Solid State Hard Disk Drives (SSDs) Part 2
I’m not one to defend a competitor here, but I highly doubt that any Tier One vendor is seeing SSD hard disk drives being returned at a 10 percent rate. The article circling the Internet is fear mongering meant to drive readership. On the other hand I do doubt that return rates are as low as traditional hard disk drives though.
For those that aren’t familiar with what I’m talking about, there are stories and blog posts that suggest that “a leading vendor” has had major issues with solid state hard disk drives including premature failure and poor performance that isn’t meeting customer expectations. Here’s one example.
I’ve written about SSD drives before and it probably warrants an update. Like in the last post, I’m indebted to Jeff Hobbet and the other engineering teams here at Lenovo. Many of the words here are theirs. Getting to work with these guys on a regular basis is one of the highlights of my job.
SSD technology is new. It is undergoing growing pains, and while Lenovo took a lot of heat from our customers for waiting so long to ship an SSD option, we did this for one primary reason. IT’S YOUR DATA and it requires a lot of care to keep it safe. Anything that replaces a tried and true technology for something new should be approached with skepticism until it has proven its worth in the marketplace and has been tested, retested and tested again. (The same can be said for just about anything from Full Encrypting HDDs to LASIK surgery).
As the SSD industry grows, manufacturers are wrestling with many problems like:
Endurance – or how many times a cell inside an SSD drive can be erased and rewritten before it goes bad (i.e. cannot maintain an electrical charge). Hard disk drives have no practical physical limit in this area.
Data retention – though SSD drives use solid state technology, they DO wear out. The more times they are written to and erased, the less time they can maintain data in storage. Hard disk drives can reliably maintain data for ten years or so regardless of how much they are used. SSD drives, depending on their usage pattern, can also have data retention times up to ten years. In practical usage, this often will be considerably less. The more you use it, the less time an SSD can retain your data. Thus, these drives SHOULD NOT be used for archival storage.
The industry has come up with some clever ways of making drives last as long as possible. Your average 64GB SSD drive actually contains more like 68GB of flash memory. The extra is used by the SSD to automatically be a reserve for those cells that wear out. Additionally the drive is using wear leveling algorithms to constantly move the data around internally to prevent hot spots from wearing out prematurely.
Lenovo engineers have set a design target of a write throughput which we know to be well above what the average user will experience over the lifetime of his or her machine. Our engineers have the data that show that the 2nd generation Samsung SSD drive that Lenovo uses (the Samsung RBX – more on that later) will perform to those standards or better.
Performance – Over the time our engineers have been evaluating SSDs, they have learned a lot about what makes a good drive vs. an average drive. All SSDs are not the same and anyone who is evaluating them should do extensive testing. Lenovo testing has shown that some drives from even name brand manufacturers are considerably slower than hard disk drives, especially when writing data. Others are significantly faster for random read operations. Even in a manufacturer’s own line, there can be significant differences in performance. For example, I mentioned that Lenovo uses Samsung’s RBX drive. The MacBook Air uses Samsung’s older N880X drive. While both are currently shipping 64GB-capacity Samsung drives, the NBX drive that Lenovo uses is 2X+ faster. It has had more growing pains (bugs) worked out of it. It uses SATA technology instead of older Parallel technology with a SATA bridge chip. Compare the ThinkPad X300 with the MacBook Air if you must, but at least give us credit for using a more advanced HDD technology. Better yet, run benchmarks and see for yourself.
Our advice is to test SSDs with the applications you use most often, including your email client and other programs you use on a regular basis. For today, yeah go ahead and look for a single level cell (SLC) instead of a multi level cell (MLC) drive. But honestly if you buy from a name brand manufacturer, it is likely going to be an SLC drive anyway. Plus, as the industry advances, there are going to be implementations of multi level cells arrayed in parallel to deliver single level cell performance, so SLC technology alone won’t always be a good determinant of performance.
Also ask if the drive is a native SATA implementation or a parallel drive with a SATA bridge chip. You want the native SATA implementation. They’re better in all aspects.
Power Consumption – All SSDs are going to save you battery life on your notebook, but some will save you more than others. Again, the native SATA drives will give you better battery life.
Failures – Worst case if a spinning platter HDD fails, there are clean room services that can open it up and read the data. Today if an SSD drive fails, there is currently no commercially available way to get that data back. Anyone using an SSD drive MUST have backups. It is this reality that has prevented them from being widely deployed in the corporate world. (Yes, high cost too.)
All in all, Lenovo is bullish on SSD drives and their potential. We think that the drives shipping in our products meet all customer requirements for performance, durability, and will live up to their claims. But don’t just buy because it is new. Do your homework.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
the report in question was written by the manager of a securities company who undoubtedly has or had a vested interest in driving stock prices either north or south. until i see a true report from a respected tester (rather than someone on wall street), then i’ll buy into the so-called “issue.”
having used compactflash cards in my digital SLR cameras for the last 4+ years, i have yet to be let down by high-density solid-state storage. my confidence in this technology easily carried over to the X300 when considering its purchase and nothing i’ve read thus far has changed that outlook. in fact, the report made me laugh. it’s like being explained F1 chassis setups by a used car salesman.
matt, your article here sheds new light on and brighter confidence in SSD technology, its benefits, and its limitations. also knowing that the drive used in the X300 is twice as fast as that used in the macbook air is welcome news. in fact, reading this has made me even more anxious to take delivery of my X300 regardless of what the nay-sayers wish to interject.
keeping good backups is a wise idea no matter what type of storage is used. given the slight increase in volatility with the SSD, i plan to increase redundancy in my storage methods just in case my new toy does crap out on me.
good stuff. thanks for the insight.
March 20th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
I have no doubt that SSDs (instead of HDDs) might be one day the defacto standard and thus common usage for small notebooks (aka subnotebooks), but actually we are somehow still far away from there, especially if I compare the momentary price vs. capacity factor.
In other words, actually SSDs are still too pricy and also too much capacity limited in order to be very attractive for a wider audience. Most casual consumers/customers have nowadays all limited budgets (…times and earnings got visible worser everywhere around the world), but do represent the real masses. And I pretty much believe that all those people will not be able or willing to pay these (over)high prices just in a favour of an SSD drive.
Just imagine you have to carry a little bit more installed software around, not only a Vista OS and an Office package, let’s say some enterprise resource planning software with a bigger database and/or some development tools etc., how will you put all this onto just a 64GB SSD? – You can’t and carrying another additional external drive together with you might not be very desirable, if your main point was to carry less weight and less devices around.
In sum up, the keypoints are that SSDs have to become quickly much more cheaper and also must offer bigger capacities, in order to be a real, attractive alternative for actual HDD technologies. As far as those points are not given, I don’t see any overwhelming market share for SSDs and not for notebooks with just these build in.
March 20th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I love SSD and have come to really appreciate its performancce on th X300 I’m using to look at design drawings related to my remodel from hell.
Moreover, SSD eliminatess my worries about a hardfile dying when I least expect it.
I love the blogs guy. Is David a hard tyask master?
Best
Jim Forbes
Escondido CA
March 20th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Matt, what’s your qualification? You sound very intelligent person and I’d love to study the field of program in university that you’ve studied. This is a serious comment and for privacy reasons you can email me your reply if you like. Thanks in advance!
March 20th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
vkyr brings up a great point that 64GB will be cutting it close on systems with vista, office apps, and large client files. i think the storage limitation will be rectified within the next 365 days.
it reminds me when i bought my first digital camera (a canon S20 p&s) back in 2000 when compactflash storage was expensive. before a trip to japan, i bought one of the first-generation IBM microdrives (a 384MB) because it was actually cheaper than the same amount of storage in flash. SSDs will be no different.
i look at the 64GB SSD on the X300 as a temporary solution. bigger, faster, and more reliable drives will follow within a year and it will be easy for us owners to upgrade later. the 1.8″ microSATA form factor will likely become standard issue on ultraportables–unlike the X4-series where 1.8″ PATA drives have since gone the way of the dodo.
March 20th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
My respect for Lenovo just continues to grow.
Good article. Confirms my long held belief of waiting for 2nd gen or better when buying hardware, as well as educates me on points I didn’t know existed (and confirmed my knowledge that SDD cells die over time).
Been looking to start up a company blog(s) at my pseudo-startup, and wanted to let you know the Lenovo blogs were the first on my list as a good example.
March 21st, 2008 at 3:15 am
Matt..
thanks for the short class on SSD’s..
very informative..!
March 21st, 2008 at 10:01 am
Loving the article – gives me more evidence for MBA bashing on any forum that trys to compare it to an X300, I was having trouble getting any specs for the SDD in the Air so its good to know the ThinkPad is twice as fast.
You mention benchmarks, as a competitive analyst – do you have a Macbook Air? Any Chance you could get overall performance benchmarks for MBA running Vista (with the 2GB RAM but the 1.6/1.8GHz) versus the X300 running Vista with both 2GB & 4GB (not possible on the Air) to see what overall effect the better HDD but slower CPU are having.
March 21st, 2008 at 11:38 am
thanks for this piece, it will surely ruffle the feathers of the mac community once they find out what you said.
i like the fact that you’re pushing so hard for people to wait for the second generation and this money shot: “But don’t just buy because it is new. Do your homework.” makes me want to wait for the second iteration of the X300.
hopefully it will have an SD card slot
March 21st, 2008 at 12:17 pm
[...] up to bat, Lenovo’s Inside the Box blog: I’m not one to defend a competitor here, but I highly doubt that any Tier One vendor is seeing [...]
March 21st, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Stefan, its likely that to compete with capacities/price, that next generation drives are more likely to be MLC drives rather than SLC so this might be one instance where the first generation is a good bet (i think Matt was suggested that Lenovo had already waited and choose the right thing rather than advising to wait on the X301 or whatever) – i’m more concerned with the lifespan of the MLC drives rather than the performance, I did a calculation (i do a lot of data throughput) and current MLC drives would wear out in just over a year with my usage.
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:47 pm
[...] Original post by Lenovo Blogs [...]
April 1st, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Our design team has a Mac Air. I haven’t seen any benchmarks yet (they’re studying the other attributes of it right now). Honestly though, as there are so many sites out there that do benchmarking, I doubt I’ll end put publishing any here. (Not that you all can’t in the comments though.)
I ended up pushing the envelope perhaps a bit too much already by calling out a competitor by name. I’m not willing to push it further right now.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
For those who want a bit more on the subject, I was on CNET’s The Real Deal with Tom and Rafe yesterday talking about SSDs. The Podcast is available for download here (Episode 104)
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-1.....288-1.html
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
matt, great cast — especially in the areas of longevity and reliability.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Really great writeup. Thanks for posting it. Helped to clarify a lot of confusion I had. P.S. Typed this on my 2 day old X300 with XP and SSD. Fastest notebook I’ve ever owned. Hands down. Applications open extremely fast and startup and shutdown times are cut by at least half compared to my Toshiba M400 and M200 and my Macbook. Thanks again.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Excellent analysis. I agree with your points. Although there are more HDDs around, SSDs still have more advantages other than the fact there is no data backup. But when would a SSD fail?
April 15th, 2008 at 8:42 am
just a quick remark from a dreamer:
Wouldn’t it be nice to have some smaller SSD around 30GB to hold operating system and applications, and a larger HDD for data? Most people i know use an extra partition for their data anyway which is extremely useful when updating the operating system. I know that it would not be easy to squeeze these two devices in a small laptop like the X300, but if, this would be wonderful and solve most of the drawbacks of one or the other alternative as you discussed them, Matt.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 am
This is good news. I work in the corporate world, and it’s good to know these things before we buy computer memory.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:19 pm
[...] και τα παρακάτω άρθρα από τα blogs της Lenovo:Solid State Hard Disk DrivesSolid State Hard Disk Drives (SSDs) Part 2 ειδικά το δεύτερο, για τις διαφορές ανάμεσα στα SSDs [...]
May 8th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Can you be more specific on the Samsung models, the website http://www.samsung.com/global/.....mly_id=161 doesn’t use your model numbers? I want to be sure that the Apple model is the older one and any I buy in a future laptop is the faster model.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
ted, the SSD in the X300 is a samsung MCCOE64G8MPP.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
[...] Current flash chips have about a finite lifetime of reads & writes due to the design of the technology. As the chip sizes get smaller, this number drops quickly. This makes the life spans of SSD based hard drives in particular a bit worrisome. [...]
August 30th, 2008 at 5:49 am
Sounds like a lot of people here are drinking the Lenovo kool-aid. If you guys want to compare SSD drives that’s one thing, but to compare the monstrosity that is the X300 to a MacBook Air, and say it is superior, shows that you don’t get out much. Also, I’m going to need more proof that the MacBook Air uses inferior SSD drives than the word of a Lenovo spokesman.
August 30th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Though in many ways that Macbook Air and X300 are similar, there are important differences, the Mac Air is aimed at a population whom seek form over function. While, X300 is distillation of all the things that are great about the T and X series.
August 31st, 2008 at 1:49 pm
wjli2: Please elaborate and share with all of us the function that is being left out of the MacBook Air?
As I said earlier, if Apple is using inferior SSD Drives we should call them on it, but give us more proof than the word of a Lenovo spokesperson. But to say the X300 is superior in design or functionality is just plain silly. The MacBook Air packs all the functionality and more in a beautifully designed package. Some would argue that the MacBook Air is “less than” because it does not include a built in DVD drive, Ethernet port and Firewire port. However, these functions are not necessary for the MacBook Air market. The MacBook Air is a secondary travel computer and not a desktop replacement. 90% of hotels around the world use wireless connectivity and an ethernet port is rarely needed. I can prove this because my job requires that I travel to Asia about 50% of the time. I’ve yet to need the add-on USB ethernet adapter. If you need a DVD drive, while at home, this can be purchased separately. It is good to note that this is also a choice for the X300 and not built in to all; so this is a wash in comparison. As for firewire, again the MacBook Air was not designed for high-end video editing. For this you have the MacBook Pro or Mac Pro. Although, the MacBook Air is great for casual video editing for your blog and home movies using a hard drive video camera that utilizes USB 2.0 to connect to your MacBook Air. The MacBook Air will handle these functions far better given its superior 1.8 Ghz Intel COre 2 Duo processor choice.
Would I like to put in more RAM in my MacBook Air… yes. But what you may not realize is that a Mac uses the far superior and more functional Mac OS X. Meaning, even with a max of 2 GB of RAM it is far faster and “snappier” than Windows Vista using 4GB of RAM. Oh and another notch on the MacBook Air bedpost of far superior functionality is… it also runs Windows Vista or XP or any version of Windows.
Can the X300 run Mac OS X? Seems, to me, like the X300 is not as functional.
December 6th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Ugh, well I got dupped. Lenovo started having a clearance deal on their SSD’s online ($68 over the price of a 320GB 7200RPM) and I was in the market for a new laptop. So I started searching for information the model of drive that Lenovo used in their laptops because of the varied speeds being seen in benchmarks. I found this post stating “Our engineers have the data that show that the 2nd generation Samsung SSD drive that Lenovo uses (the Samsung RBX – more on that later) will perform to those standards or better.”
I was satisfied and ordered a brand new W500 with the 64GB drive, it came and I started it up and went into the bios where I saw the model number of the drive I recieved “MMCRE64G8MPP”. I search online for that model number and find the datasheet (http://www.samsung.com/global/.....CRE64G8MPP) and what do you know, a crappy MLC drive! And then I find this post (http://forum.notebookreview.co.....p?t=320136).
Yeah, I feel like I got the bait and switch, it looks like Lenovo is trying to dump a bunch of their stock of garbage SSD’s by purposefully not posting the exact drive to be shipped in the system even though they know — evidenced by this very post — that the type of drive even from the same manufacturer is important to the performance of the drive.
I guess I’ll just call Customer Service and See if they’ll take this thing back or give me what their own customer service and blogging executives say are in their laptops.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:43 am
I’ve installed a 256 Gb SSD disk with 220/200 R/W speed.
My laptop starts and are ready for work – all boot and background operations done AND password input: 45 sec.
All programs start in 1/5 to 1/10th of the time with my ordinary HDD and Vista.
Got Windows 7 now – and all previous software installed from scratch.
I luuuv SSD – and I use reliable backup anyway.