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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

G-Tech Solid State mini RAID - Any news? Reviews?

Wouldn't a G-Raid Mini 2 with two Intel X-25M 80GB drives in Raid-0 configuration be better and faster. Those drives have dropped from $499 to $363 on Amazon. You'd have less storage space but for most editing and playback situations, you wouldn't need more.

-shooter
 
The thing is coming close to saturating the FW800 bus as it is, so the added performance and expense of the Intel SSDs would be lost there. Would be nice for eSATA though. Personally, if I were to spend more money on a unit like this, I would rather see SLC and not MLC memory being used. Once again, that would mean less storage space and overall slower performance, but you wouldn't have to worry about memory cells giving up on you and the relatively short lifespan of the MLC SSD units. IMO this unit will probably not live any longer than an HDD unit. Probably won't live as long compared to an HDD unit that is well cared for. The advantage here is it wouldn't be susceptible to motion, vibrations, shock, etc.. like hard drives would. But MLC FLASH memory has relatively low MTBF numbers. By this time next year, most small drives like this will be SSD based and cheaper. I'm expecting the MTBF numbers to be greatly improved as well, either by improving MLC reliability or by shifting over to SLC entirely.

I don't want to scare people with the MTBF talk. These units would probably be pretty reliable right up to the point where the FLASH cells start to degrade. There's probably a good year or two of regular use to be had out of a unit like this. It's expensive, but may be worth it if you're always moving drives around, as many of us are.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
...Personally, if I were to spend more money on a unit like this, I would rather see SLC and not MLC memory being used. Once again, that would mean less storage space and overall slower performance, but you wouldn't have to worry about memory cells giving up on you and the relatively short lifespan of the MLC SSD units...
Click to expand...

There's a good article at AnandTech that explains in some depth why Intel's MLC drives are better than those of the competition.

Intel have put their unique chip design expertise into the SSD's controller and have achieved better performance and greater reliability and durability than even some SLC-based drives.

MTBF is far more consistent for SSDs than for conventional HDDs, and in the not-too-distant future, firmware will allow a drive to accurately report on its remaining lifespan across the entire memory array.

Rising MLC capacities are driving the consumer SSD market at the moment, but I believe that if the cost of SLC technology doesn't drop soon, MLC drives will find a place in professional applications as companies like Intel improve their designs.
 
I just looked them up as well, but since I'm not going with the SSD on the new MBP it makes no sense to get the G-Tech SSD drives and I trust Jeff's suggestion on this, as well as the price being really too high at this time and age.

But still confuse on the RAID vs. DRIVE for both portable and desktop units, hope some one here can shed lithe on that as well.

ciao
 
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