I love SSDs. As do others. Currently all of my SSDs are from Intel except for one. I’ll have to count them up at some point but needless to say from my first 80 GB generation one X-25, I’ve been hooked.
Recently, one of my generation 2 Intel 160 GB drives was acting up. Now unlike old mechanical drives, you don’t get much warning. Generally they just die. I quickly copied off all the data and then put it aside.
Today while working on other things, I did some testing on it with the Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox as well as HD Tune Pro. I had been using the drive in an external case over eSATA (more on that later). In order to use the Intel tools, I needed to direct connect it to my laptop using the ultra bay in one of my Lenovo W510s.
The Intel tools all reported all was well. I then ran all the tests in HD Tune Pro both with and without a partition (you can only run the write tests without one). The health report did in fact show an issue. It doesn’t look too bad so with regular backups, I think I can continue to use the drive.
One down side to SSDs is that their performance can degrade over time (especially if you have a drive without TRIM support or like me, you put the drive in a case that prevents regular use of TRIM).
I was interested then in how the drive was doing performance wise.
Here’s the raw Benchmark Read results in the ultra bay:
Here’s the raw Benchmark Write results in the ultra bay:
Overall, not bad for a drive that’s almost two years old and has been used extensively to host VHDs for Hyper-V.
As I had mentioned, I had been using the drive in an external case. So I put it back in the case and ran the same HD Tune Pro. The results, depressing.
Here’s the raw Benchmark Read results in the external case over eSATA:
Here’s the raw Benchmark Write results in the external case over eSATA:
As you can see the read is down about 100 MB/s (!) and the write is down about 25 MB/s.
What’s going on? I’m not quite sure.
Is it the eSATA port on Lenovo? The external case?
I’ll investigate more in part 2 as well as do some tests with a brand new Generation 3 Intel 160 GB drive.
So here’s the obligatory test post.
I finally updated to BlogEngine .NET 2.5.
While I considered writing my own … who am I kidding … I have too much to do already so it’s nice to have something new, modern, and fresh.
I’m now using Feed Burner for my RSS feed and if you’re using your web browser to read this, I’m using the MetroLight theme.
Thanks to everyone who made this great, free blog engine.
What’s great about computers today and good virtualization software is that you can do more with less.
However, I continue to pick areas where I need as much or more hardware on the road with me. While the promise of the cloud and Internet in general is great. I can’t always count on reliable connectivity back to my servers. And since I tend to do demo heavy talks, I’m forced to travel with a fair amount of kit.
For Tech Ed 2011 in Atlanta, I’m doing an all-day workshop on virtualization for developers and two sessions. The sessions can be fulfilled with just one of my W510s. My workshop however, demands a bit more.
So, what am I packing?
- Two Lenovo W510s
- Two Intel 160 GB Gen2 SSD in external cases over eSata to W510s
- One Lenovo X61
- One 8-port HP Switch with VLAN support
- One DLINK 4-port router
- One QNAP TS-259 Pro+
This configuration will let me show Hyper-V Live Migration as well as run a full Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management demo domain with a DC, SCVMM host, TFS, Build, Developer, and Tester machines and of course a Hyper-V host to run lab machines.
Hope to see you there!
[Edit] Fixed bulleted list.
Where will you be the week of May 14, 2011? I hope it’s with me and a bunch of other great folks at Tech Ed 2011.
It looks to be another great show. I’m lucky enough to be presenting an all-day workshop on virtualization for developers as well as two sessions.
One session is on using Expression Blend 4 as a developer. The second is on Team Build 2010.
I hope to see you there. And if you’ve not registered, there’s still time for both the show and/or my pre-con.
If you’re coming to my pre-con, drop me a mail with your t-shirt size. See the contact link on the blog.
See you there!
Thank you to everyone who attended Ken and mine’s workshop on April 18, 2011 at VSLive in Las Vegas.
You can obtain updated slides from the conference downloads site.
I’ve posted a zip file on my SkyDrive for you to download which includes our license, docs, and source files.
Please return to this post as we may more or update the zip in the future.
Update: reminder, you’ll need to get your own flickr developer key to work with the sample.
The Globals.cs file in the Common Library source has commented out variables that you need to update before the code with compile and run.
Thanks again for coming!
Brian and Ken
I’m doing a talk today at DevConnections in Orlando, FL today. The talk is primarily about all the yummy goodness that Microsoft ships out of band from the core Visual Studio product boxes. In addition, I cover what’s in the SKUs above Visual Studio 2010 Professional edition—Premium and Ultimate.
So here’s a list of the items I either showed a demo of, or mentioned.
Notes
Feature of SKU means it’s in the box.
Benefit means you get it if you have the SKU and valid MSDN Subscription
N/A under Minimum SKU means it works with command-line tools or doesn’t technically require Visual Studio 2010 to work