ssd mounting

AmigaOne X1000 platform specific issues.
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ggw
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ssd mounting

Post by ggw »

I would like 2 suggestions. 1) brands of SSD to avoid; 2) are there mounting issues?

I've never owned an SSD I had access to.

1) prices vary from 60$ to 120$ for SSDs.

2) they all seem smaller than the WD 1TB dead disk in the X1000. Do I need to buy a bracket?
George Wyche
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tonyw
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Re: ssd mounting

Post by tonyw »

SSDs are generally 2.5" mounting (same size as a laptop HD). You can get an adapter plate for a couple of dollars that will make it fit a "normal" 3.5" HD drive slot, or you can make something up out of scrap aluminium sheet.

I am currently testing as many as I can get my hands on (and afford). I have not found any that don't perform flawlessly. All so far tested support Trim and all (so far) have 4096-byte sectors that are addressable as 512-bytes. The big ones (>480 GB) are expensive and probably not worth the money.

All of them seem to claim the same top speed (500-550 MB/sec), but that is of course only for short bursts. Long transfer speeds depend more on the file system and device driver.

If I were to recommend a brand, I would suggest you choose from one of the big names like Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, SanDisk, etc. I have read that some Samsung drives have had issues in the past, but that may not be true of today's offerings, of course. I have only one Samsung drive but it has no problems.
cheers
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LyleHaze
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Re: ssd mounting

Post by LyleHaze »

If you have the Official X1000 case, an SSD drive can be screwed directly to the hard drive tray. It is NOT through the vibration rubbers that regular drives use, but there's not much need for those on an SSD anyway.

I have some type of SanDisk, details not remembered, it has worked without issue.

The partition that holds my projects (and SDK) is on the SSD, but out of caution my backup script also saves a copy off to a PATA drive as well. Having two copies of each backup is quite comforting, and being able to make backups easily has really helped me to keep backups fresh. Considering the low cost of storage nowadays there's no reason not to make LOTS of backups.
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Re: ssd mounting

Post by ggw »

Hi Lyle,

The PATA's controller is necessarily different from the sata2 controller (other than sharing the motherboard resources and connectivity to a bus).
Is that fair to say?

I'm grumpy about it because the replacement 1TB which has been running unused in the X1000 (My X1000 is typically on for 4 hours / day.) refused to boot up about 4 times in a row, stopping in CFE with words to the effect that no boot could be found. I went away in disgust, but returned at the end of the 4 hours after removing the side panel staring that the cables, babying them, nothing loose all looked normal, back together and.... all was normal... what was *my* problem it seemed to say. No more problems since then (last weekend).

What I really want for a backup is not that much, so a PATA drive should be plenty. How to keep it organized and how to use it specifically WHEN the #2 1TB (also) dies is not that clear (as when #1 TB did die and my backups did not just organize themselves into my salvation).

As my original post said, I don't know anything about SSDs when it comes to "who is a name brand", but your list is sufficient to pick from. Thanks in particular about the 2.5 mounting into the X1000 straight away. I'll do that!.

George
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LyleHaze
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Re: ssd mounting

Post by LyleHaze »

Sounds like you've had some bad luck.
I don't know much on the difference between SATA and PATA. I believe the command set is similar but the interface has gone serial.

While some may disagree, I have always believed that IF you have good power, it's better for a computer to stay on 24/7 than to power it up and down with each use.
This reduces the thermal changes, as well as reducing the power up inrush. Of course it does add wear to the fans.

The list of brands to choose from was from Tony. I have only one SSD, it's a SanDisk. I expect to be getting another soon for a different computer.

I have never tried booting to a PATA on my X1000. When I was writing my backup script I wanted a completely separate drive for the second backup location, so I grabbed an old PATA from the pile of old parts and added it. One day I might use a NAS for the purpose.

Good Luck,
Lyle
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Raziel
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Re: ssd mounting

Post by Raziel »

ggw wrote:Hi Lyle,

The PATA's controller is necessarily different from the sata2 controller (other than sharing the motherboard resources and connectivity to a bus).
Is that fair to say?

I'm grumpy about it because the replacement 1TB which has been running unused in the X1000 (My X1000 is typically on for 4 hours / day.) refused to boot up about 4 times in a row, stopping in CFE with words to the effect that no boot could be found. I went away in disgust, but returned at the end of the 4 hours after removing the side panel staring that the cables, babying them, nothing loose all looked normal, back together and.... all was normal... what was *my* problem it seemed to say. No more problems since then (last weekend).

What I really want for a backup is not that much, so a PATA drive should be plenty. How to keep it organized and how to use it specifically WHEN the #2 1TB (also) dies is not that clear (as when #1 TB did die and my backups did not just organize themselves into my salvation).

As my original post said, I don't know anything about SSDs when it comes to "who is a name brand", but your list is sufficient to pick from. Thanks in particular about the 2.5 mounting into the X1000 straight away. I'll do that!.

George
Ah, the infamous "not enough memory" error when booting off of SSD's...that specific error bit me too thrice upto now, very randomly and very seldom here.
Not sure what the cause is, but it seems the SSD is not known/initialized to the system when cfe wants to access it, maybe a power cord problem, don't know.
Normally doing a system shut down, leaving it be for five minutes and powering it up again will solve the problem (at least for me).

wrt your brands question i can only tell you the brand and drive i got in my x1000

It's a Samsung SSD 850 EVO with 500GB, haven't had any need for more
The 1TB version should work as well though

Good luck
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tonyw
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Re: ssd mounting

Post by tonyw »

Hmmm, I've never had a failure to boot (from a cold boot), but sometimes the X1000 won't perform a warm boot - the device driver locks up saying the SSD is not ready.

I think the SSD is doing a garbage collection and is busy, but it has only started doing it recently. Maybe it's because the "disk" is becoming more full and wear-levelling takes more time.
cheers
tony
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Re: ssd mounting

Post by AlfredOne »

ggw wrote:I would like 2 suggestions. 1) brands of SSD to avoid; 2) are there mounting issues?

I've never owned an SSD I had access to.

1) prices vary from 60$ to 120$ for SSDs.

2) they all seem smaller than the WD 1TB dead disk in the X1000. Do I need to buy a bracket?
I'm using a Crucial MX300. I read some benchmarks and what convinced to buy this is that performances does not degrade over time as with other ones.
Time will tell if it is true.
What I can say is that AmigaOS4 (beta) boot time decreased from 42 seconds to 17 seconds. Consider that if we could use a SATA3 controller, it would be twice more fast.
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ssolie
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Re: ssd mounting

Post by ssolie »

AlfredOne wrote:I'm using a Crucial MX300. I read some benchmarks and what convinced to buy this is that performances does not degrade over time as with other ones.
Time will tell if it is true...
All flash chips degrade over time. There is no way around that fact. What makes the difference is the software in the controller. A good controller will spread the wear out over all the flash chips and attempt to avoid erase/write cycles as much as possible. It is all up to the firmware.
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