Which is faster please? ZIFF HD or 300x SD card

which will have the faster read, and perhaps more importantly (for Windows anyway) write speeds please?
deciding which mod to do.

Thanks.

 

I don't know how fast (in x speed) my SD card is, but it is a class 6 card, and when it comes to working with a lot of files, it seems much slower than the SDD.

 

Lexar seems to be the only company that uses x to measure the write speed of CF cards. 300x is equivalent to 45 MiB/s sustained write speed which is quite good. The HD speed obviously depends on which model you buy. There are other factors which makes comparison harder (for instance SD card has random access, which is good).

 

1.8" drives are pretty slow, probably about half the speed of a 300x CF flash card. About 20-25 MB/s is typical for 1.8" HDD.

Even 3.5" drives aren't that much faster than 300x CF cards at about 60MB/s and I expect this gap to close very soon.

The fact is that HDDs are yesterday's technology and where the requirement is for a relatively low capacity disk such as in notebooks, they are likely to be superseded over the next few years. SSDs are also much more robust than HDDs, which is a useful feature in a disk in a very portable machine like the One.

However, if you want real speed, try an SLC SSD. They can achieve read speeds of more than 120MB/s. Unfortunately they are extremely expensive.

EDIT

I've just had a look on eBay and while they are expensive, perhaps I should have said "very" rather than "extremely". A 128GB SSD capable of 120-143MB/s read and 80-95MB/s write is about £340. I know this is a lot, but it wasn't that long ago that something like this would have set you back more than £1k.

 

The hard disk are not yet "yesterday's technology ". They are MUCH cheaper, generally faster (or at least as fast than reasonably priced SSDs), they have virtually unlimited writting capability (as opposed to SDD), and it is easier to recover the data from them in case of a failure (it can be expensive, but possible). However, with a SDD, if it dies, then good luck getting your data back.

 

I believe your information is faulty. Lifetime of SSD:s is, from what i have heard, not an issue. MTTF values are usually extremely high for SSD:s and while these values may not be accurate, if its even a tenth of whats promised they outshine mechanical HDD:s by years. Roughly speaking the first part of any high-tech device that breaks is always a moving part. HDD:s have them, SSD:s do not.

Also in todays market even the second-to-cheapest SSD:s perform better than the most expensive HDD:s (there may still be some method of benchmarking in which this is not true, but in general this is a fact).

Recovering data from a critically failed HDD is not an option for home users. If your data is sensitive enough to justify the astronomical costs of such a recovery, then don't keep it on a netbook. Using a RAID array and doing regular backups to a remote location is cheaper and allows for quicker recovery.

Whether or not HDD:s are yesterday's technology or not. Obviously it's not possible to say for sure one way or the other, but HDD:s where developed in the 1950:s so in that way its positively ancient...

Still, you are right about the price issue. For secondary storage HDD is still the way to go and it will probably be for some time.

 

HDDs are not yesterday's technology. Proof: I can go down to the shops and buy a HDD, its not like going into a music store and trying to find a vinyl record.

You say that even the 'second to cheapest SSDs' will outperform the MOST expensive hard disks. If you take a look at the other forums, it seems like we're all swapping out the slow ass SSD for hard drives. Developed in the 1950s? Thats hardly ancient. How about the engine in your car? That principal was devised in the 1800s, are you saying the engines in our cars are outdated?

 

The part about HDD:s being yesterdays technology because it was devoleped in the 1950:s was mostly intended as a joke, and i agree with you that the wide availability contradicts this.

But still the HDD in your computer is definietly the part that has evolved least for the last 30 years, and the HDD has been a performance bottleneck for a very long time. I believe that SSD technology is about to change that.

The SSD market is growing fast and development in technology is even faster, the SSD:s that where on the market when the 110 was being developed where many more times as expensive as todays per Gigabyte and very much slower as well. The OCZ Core series is a good example of recent development in SSD technology, with read/write speeds in order of 170/100 MBps (Although the disks are still to expensive to put in a netbook).

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/1-8 ... 08-10.html

Here are some review of the Toshiba that i am using the double platter 100GB :mrgreen:
I definetly like it over the stock Intel 8GB SSD =)

 

I compared a 1.8” Toshiba MK6028GAL with a 16GB A-Data 350x CF-card. The CF feels much faster… although the HDD actually shows higher write speed. I guess the access time, and the read speed, for the HDD is a true bottleneck for performance. I must also say that I’m somewhat disappointed by the performance from the 350x CF card. It’s no way near the expected and 47MB/s write and 52MB/s read speed

Boot up time (in XP/SP3) is 32s for CF and 48s för HDD
(boot up time -> until the hour glass disappears from the arrow-pointer).

bench32 for Toshiba MK6028GAL:
http://i37.tinypic.com/2h3de9v.jpg

bench32 for A-Data 350X:
http://i38.tinypic.com/2l917gm.jpg

 

AFAIK, the flash memories are rated somewhere between 100K and 500K writes. That's very little, for example the part where the file system information is located can change many times every second when copying/moving/creating files. Yes, some of the writes are cached, and the SDDs have a system where they write to a different part of the disk to distribute the 'wear', but even so, if you do stuff such as real time data aquisition, SDDs might not be the best thing for you.

That's not a fact at all. The write speed is pretty low, again, making them less suitable than HDDs for real time data aquisition.

We were not talking about netbooks here, we were talking about the fact that HDDs are NOT obsolete.

So what do you trust more? A technology that is 50-60 years old (and has been proven), or one that is 2-3 years old?

 

I have never claimed that HDD:s are absolete.

What i do claim is that SSD:s are better in all aspects except price, capacity (although data density is probably almost as good) and in some cases small random writes. If you have any information contradicting this, please present it and i will stand corrected.

Your claim that HDD:S have higher write speeds is just plain wrong (or you have outdated information). Good SSD:s have at last 100-120 MBps sustained write speeds which conventional HDD:s will probably never have. The WD velociraptor is AFAIK the fastest mechanical HDD on the market, there is a comparison of that drive to the pretty average SSD:s in the OCZ Core series here: http://www.hothardware.com/News/OCZ_Cor ... neak_Peek/
I should also mention that OCZ Core is marketed as a low price alternative in the SDD market while the WD disk is marketed as the best of the best in HDD...

Many HDD:s have bad blocks in them, blocks which they map and avoid using transparantly to the user. If you would somehow manage to write the same cell of an SDD sufficiently many times to make it malfunction, then that is what it would become. A bad block. Before you question the reliability of SSD:s, do you have any credible source that claims that there have been actual problems with flash based SSD:s due to wear?

I am usually quite conservative with new technology, but i do not judge technology solely on its age. While i usually prefer the more tested technology, there are of course exceptions (otherwise there could be no progress).

 

Well, I guess it depends on what you understand by write speed. For example, with the money you'd spend on a SDD you can buy 8 HDDs and put them in a RAID and get faster speeds, at the expense of space and power (obviously, this works mainly for servers)

Not really, but that's because SSDs are new and expensive, so not many people use them. Once they are more common, I am sure there will be more reports of their failure.

 

Is it Just me or is there a Bottle neck on the ZiF Controller that resides inside the Acer One ??
I dont see much Speed gain between a 8MB cache HD and a 2MB cache Atleast not yet i am try update all drivers and try run benchmarks again.

 

the cache wont be that important on such slow drives.

 

nopw not much differences between 2mb and 8mb cache.
Except the 8MB cache has a higher min compared to the 2mb.
Oh well i stick to my 100GB 8mm Toshiba double plate.

 

Thanks Trillian your information is what I was looking for, I have a ZIF to SD converter, so I just need to find a good CF card in the UK now, what do people recommmend, a Sandisk ? Which Model?
8Gb should be enough for winxp sp3 and some apps and data for me.
Thanks.

 

From what I’ve read the Transcend 300x 8GB CF card seems to be a good performer.

 

Sure enough the 300x CF card will be a bit faster, but for what they cost you could buy the mother of all 1.8" Zif drives. I would think that 100+GB of space compared to 8/16GB of slightly faster storage would be a no brainer.

The CF card is a little faster, but most programs reside in memory. So you only need to have storage that will be fast enough to not be a bother. Doesn't make sense to pay for an expensive 300x CF card (isnt it almost 1/2 the value of the laptop?) when the SATA HDD version would definetly be faster and cheaper than both.

 

Sure enough the 300x CF card will be a bit faster, but for what they cost you could buy the mother of all 1.8" Zif drives. I would think that 100+GB of space compared to 8/16GB of slightly faster storage would be a no brainer.

The CF card is a little faster, but most programs reside in memory. So you only need to have storage that will be fast enough to not be a bother. Doesn't make sense to pay for an expensive 300x CF card (isnt it almost 1/2 the value of the laptop?) when the SATA HDD version would definetly be faster and cheaper than both.