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Started by mraroid | | 6 answers
Hi...
I see a lot of SS drives that say they can do 6Gbps. But when I look deeply into it, the SS drive is a SATA III drive.
Does anyone make a SS drive, that is SATA II from the get go? Or, are all SS drives SATA III?
Thanks everyone
jack
I see a lot of SS drives that say they can do 6Gbps. But when I look deeply into it, the SS drive is a SATA III drive.
Does anyone make a SS drive, that is SATA II from the get go? Or, are all SS drives SATA III?
Thanks everyone
jack
mapesdhs
October 17, 2014 2:57:59 PM
AS-SSD, Crystal Disk Mark, HDTach and ATTO are typical free utilities.
Note that I cited that article because by definition SATA2 SSDs are indeed old now. Nobody makes
them anymore. All modern SSDs are SATA3 by default.
Also as I tried to explain before, by definition, a SATA3 is the same thing as 6Gbps. Likewise, SATA2 = 300Gbps
(or 300MB/sec approx.), so it's impossible for a SATA2 to be any faster than that. The two terms you've
mentioned basically refer to the same thing, just different marketing ways in which companies & users refer
to the max speeds and connection speeds.
Let me put it this way, if I told you how fast you were going in your car in mph and also in feet-per-year,
they'd be two very different numbers, but both define exactly the same velocity.
Btw, using RAID0 is a bad idea for anything that needs long term reliability. Lose one device and the
whole array is lost. Fine for scratch drives & suchlike, but use RAID10 for anything which needs reliability
and long term use. I was able to get 700MB/sec with 4 ports RAID10 on a SATA2 board.
If you want reliability, then use the Samsung 840, 840 EVO, 840 Pro, 850 Pro, Sandisk X210, Vector,
or various other top-tier models. For the work you're doing, definitely avoid the budget models like
the M500, MX100, etc.
I hope you're using a Quadro card for 4K. You won't get accurate colour grading with a gamer card.
Also, for the best possible consistence performance, you ought to use a decent RAID card like an Areca,
or just use a mbd like the Asrock X99 Extreme11 which has built-in SAS and lots of ports, or of course
if you can afford it, a dual-socket XEON board.
Btw, you do realise that film data is all sequential I/O? Using SSDs doesn't really gain you that much.
For film I/O, SAS drives would give the same performance levels in a RAID setup, since the I/O is almost
always large request sizes (30 to 60MB per frame, perhaps more, depending on depth, Alpha, res, etc.)
Ian.
PS. Other prosumer alternative, the one I'd use if I couldn't afford XEONs: ASUS X99-E WS, fitted with
a RAID card. Naturally, use a RAID card which has some cache RAM and battery backup. I bagged an
old HP P410 with 1GB RAM that easily manages 2GB/sec, includes battery backup. Lots of newer options
now though.
Note that I cited that article because by definition SATA2 SSDs are indeed old now. Nobody makes
them anymore. All modern SSDs are SATA3 by default.
Also as I tried to explain before, by definition, a SATA3 is the same thing as 6Gbps. Likewise, SATA2 = 300Gbps
(or 300MB/sec approx.), so it's impossible for a SATA2 to be any faster than that. The two terms you've
mentioned basically refer to the same thing, just different marketing ways in which companies & users refer
to the max speeds and connection speeds.
Let me put it this way, if I told you how fast you were going in your car in mph and also in feet-per-year,
they'd be two very different numbers, but both define exactly the same velocity.
Btw, using RAID0 is a bad idea for anything that needs long term reliability. Lose one device and the
whole array is lost. Fine for scratch drives & suchlike, but use RAID10 for anything which needs reliability
and long term use. I was able to get 700MB/sec with 4 ports RAID10 on a SATA2 board.
If you want reliability, then use the Samsung 840, 840 EVO, 840 Pro, 850 Pro, Sandisk X210, Vector,
or various other top-tier models. For the work you're doing, definitely avoid the budget models like
the M500, MX100, etc.
I hope you're using a Quadro card for 4K. You won't get accurate colour grading with a gamer card.
Also, for the best possible consistence performance, you ought to use a decent RAID card like an Areca,
or just use a mbd like the Asrock X99 Extreme11 which has built-in SAS and lots of ports, or of course
if you can afford it, a dual-socket XEON board.
Btw, you do realise that film data is all sequential I/O? Using SSDs doesn't really gain you that much.
For film I/O, SAS drives would give the same performance levels in a RAID setup, since the I/O is almost
always large request sizes (30 to 60MB per frame, perhaps more, depending on depth, Alpha, res, etc.)
Ian.
PS. Other prosumer alternative, the one I'd use if I couldn't afford XEONs: ASUS X99-E WS, fitted with
a RAID card. Naturally, use a RAID card which has some cache RAM and battery backup. I bagged an
old HP P410 with 1GB RAM that easily manages 2GB/sec, includes battery backup. Lots of newer options
now though.
mraroid
October 17, 2014 2:42:49 PM
The link was helpful Ian. Thank you. But I did notice that it was about four years old.
Do you know of a free utility that I can use to benchmark my SSDs?
Thanks
jack
mraroid
October 17, 2014 2:34:24 PM
Hi everyone. Thanks for the good feedback. Yes, I am talking about Solid State Drives, so yes, I mean SSD.
Currently, I am running a Intel SATA II motherboard and I am running all solid state drives. I am about to build a new computer and I want to build a RAID 0 array using SSDs. I work with 2K and now 4K motion picture film and digital files. I need FAST. I do not play any video games at all, but I do try to suck up 4K video with out dropping frames.
All of my SSDs say that are 6Gbps, and they all are SATA III SSD's. I just thought that maybe someone was making a SATA II SSD that would run faster then 6GTbps.
But I guess not?
Yep, I know I do not get 6Gbps across the motherboard. I know in real life it is slower. I hope to fix this with two SSDs in a RAID array.
I kind of like the 3 year warranty on some SanDisk SSDs.
Can anyone recommend a SSD to me that you believe is fast and would last a bit longer then cheep SSD's?
Thanks again for the help.
jack
Currently, I am running a Intel SATA II motherboard and I am running all solid state drives. I am about to build a new computer and I want to build a RAID 0 array using SSDs. I work with 2K and now 4K motion picture film and digital files. I need FAST. I do not play any video games at all, but I do try to suck up 4K video with out dropping frames.
All of my SSDs say that are 6Gbps, and they all are SATA III SSD's. I just thought that maybe someone was making a SATA II SSD that would run faster then 6GTbps.
But I guess not?
Yep, I know I do not get 6Gbps across the motherboard. I know in real life it is slower. I hope to fix this with two SSDs in a RAID array.
I kind of like the 3 year warranty on some SanDisk SSDs.
Can anyone recommend a SSD to me that you believe is fast and would last a bit longer then cheep SSD's?
Thanks again for the help.
jack
mapesdhs
October 17, 2014 1:26:05 PM
WyomingKnott said:
By the time that solid state drives were mainstream, no-one bothered to make drives with SATA II interfaces...Don't know where you get that from, there were loads of them. Vertex, Vertex2, Vertex2E, Agility 2, etc.
and a whole plethora of equivalent models from Corsair, Samsung, Kingston, etc. Quite a few of the OEM
Samsung SATA2 SSDs end up on eBay, need to be careful one doesn't mistake them for a later model.
eg. see:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3681/oczs-vertex-2-specia...
Ian.
mapesdhs
October 17, 2014 1:21:34 PM
When you say SS, do you mean SSD? If so, 6Gbps is the same thing as SATA3, ie. 600MB/sec max theoretical,
though in practice most will not do more than 550MB/sec due to overhead & other issues.
Older models are native SATA2, such as the OCZ Vertex2/2E, Corsair F60, etc. However, even a Vertex2E is
a nice speedup over any mechanical drive; I use loads of them for benchmarking both SATA2 and SATA3 systems.
Note that it doesn't matter if you connect a SATA3 SSD to a SATA2 port; all that happens is the SSD switches down
to SATA2 compatibility mode, limiting the max speed to around 275MB/sec. Works fine with UNIX systems too. Heck,
I tested an 840 Pro 512GB with an SGI Indy's SCSI2 port (SCSI/SATA bridge box), worked fine.
Ian.
By the time that solid state drives were mainstream, no-one bothered to make drives with SATA II interfaces. Even HDDs these days are made with SATA III interfaces to avoid the expense of making and stocking two different types of drive interface chips.
I have a solid-state drive attached to an SATA II port on my mobo (mobo has no SATA III ports) and I'm thrilled with the performance, though.
I have a solid-state drive attached to an SATA II port on my mobo (mobo has no SATA III ports) and I'm thrilled with the performance, though.
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