July 12, 2010 at 12:24WD SiliconEdge Blue: SSD from the famous manufacturer of hard drives
Can a laptop Western Digital Blue work for a couple of days in a non-sterile room without a case, that is, literally - with the stuffing out? And not only to work out, but also to remain unscathed at the same time, without suffering losses in durability? Of course, I want to immediately say a decisive "no" and ... make a mistake. After all, WD has recently made not only familiar hard drives, but also SSDs, and the latter are built into the existing color separation. That is, Green - "environmentally friendly", Blue - the mainstream, and Black - the fastest. In theory, SSD requested either in a green party, or in black. But no - for some reason the SSD was sent to the blue ones, as if hinting that there is still room for improvement in terms of speed and economy.
So far, the WD SiliconEdge line has only three models - 64, 128 and 256 GB. I was hooked that all three have the same characteristics: read speeds of up to 250 MB / s, and writes - up to 170 MB / s. These are good indicators, and the younger model looks especially nice considering the price of 5400 rubles. In general, being in one friendly store, I turned this SSD in my hands, outwardly no different from a normal hard drive, and brought the necessary amount to the cashier. I wish I knew in advance what I’m getting into ...
Blame, of course, in the first place is not so much the disc itself as my relaxation. I have been using the SiSoft Sandra test suite for many years, which may not be very “professional”, but it never messes up seriously, and it tells the truth about hard drives. There, as many know, there are only two tests for HDD / SSD - the file system and the disk as a whole. And so I'm used to the fact that the first and second give roughly the same numbers ... In general, this time I launched only the first and was stupefied. With reading, something goes up to 235 megabytes. But the recording froze at around 65 megabytes per second, and at least you crack. Despite the fact that it was evening, he dragged the SSD from the laptop to a large computer. I launch Sandra - broads, the same numbers. Well, I think, either I’ve got a defective one, or WD people are fooling around, they shove a simplified controller into the younger model. He didn’t fight further and, extremely embittered, went to bed. And in the morning on the way to the service I bought a set of small screwdrivers, which make it possible to disassemble the WD SiliconEdge to the base. Another 550 rubles!
Analysis, however, showed that everything is in order in order. Yes, flash-memory modules (of course, MLC) are less capacious than in the older models, the tests of which I managed to find, but the controller is the same, as well as the buffer size - 64 megabytes of fast DDR2 memory. By the way, do not believe the WD markings on the controller - in fact, this is an old friend of the JMicron 612, perhaps a little modified by Western Digital engineers.
I run the file system test on another computer - alas, oh, the same 65 megabytes. Well, nothing can be done, you’ll have to demolish the section where I already copied the operating system with a full set of software ...
Demolished, ran a test of a physical disk and ... Hurray, there is 130 MB / s for recording on average, and at the peak at the very beginning of the disk as much as 180 MB / s! Read speed remained the same, 233 MB / s on average per disk.
Well, what ... I cursed myself for breeding panic and breaking the coveted sticker, without which I no longer have a guarantee, but it eased me from my heart. Do not be fooled! Although the behavior is still a bit strange, not one of my previous experimental subjects has shown such a gap.
Speaking of warranty. It is three years, and if something happens to the disk during this time, they should change it. The total time between failures is as much as 1,400,000 hours, as in WD VelociRaptor. But there is a nuance: you can read data unlimitedly, but it is recommended to write no more than 17.5 GB per day. Where did such a strange figure come from - I don’t know. But, most likely, meeting this limit will not be difficult. After all, it is unlikely that you will use an SSD, and even such a volume, for file cleaning. For example, in my main computer it will become the main system one. After installing the 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate with all the drivers, Photoshop CS4, MS Office 2007 Professional, The Bat! with a long-term mail base and a handful of small, but necessary programs, I still have about 20 GB free. Given the that initially there were 60 of them (the rest is reserved for systemic needs), quite tolerant. But we all understand that you should not insert this drive into a serious server, you need something on the SLC.
Output three.
Firstly, WDs have good and relatively inexpensive SSDs. I compared - for the same price (and with similar characteristics) you can only buy Kingston SNV425-S2, everything else is either more expensive or slower, or both at once. Kinston is practically a twin.
Secondly, it’s cool that the hardcore HDD manufacturers stopped shaking with fear, what they did a couple of years ago, and they rushed to the SSD market. I wonder what Seagate will answer? They have already released a hybrid (http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/hardware/96138/), now it's up to the real solid-state drive. Yes, by the way - I laughed a lot when I saw a list of SMART parameters in WD's SSDs. I don’t know if this is a jamb, or it’s intended so, but the list is practically no different from what ordinary hard drives have. It would be okay, but how do you track the Spin Up Time in an SSD, and why is OK next to this item? Like, does the disk think the spindle is spinning fine? Or there, our guys from the Moscow Region auto service set everything up, able to debug the carburetor in the injection engine? Well, or is there somewhere inside a little scarlet gnome sitting and twisting, twisting toy spindles?
Thirdly, before you panic, after seeing strange results in a familiar test, you need to try some other one. Not that I was very worried about the warranty (the data is still much more expensive for me than any drive), but ... next time I’ll be calmer, duplicating Sandra with the good old Everest.
About the same, but written in other words and with additional details can be found in my article on 3Dnews .
And yet - sorry for the arrogant self-PR - three years ago I talked in Iceland with WD President John Coyne. It’s very ... interesting to read his statements about SSD right now , although many of the assumptions and forecasts really came true.
So far, the WD SiliconEdge line has only three models - 64, 128 and 256 GB. I was hooked that all three have the same characteristics: read speeds of up to 250 MB / s, and writes - up to 170 MB / s. These are good indicators, and the younger model looks especially nice considering the price of 5400 rubles. In general, being in one friendly store, I turned this SSD in my hands, outwardly no different from a normal hard drive, and brought the necessary amount to the cashier. I wish I knew in advance what I’m getting into ...
Blame, of course, in the first place is not so much the disc itself as my relaxation. I have been using the SiSoft Sandra test suite for many years, which may not be very “professional”, but it never messes up seriously, and it tells the truth about hard drives. There, as many know, there are only two tests for HDD / SSD - the file system and the disk as a whole. And so I'm used to the fact that the first and second give roughly the same numbers ... In general, this time I launched only the first and was stupefied. With reading, something goes up to 235 megabytes. But the recording froze at around 65 megabytes per second, and at least you crack. Despite the fact that it was evening, he dragged the SSD from the laptop to a large computer. I launch Sandra - broads, the same numbers. Well, I think, either I’ve got a defective one, or WD people are fooling around, they shove a simplified controller into the younger model. He didn’t fight further and, extremely embittered, went to bed. And in the morning on the way to the service I bought a set of small screwdrivers, which make it possible to disassemble the WD SiliconEdge to the base. Another 550 rubles!
Analysis, however, showed that everything is in order in order. Yes, flash-memory modules (of course, MLC) are less capacious than in the older models, the tests of which I managed to find, but the controller is the same, as well as the buffer size - 64 megabytes of fast DDR2 memory. By the way, do not believe the WD markings on the controller - in fact, this is an old friend of the JMicron 612, perhaps a little modified by Western Digital engineers.
I run the file system test on another computer - alas, oh, the same 65 megabytes. Well, nothing can be done, you’ll have to demolish the section where I already copied the operating system with a full set of software ...
Demolished, ran a test of a physical disk and ... Hurray, there is 130 MB / s for recording on average, and at the peak at the very beginning of the disk as much as 180 MB / s! Read speed remained the same, 233 MB / s on average per disk.
Well, what ... I cursed myself for breeding panic and breaking the coveted sticker, without which I no longer have a guarantee, but it eased me from my heart. Do not be fooled! Although the behavior is still a bit strange, not one of my previous experimental subjects has shown such a gap.
Speaking of warranty. It is three years, and if something happens to the disk during this time, they should change it. The total time between failures is as much as 1,400,000 hours, as in WD VelociRaptor. But there is a nuance: you can read data unlimitedly, but it is recommended to write no more than 17.5 GB per day. Where did such a strange figure come from - I don’t know. But, most likely, meeting this limit will not be difficult. After all, it is unlikely that you will use an SSD, and even such a volume, for file cleaning. For example, in my main computer it will become the main system one. After installing the 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate with all the drivers, Photoshop CS4, MS Office 2007 Professional, The Bat! with a long-term mail base and a handful of small, but necessary programs, I still have about 20 GB free. Given the that initially there were 60 of them (the rest is reserved for systemic needs), quite tolerant. But we all understand that you should not insert this drive into a serious server, you need something on the SLC.
Output three.
Firstly, WDs have good and relatively inexpensive SSDs. I compared - for the same price (and with similar characteristics) you can only buy Kingston SNV425-S2, everything else is either more expensive or slower, or both at once. Kinston is practically a twin.
Secondly, it’s cool that the hardcore HDD manufacturers stopped shaking with fear, what they did a couple of years ago, and they rushed to the SSD market. I wonder what Seagate will answer? They have already released a hybrid (http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/hardware/96138/), now it's up to the real solid-state drive. Yes, by the way - I laughed a lot when I saw a list of SMART parameters in WD's SSDs. I don’t know if this is a jamb, or it’s intended so, but the list is practically no different from what ordinary hard drives have. It would be okay, but how do you track the Spin Up Time in an SSD, and why is OK next to this item? Like, does the disk think the spindle is spinning fine? Or there, our guys from the Moscow Region auto service set everything up, able to debug the carburetor in the injection engine? Well, or is there somewhere inside a little scarlet gnome sitting and twisting, twisting toy spindles?
Thirdly, before you panic, after seeing strange results in a familiar test, you need to try some other one. Not that I was very worried about the warranty (the data is still much more expensive for me than any drive), but ... next time I’ll be calmer, duplicating Sandra with the good old Everest.
About the same, but written in other words and with additional details can be found in my article on 3Dnews .
And yet - sorry for the arrogant self-PR - three years ago I talked in Iceland with WD President John Coyne. It’s very ... interesting to read his statements about SSD right now , although many of the assumptions and forecasts really came true.