[B_2]

Hi everyone,


Just purchased an Aluminium Macbook 2Ghz with 4GB Ram, looking to buy an SSD.

Which is the faster drive in terms of booting up and application launching? Capacity is not an issue as I only have Office 2008 loaded and nothing else.


Thank you in advance

B_2

[CharlesS]

The X25-E is SLC and the X25-M is MLC, so I'd expect the E to be faster, and a lot more expensive.

[mduell]

The X25-E is faster; Newegg has the 32GB version for $405.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

The X25-E is SLC and the X25-M is MLC, so I'd expect the E to be faster, and a lot more expensive.

That's right.

The X25-M is slower (MLC) and less expensive, but it's available with higher capacity.
The X25-E is much faster (SLC) and much more expensive.

32GB X25-E for $405
80GB X25-M for $369
160GB X25-M for $779

[reader50]

The X25-M has just had a data fragmentation issue discovered, which can significantly decrease performance over time. It is suspected to affect the X25-E as well, though possibly to a lesser degree. At this time, there are no good solutions to fix the problem. Intel is looking into it.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by reader50 

The X25-M has just had a data fragmentation issue discovered, which can significantly decrease performance over time. It is suspected to affect the X25-E as well, though possibly to a lesser degree. At this time, there are no good solutions to fix the problem. Intel is looking into it.

Intel has stated that it has not been able to replicate the X25-M performance problems originally reported by PC Perspective last week.

"Our labs currently have not been able to duplicate these results," Intel said in a statement to CNET. "In our estimation, the synthetic workloads they use to stress the drive are not reflective of real world use. Similarly, the benchmarks they used to evaluate performance do not represent what a PC user experiences. In general, when a PC's drive (SSD or HDD) is full, there will be some reduction in system performance, however the performance reduction reported by PC Perspective is higher than we generally expect, which is why we are looking into the methodology."

[CharlesS]

Doesn't wear levelling mean that any SSD is going to be pretty much maximally fragmented all the time anyway?

[joe]

I have the X-25M 80GB SSD drive in my 2.4GHz MacBook Pro. It boots in 29 seconds. Very fast all around. Apps load almost before you lift your finger off the mouse/trackpad button.

Be aware that the X-25E and M share the IDENTICAL high speed (250MB/s) READ performance. No other SSD manufacturer comes even close. The write speed however jumps from 70MB/s on the "M" to 170MB/s on the "E" with its SLC tech. This is the basis of any "slow" comments. And even then it still outperforms the stock drive in my MacBook Pro by a wider margin than you'd expect. This is due to the way manufacturers have been rating traditional rotating hard drive performance (ie - empty).

Also, both of Intel's SSD drive technologies (SLC/MLC) have the unique claim to fame that they maintain their high rate of speed (read and write) across the entire surface of the drive. This is in stark contrast to both traditional hard drives and competing SSD/MLC drives.

Traditional hard drives spec at a given speed (ex 65MB/s of the stock 5K250/320) but only when they are empty. As they fill their speeds drop by nearly half (or worse). The Intel drives have the same performance from empty to full. Other SSD brand drives while faring much better than rotating hard drives are still are not capable of Intel's performance. Many suffer from stuttering and temporary lockups - especially during writes. Even newly released dual controller SSD drives while claiming up to 150MB/s write speed only end up averaging 54Mb/s instead (MLC drives). Their performance charts are basically a bunch of spikes alternating between 150MB/s and 15MB/s. So yeah, some are that fast - sorta. This is not to say the other SSD brands don't offer very fast SSD drives - especially the SLC variants. But at this point, Intel is definitely the one to beat for both SLC and MLC SSD drive technologies.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by B_2 

Which is the faster drive in terms of booting up and application launching? Capacity is not an issue as I only have Office 2008 loaded and nothing else.

Wouldn't it be immensely cheaper, and equally productive, just to get in the habit of putting the computer to sleep, instead of closing everything and shutting down?

When you sleep, all applications, documents, etc. stay open.