1GB per second read/write), I will be buying a pair of Kingstons for several reasons, the first is they make great memory sticks, they take a lot of abuse and are as solid as a rock (sounds like a Chevy truck commercial, lol), the second reason is, they come with internal 2.5"->3.5" bay adapter brackets! Very few SSD makers offer that. :-/

It's not all about MTBF though. However since you mentioned it, if a drive dies early, it doesn't live up to the MTBF does it?

My main argument was Intel SSDs are not the expensive product made out to be unless you try to compare Taylorville to the other SSDs on the market. In which case, I think all of us tech heads know that new technology = Premium $$$ and that's what Taylorville is. New tech. It's not a refresh.

Since you mentioned it though, that's one great things about Intel, is they include the 2.5"->3.5" adapters. Going of memory(I forgot to hit submit on my previous post last night), I think Samsung was the only one to include the adapters. When you consider that the ~$5 price difference on Intel is easily made up for with the brackets.

[oshunluvr]

My two high-end SSDs (Adata and Samsung) came with brackets, an older, cheaper one did not. I actually have an extra bracket because only one SSD is in the desktop machine. The others are in laptops so no bracket required. The Adata bracket is a cool anodised blue color but you can't see it inside the desktop! At least I have one extra for down-the-road.

As far as our other SSD discussion: Regardless of cost (to a limit), I want speed per dollar. Intel simply is not in the top ten of this measure on any comparison table I have ever seen. They emerged as the de-facto standard 4 years ago due to perceived reliability, but as I pointed out ad nauseum, that isn't a enough of an issue for me to justify being that much slower. My last SSD purchase was the Samsung 840 PRO 256GB which currently Tom's Hardware states "The fastest SSD we have ever tested..." (within it's class, of course). The only comparable (SATA III, 250ish GB, 2.5" format) Intel model on Newegg.com is the 550 "Cherryville." It retails slightly more ($30) but specs about half the IOPS rate, 10-12% slower overall transfer rate. and less capacity. Again, Intel is just not on my short list.

[Xplorer4x4]

I must have missed your reply. It's been a fun debate but it seems the original issue is still at hand. Although, the good news is since I swapped mobos, it seems to be isolated to 1 particular HDD now, and the issue seems to have every few days now instead of at least once every 24 hours. Any ideas besides swapping cables, and possibly formatting the HDD? I have not checked the smart attributes lately but last time I checked, they were fine..so any other suggestions short of an RMA?