Why I finally ride the SSD train
by
zen
For the longest time... I was always against using SSD's, as reliability had been an issue for the first several years they were on the market. Now however, I have discovered the Samsung 850 EVO series of 2.5" SSD's, and damn are they amazing. I have one in my Sawtooth, and one in my late 2009 Mac mini. The performance and reliability is amazing all-round.
As my Sawtooth relies on a PCI-M slot powered SATA 1 controller, I am limited to around 80MB/sec read and write, but the latency is incredibly good. On my Intel mini, with SATA 2, I get sustained speeds of 270MB/sec read and 210MB/sec write. It's also the most reliable boot drive I have ever used. More on all this later.
I know this place has seemed dead in the last year or so, but I can assure you it's not. There is still plenty of hits every day here, and I am starting to use my PowerPC systems more lately. Also, I recently picked up a 1.5GHz 12" PowerBook G4 for next to nothing. What a great machine.
I still have five PowerPC computers, so new content will come, and hopefully me posting will inspire the other authors. *wink wink* *nudge nudge*
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Nice to read/hear from you.
ReplyDeleteNAS-aside, I've become an SSD-only household. Reliability-wise I always had luck, but in the earlier days it was the price that was deterring me. I don't need much space, so an much too expensive IDE/PATA-SSD with incredible 32GB *cough* got me started. Nine years later it is still running fine with my 12" 1,33GHz PB G4. Though I fear the day that the SSD will die so I have to disassemble the PB.
Every other PC is rocking SATA-SSDs as prices per gigabyte have become much more attractive too. For a short time, I was running a M.2 Slot PCIe SSD. Speeds were amazing (1TB/s +), but the controller chip got so hot, it cooked itself to death. So that would be my reliability mark. I'm back to SATA-SSDs now - or as I'm writing this on my PB, PATA.
If you want to use a SSD in your new PowerBook, there are 2,5" Adapters out there to convert mSATA Drives to IDE/PATA. Prices for IDE-SSDs are still high and mostly niche fabricators. But with using mSATA you can chose modern drives and from manufacturers like Samsung.
Glad to see there are somew news here.
ReplyDeleteI am also back to Mac with a PB G4 12 1.5GHz.
In a short time I expect to upgrade it to SSD also. from what I've seen the lindy msata to ssd adapter is the best bet. The cheap ones with JM20330 are not good bets from what I've read.
About samsung SSDs, my Thinkpad X230 is running a Samsung 830 for at about 5 years without issues. Previously this SSD was on my Late 2008 White Macbook.
Great news Zen,
ReplyDeleteWould love to here more about your plans for the 12" PB as i still have one. Also any updates on BSD / Linux you recommend. I'd be interested to here if you bang an SSD in the 12" and maybe a round up of your OS of choice 2017/18
gbar
Thanks everyone!
ReplyDeleteI promise the new year will bring new content.
I forgot to mention...
ReplyDeleteWhen I say I need reliability, I mean that I go with what more people have had stability with, and even to this day that is magnetic drives. Before I discovered the 850 EVO drives, I was happy to give up a bit of performance.
These days I no longer work in the computer industry, so I don't need to be as anal about reliability now. I'm now in the fire safety equipment business, but am still (and allways will be) a massive computer user.
Samsung 850 EVO SSD's are KICKASS!!!...I come from a Mac-ish background & found this site since I have a Mac Mini G4 and would like to revive it...I think I have OS X 10.3 or 10.4 on it...can't remember....maybe I'll see if I can run Garageband on it and hook it up to a keyboard!..Anyway, back to the Samsung EVO 850, The "live cloning" tool for windoze is AMAZING!!!...don't even have to shut down whilst cloning the windows os! (I'm running win7pro x64). I have two Dell Dimension 9200's that are spec'd the same, quad core cpu, 8GB of RAM each(I believe mfd in 2006). One PC running Win7x64 and the other running Ubuntu most recent x64....both have the 850 EVO SSD's and both boot in about 30 seconds or less. Interesting thing is these PC's were suffering from lockups and stalls...why?...Bad Caps on the MOBO!!!...just replaced them with higher spec caps and it's all good now!!! anyway, if y'all have any info on the PowerPC G4 Mac Mini front, I'm game to hear what y'all have to say!!! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHey there. Nice article. I have been return PPC Mac user as I am MorphOS hobbyist (G4 Mac Mini and 15" powerbook) but decided to pick up a 12" G4 powerbook just because I love the formfactor and always wanted one.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate glad to see some hardcore PPC users out there and I am digging your posts as I have been reading through the older ones. Please keep at it with the blog.