On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Jeppe Øland <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> I had a OCZ Vertex 1 (Indilinx) in my home PC for 2 years ... every 3
>>> months it would corrupt fatally (BIOS wouldn't even see it).
>>> After 3 RMAs I got them to replace it with a Vertex 2 (Sandforce), and
>>> that one is stable as a rock.
>>> ... Slightly slower than the Indilinx - but who cares about that when
>>> it's at the expense of stability.
>>
>> Interesting.  Have a few 30-120 GB Vertex 1s around here.  Been OK
>> once OCZ got the firmware stablized and pretty stable.
>
> The thing with V1 is that they don't move data around on the flash cells.
> In other words, if you fill the drive 90% with static data
> (Windows/Applications), and then write like crazy ... the remaining
> 10% + the overprovisioned area will be wearing out very quickly.

I can tell you that it definitely does move data around looking at the
smart data for drives I have.  The minimum erase count climbs on all
drives I have even with plenty of static data.

>> The Vertex 2 should be MUCH faster than the Vertex 1 - at least that's
>> what all the benchmarks say.
>
> V2 is faster with *some* data.
> The controller employs data compression - partly to give you longer
> life by having to write fewer physical bytes to the flash - and partly
> to get speed.
> The numbers quoted are for "average" data that compresses 2:1 or even 3:1.
> Use the drive for incompressible data, and the speed is actually
> slower than a V1.

OK, so I reviewed the benchmarks and the Vertex 2 is only slower when
writing sequential random data to the drive.  Which doesn't really
matter for most use cases (especially pfsense) as it's random IO
performance kills the Vertex 1 - with or without random data.

> Just don't trust any important data to them .... either back up
> religiously, or just use the SSD for the boot/applications drive, and
> keep your hard-to-replace data on an HDD.
> (And spend the money that a bigger SSD would have cost on lots and
> lots of RAM instead).

My luck with rotating drives isn't any better than with SSDs - those
need to be backed up as well.  Regardless of the type of drive I'm
using - if the data and downtime is important - you need to use the
drive in a RAID array and it needs to be backed up to separate media
regularly.

-Dave

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