Solid State Drives...

[powerarmour]

OCZ Confirms Octane and Vertex 4 use Marvell based Silicon

Bizarre!

Will the next Sandforce controller actually be a Marvell in disguise...

Seems firmware is almost everything on SSD controllers, it's not so surprising now how a lot of drives are getting big jumps in performance out of nowhere (m4's, Vertex 1's etc).

[Tabajara]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5743/inte ... in-1h-2012

Intel's SSD 910: Finally a PCIe SSD from Intel
by Anand Lal Shimpi 5 hours ago
Solid state storage has quickly been able to saturate the SATA interface just as quickly as new standards are introduced. The first generation of well-built MLC SSDs quickly bumped into the limits of 3Gbps SATA, as did the first generation of 6Gbps MLC SSDs. With hard drives no where near running out of headroom on a 6Gbps interface, it's clear that SSDs need to transition to an interface that can offer significantly higher bandwidth.

[powerarmour]

Speak of the devil...

Crucial Releases Firmware Update for m4 SSD :-

Crucial has released a firmware update for its popular m4 SSD series. The update carries a version code of 000F. The update is said to improve compatibility with certain SAS expanders and RAID cards but Crucial is also claiming better throughput stability (i.e. performance) under heavy loads and enhanced data protection in the event of power loss.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5745/cruc ... for-m4-ssd

Got to love these m4 updates...

[powerarmour]

Cloning complete, now on Win7 :-





Not sure why my 4K read seems low, but I think that's normal. It certainly doesn't affect the performance on the desktop, it's quick!...

Original firmware (above) vs new 0009 (below) :-



Basically read speed seems up quite a bit, write seems down, no huge noticeable difference in real world usage so far though...

And now look at the performance of the 000F firmware... :-



Some of that could be down to my new Z77 chipset, but that is a nice little boost overall. Notice how Crucial have managed to push the write speed almost back up to the original levels, whilst still maintaining the extra read speed boost of the newer firmwares

[Tabajara]

Was the data preserved? Meaning, did the firware flash erase your drive?

[Seawolf]

000F refuses to update for me and many others on the Crucial forums, didn't have any problems with the last few so thats weird.

[powerarmour]

Was the data preserved? Meaning, did the firmware flash erase your drive?

Nope, I just did the manual update (I prefer the non-windows .iso method) and it rebooted normally, if the updates are destructive they usually mention it!

000F refuses to update for me and many others on the Crucial forums, didn't have any problems with the last few so thats weird.

Yeah seems weird, 000F was no different than any of the others for me...

[thegrommit]

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/22787

Seems OCZ's new "Indilinx" controller isn't quite what they made it out to be. Shouldn't be a big surprise given it's OCZ.

[Seawolf]

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/22787

Seems OCZ's new "Indilinx" controller isn't quite what they made it out to be. Shouldn't be a big surprise given it's OCZ.

Yeah I like my Revo overall but I rank OCZ about a 7.5 in the grand scheme of things. Decent products and it's a plus that they have the will to do unusual form factors, but definately not perfect.

[powerarmour]

Seems OCZ's new "Indilinx" controller isn't quite what they made it out to be.

Yeah as mentioned earlier it's a bit bizarre, they should have been more honest with their customers really.

I mean it's not that big of a deal, but probably a few folks bought those because they had good experiences with the first gen Indilinx controller drives, and bought them based on the brand and what seemed like an updated Mk2, they might be slightly peeved. It's like buying a new Porsche because you like Porsche's and Porsche engines, only to find out it's a rebranded Audi unit under the bonnet...

Or more applicably, like buying a WD HDD and getting a rebadged Seagate..., sure it'll perform the same and should behave utterly fine as specified, but it's not quite the point...