Intel's X25-V for $98 at Newegg, Update:Dead Deal

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• bah12 - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link

  Do as I do and set up some .bat files to move the games from the main storage to SSD when you want to play. If your like me you may have several installed, but only play one or two during a sesion.
  
  It adds some time, but it does alleviate the space issue. Plus sequential read on mechanical drives is pretty good, so the transfer does not take too long.

• austonia - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link

  can't bite on 40gb at any price, space is just too tight after installing Windows. 60-64gb i can do. when it hits $2/gb with a speedy i/o controller.

• icrf - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link

  I could do 40 GB, I could actually go smaller, but what I'm after more than anything is cheaper. Give me a 16 GB SSD with an Intel controller or $40. I'm not even after speed, just reliability/longevity, without having to run a specialized thumb drive/CD style live OS.

• vol7ron - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link

  If you're not after speed and only after reliability and longevity, why don't you just get a standard hard disk? You don't need solid state.
  
  Aside from the fact that they have moving parts, out of 20+ hard drives, I've only had one fail. There are performance disks I'm using from 10 years ago, albeit they don't have a lot of space on them, but I doubt the SSDs would be as reliable. I think they would wear out in that amount of time.
  
  Buy to suit your needs, is what I'm saying -- and if you have extra $$, buy what you want :)

• ClagMaster - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link

  I am quite satisfied with the performance of my WD6400AAKS harddrives on Windows XP desktop in native IDE. Very fast, reliable and quiet harddrives that I would heartly recommend to my friends. These harddrives are actually faster than the early 36GB Western Digital Raptors.
  
  There is no rational incentive to for me to drop $200 for two Intel X25-V tSSD's at $2.50/Gigabyte when I already have a great pair of harddrives for $120 at $0.11/Gigabyte. The improvement of the RAID0 SSD to overall performance is not significant for the applications that I run to justify such an expenditure.
  
  If the price was $0.5/Gigabyte or less for an 120GB SSD (the size of my system partion) with ~4x the bandwidth of this SSD were available, then I will reconsider an SSD upgrade for my PC.
  
  This SSD would be a wonderful upgrade for a laptop with its speed and power consumption. But I cannot justify this for a desktop.

• vol7ron - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link

  I somewhat agree.
  
  On the one hand, I want SSD prices to drop, but I don't know how these drives will act in the longterm. The failure rates might actually be higher than forecasts.
  
  The ability to get 1-2TB for $100 these days is amazing. I'm curious if SSD prices drop, that the price of large storage medium might increase (due to lower demand and less of a supply in the future).
  
  I would add that you are still missing the fact that these drives do reduce boot and load speeds. So perhaps you would pay a premium for a boot drive, for your desktop. The other thing to consider these for, aside from desktop/laptop is for HTPCs. When watching shows and accessing media, you want as minimum lag as possible. SSDs are the solution.

• ClagMaster - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link

  I agree with your reflections. There are improvements in boottime and media play back with SSD's. I have not overlooked that.
  
  My real reservations with SSDs is I believe the reliability of the SSD technology is not quite "there" yet. These are 2nd generation SSD devices which are a lot better than the 1st generation JMICON controller SSD devices (that Mr Shimpi disdainfully refers to as "Trash"). These Intel SSD's are fine devices but I feel I could do better if I wait a year for the industry to finally perfect the controllers, controller firmware, and NAND technology with 3rd generation SSD devices available in SATA3.
  
  I especially do not like the lack of ownership/stewardship of some of these SSD vendors with the firmware of their devices. Some of them appear clueless as to how this firmware works. Thats because they do not write this firmware but contract it out to a 3rd party. When vendors other than Intel and OCZ start owning their firmware and show better accountability for it, I will become more interested in adopting SSD's
  
  I need a SATA3 motherboard to fully utilize my 4x bandwidth expections. I currently operate a 3 year old Intel motherboard (DG965WH mobo/C2D E6600 processor operating Windows XP Home) which only has SATA2. In addition to purchasing the SSD's, I would have to upgrade the motherboard, processor and memory. An expensive proposition for shaving off a few seconds of boottime. With the exception of the AMD motherboards with the SB850, SATA3 implimentation is presently an afterthought that robs PCIe lanes from graphics. I want a motherboard with native SATA3 in its chipset with dedicated PCIe lanes supporting this capability. That will not happen until late this year.
  
  In the meantime, I cannot justify SSD's for my current desktop because of high cost, utility and reliability of the present SSD devices. I feel I can get a lot better value for my money with 3rd generation SSD devices that will be available next year.

• Fastidious - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link

  That was fast. I wasn't sure if I was going to buy any but they are all sold out anyways.

• Connoisseur - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link

  Actually i think they're back in stock. Jumped on two for a Raid 0 Config. Anyone know if a P5Q Pro can handle TWO Raid 0 setups? I already have two traditional drives in Raid 0 for storage.

• vol7ron - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link

  I concur.
  
  I checked on New Egg and they're in stock. I think Anand might be trying to save some for himself ;)
  
  I'm not going to get them though. I feel as if the newer, faster, cheaper drives will be out by the time RAID has trim.