The first hard drive I bought was a Seagate ST32140A. This was a 2.1GB (yes, GIGA) drive I bought in 1996. For the 'cheap' price of $490! So that makes this solid state drive about 1/100 the price of that drive not to mention it has got to be 20 times faster as well.
My first drive was a beastly 40MB unit in a 286 16MHz system. It "only" cost me $220 back in 1989, and then Wing Commander came along and sucked up 25% of the drive! Good times... I think those old drive maxed out at around 1.5MB/s, with seek times of around 35ms. So in raw transfer rates we're 50X to 350X faster, and seek times are about 20000X faster. Sadly, modern 7200RPM drives are only about three times as fast in seek times as drives 20 years old, which is why we really need SSDs.
Wow, saw these posts and had a horrible flashback to my early years in IT (before Anandtech even existed!) While I can't remember the first drive I purchased I still have a box in the basement of my first computer parts LOL!
If I remember correctly my first upgrade was to 2MB RAM in the form of SIMMs for just over $500! That's over $250 per MB (yes MB, not GB!)
My first HDD Upgrade was to a 6MB Corvus(?) at nearly $200 per MB!
My next system was a 486SX and I'll never forget paying an absolute fortune for a Math Co-Processor, and later an "Overdrive" @ 100Mhz! Not to mention the 4MB RAM for $700!!
Last but not least, I skipped the original Pentium generation and I'll NEVER forget this system - A Pentium MMX 233, 32MB RAM, and a 5.25" Bigfoot Hard Drive @ 2.1GB. I can still remember myself talking to salesman at our local computer store saying "There is no way anyone could ever use 2GB of storage!"
Wow, did I think I was special after I upgraded to 1GB RAM and the original 3DFX add-in "3D Accelerator"! At the time most enterprise servers were shipping with less...
Thinking back to the early years really makes you think, especially how much we take our "new" technologies for granted! In my mind, even to this day (other than massive HTPC / Media Servers I really can't imagine many people using more than a few TB or storage, more than 3x/4x SLI / CF, or 12-24GB RAM, or needing any faster speed than the fastest SSD's on the market...
Really think about that, how a 16Mhz CPU was more than enough just a short while ago! How the 3DFX card changed gaming and evolved into parallel processing, how a plain old RUST HDD was made almost obsolete overnight! Then try to imagine where we'll be in 5 or 10 years from now - how much is really enough?! Just the thought that the smallest cellular phone is 20x faster than a full tower computer was a few years ago is mind boggling!
Sorry if I seem to be rambling on, I'm a bit tired but these posts really got me thinking of my past... $1,150 for 6MB of storage!! WTF was I thinking!? LMAO!
My first HD was 15MB, and as I recall I was able to use a couple of "tricks" to get 18MB out of it. It was a 3 1/2 ...by that I mean it was 3 1/2 inches high (it fit into a 5 1/4 bay).
...on a 640K PC-XT 10MHz , running DOS ...hmm (been awhile) ... DOS 3.3.
It was a couple of years later I got a 286 12MHz w/3MB (1MB internal, and an add-in Evertech card, and was able to switch between several open applications sequentially using a utility called Software Carousel): whoo-hoo!
First drive was 120 MB, and my entire operating system and all games added up to about 1100 files. I know the number of files because every time I started DOS SHell it would count up all the files. I have way more files than that just in teh system folder now.
No. The SSD is not 1000x faster than that old hard drive. Not even close. You could probably make some comparison to seek times if you wanted to "justify" that 1000x number, but that would just be marketing BS.
But anyway you want to look at it, even a cheap SSD is a BUTT load faster than any HDD, even a "fast" HDD like my velociraptor (sp?). Even at 20x, that is still the difference between 1 hour versus 3 minutes!
I think you could justify close to 1000x if you did random reads/writes. They are what kills hard drives. An Intel X-25V is 86x faster than a 600GB Velociraptor at 4k random read (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3756/2010-value-ssd-...
My first drive was a 40MB(?) 5,25" monster in a 386, wich we upgraded to a 200MB wich was so insanely high capacity we never filled more than half of it even though we had 3.11 and i put on all games i got hold of XD Good times...
a huge (physically speaking!) 20 mb was my first drive in 1986 on a 8086, very useful to avoid swapping of 5.25' floppy disks, but it was about 500$. Now my 128 Gb laptop is too little, and 256 Gb seems the minimum to me (I've no games, and my music is on a SD card)
Really? DOS 5.0 took up about 5MB of my 40MB drive (1/5). Windows 95 ate around 100MB if memory serves, so that would be 1/20 of a 2.1GB drive. Today a clean Win7 install uses around 5GB, though you need more like a 16GB drive in order for everything to function properly.
As for applications, I think things have calmed down quite a bit. Most users probably only use about 15GB of application including the OS; what eats up the space are videos, images, and music.
Anyway, outside of SSDs, hard drive capacities are such that it's seldom a concern.
Yet Amiga OS 2.x would boot up with a single floppy and have a full GUI interface. But installation onto a Drive required about 3+mb of space (fonts, and printer drivers - since many printers rand off "EPSON" mode).
You're a youngster... 2GB drives came around 1995.
My first HD, used - was a 25MB drive for my Amiga 1000. That "M" as in Megabytes. The SCSI controller itself was about $250+ and the drive was $150 (again, used).
Then I bought my Amiga 3000 (new, but was being replaced by newer models) for $850 and it came with a 50MB HD & 25mhz CPU (original MSRP was $2500). But it had the fastest SCSI controller on the market at that time.
What we get nowadays for $300~500... or full blown notebooks for $600~800 (good ones) - I laugh at people who think these prices are HIGH.
Spending $1000~2000 for a root canal and cap when the Dentist does about 1 hr of work while the rest is assistants, but the whole thing takes about 2hours.
Yeah! When I bought that old Seagate, it was the fastest non SCSI drive out. Biggest too. Most of the drives were still in the 540MB range. That ST32401A was a huge leap at the time.
Now that I think about it, I might still have that thing buried in one of my electronics stashes somewhere...
"This primarily hurts in write-heavy scenarios, and the 64GB C300 is still rated for read speeds of up to 355MB/s and write speeds up to 75MB/s. While we wait for 25nm NAND devices to double capacities at current price points, the 64GB C300 is a very tempting option that's available now."
How can it do over 300MB/s when the box says it's only SATA II?
Technically there is no such thing as "SATA II" or "SATA III"; those are marketing blips AFAIK. SATA specification 3.0 lists a variety of items, including 6.0Gbps transfer speeds. The old SATA 2.x specification was limited to 3.0Gbps, and the latest revision was 2.6. You can find the full list of 3.0 specs here: http://www.serialata.org/technology/6Gbdetails.asp
Actually, SATA uses 2 bits ECC pr 8, so it's 3Gbps/10=300MB/s. The controller of C300 64GB is identical to the 128 and 256GB versions, and unless they limit firmware it will be SATA 6Gbps. The interface is identical for 3 and 6Gbps (and 1,5Gbps for that matter).
Where's the rest of the review? It wasn't labeled as a "this just in", so I finished the first page and expected to move on to see some benchmarks and other analysis. How does it hold up to other similarly priced drives?
Agreed, was looking forward to a full review! The OCZ Agility 60GB is $120 after $10 MIR at newegg right now (I've seen this deal a few times, it's a fairly regular price), I'd be interested to see how these stack up.
The Corsair Reactor 64GB is $100 after $30 MIR, but reading the newegg reviews, they have some major issues with the BIOS not recognizing the drives it looks like.
Nice drive, decent price... But I've already got a 40GB X25-V for my netbook and an 80GB X25-M for my desktop so I'm waiting it out 'till 25nm NAND.
I gotta say, a few months ago (around Feb., when I got my X25-V) I wasn't expecting a lot more low-end models to come out before the end of the year (when 25nm flash arrives) but I've been pleasantly surprised. Between models like this and Indillix/OCZ's aggressive pricing/rebates we've actually seen a steady creep on prices over the last 6 months, which is way more than we saw the 6 months prior to that; when everyone was still price gouging like crazy on the X25-V drives.
Competition is a grand thing... A lot of people (particularly laptop users) won't ever jump on anything smaller than 100GB, but we're getting there. I've seen 120GB Indillix drives for as low as $250 after MIR, once drives like that break $20 they'll start moving even faster imo. OEM upgrade choices still seem awfully overpriced tho, SSD aren't gonna catch on big 'till the OEMs start pricing them better as built-in options (and 'till they start offering better SSD options to begin with).
Sweet, time to get that AMD board with 880 Chipset + 850 SouthBridge. ie USD3 and 6 SATA3 ports!. Let see, SSDboot, 2X HDD500 Raid0, 3 X HDD1TB Raid5. One cool server on Ubuntu Lucid.
I bought this drive.It's very quick,on sataII reads at 280,on sata III reads at 375. Had to buy an Asus Sata III contrtoller card for my P5E,but it installed with no trouble.Linux 10.10 recognized it with no problems and without installing any drivers.I am also new to Linux, so I'll See how it Goes.Paid 135Dollars at NewEgg,20 dollars for controller.It's been a good experience so far.
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Snooper - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
The first hard drive I bought was a Seagate ST32140A. This was a 2.1GB (yes, GIGA) drive I bought in 1996. For the 'cheap' price of $490! So that makes this solid state drive about 1/100 the price of that drive not to mention it has got to be 20 times faster as well.Not bad.
davepermen - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
20 times faster? this should dance around your harddrive at 100 to 1000x the speed, depending on the usage :)JarredWalton - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
My first drive was a beastly 40MB unit in a 286 16MHz system. It "only" cost me $220 back in 1989, and then Wing Commander came along and sucked up 25% of the drive! Good times... I think those old drive maxed out at around 1.5MB/s, with seek times of around 35ms. So in raw transfer rates we're 50X to 350X faster, and seek times are about 20000X faster. Sadly, modern 7200RPM drives are only about three times as fast in seek times as drives 20 years old, which is why we really need SSDs.JMcGrath - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
Wow, saw these posts and had a horrible flashback to my early years in IT (before Anandtech even existed!) While I can't remember the first drive I purchased I still have a box in the basement of my first computer parts LOL!If I remember correctly my first upgrade was to 2MB RAM in the form of SIMMs for just over $500! That's over $250 per MB (yes MB, not GB!)
My first HDD Upgrade was to a 6MB Corvus(?) at nearly $200 per MB!
My next system was a 486SX and I'll never forget paying an absolute fortune for a Math Co-Processor, and later an "Overdrive" @ 100Mhz! Not to mention the 4MB RAM for $700!!
Last but not least, I skipped the original Pentium generation and I'll NEVER forget this system - A Pentium MMX 233, 32MB RAM, and a 5.25" Bigfoot Hard Drive @ 2.1GB. I can still remember myself talking to salesman at our local computer store saying "There is no way anyone could ever use 2GB of storage!"
Wow, did I think I was special after I upgraded to 1GB RAM and the original 3DFX add-in "3D Accelerator"! At the time most enterprise servers were shipping with less...
Thinking back to the early years really makes you think, especially how much we take our "new" technologies for granted! In my mind, even to this day (other than massive HTPC / Media Servers I really can't imagine many people using more than a few TB or storage, more than 3x/4x SLI / CF, or 12-24GB RAM, or needing any faster speed than the fastest SSD's on the market...
Really think about that, how a 16Mhz CPU was more than enough just a short while ago! How the 3DFX card changed gaming and evolved into parallel processing, how a plain old RUST HDD was made almost obsolete overnight! Then try to imagine where we'll be in 5 or 10 years from now - how much is really enough?! Just the thought that the smallest cellular phone is 20x faster than a full tower computer was a few years ago is mind boggling!
Sorry if I seem to be rambling on, I'm a bit tired but these posts really got me thinking of my past... $1,150 for 6MB of storage!! WTF was I thinking!? LMAO!
brdavis9 - Monday, December 13, 2010 - link
HAHAHA -My first HD was 15MB, and as I recall I was able to use a couple of "tricks" to get 18MB out of it. It was a 3 1/2 ...by that I mean it was 3 1/2 inches high (it fit into a 5 1/4 bay).
...on a 640K PC-XT 10MHz , running DOS ...hmm (been awhile) ... DOS 3.3.
It was a couple of years later I got a 286 12MHz w/3MB (1MB internal, and an add-in Evertech card, and was able to switch between several open applications sequentially using a utility called Software Carousel): whoo-hoo!
...you kids these days ...heh.
kmmatney - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
First drive was 120 MB, and my entire operating system and all games added up to about 1100 files. I know the number of files because every time I started DOS SHell it would count up all the files. I have way more files than that just in teh system folder now.Snooper - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
No. The SSD is not 1000x faster than that old hard drive. Not even close. You could probably make some comparison to seek times if you wanted to "justify" that 1000x number, but that would just be marketing BS.But anyway you want to look at it, even a cheap SSD is a BUTT load faster than any HDD, even a "fast" HDD like my velociraptor (sp?). Even at 20x, that is still the difference between 1 hour versus 3 minutes!
Lonyo - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
I think you could justify close to 1000x if you did random reads/writes. They are what kills hard drives. An Intel X-25V is 86x faster than a 600GB Velociraptor at 4k random read (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3756/2010-value-ssd-...GullLars - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
My first drive was a 40MB(?) 5,25" monster in a 386, wich we upgraded to a 200MB wich was so insanely high capacity we never filled more than half of it even though we had 3.11 and i put on all games i got hold of XDGood times...
salb - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
a huge (physically speaking!) 20 mb was my first drive in 1986 on a 8086, very useful to avoid swapping of 5.25' floppy disks, but it was about 500$. Now my 128 Gb laptop is too little, and 256 Gb seems the minimum to me (I've no games, and my music is on a SD card)strikeback03 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
while cleaning out our lab a couple years ago I came across an ancient HDD, was a dual 5.25" form factor and 5MB capacity.marraco - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Sadly, the OS and software requirements grew even more.In 1996 2.1 GB was much more that 64 GB today.
JarredWalton - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Really? DOS 5.0 took up about 5MB of my 40MB drive (1/5). Windows 95 ate around 100MB if memory serves, so that would be 1/20 of a 2.1GB drive. Today a clean Win7 install uses around 5GB, though you need more like a 16GB drive in order for everything to function properly.As for applications, I think things have calmed down quite a bit. Most users probably only use about 15GB of application including the OS; what eats up the space are videos, images, and music.
Anyway, outside of SSDs, hard drive capacities are such that it's seldom a concern.
Belard - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Yet Amiga OS 2.x would boot up with a single floppy and have a full GUI interface. But installation onto a Drive required about 3+mb of space (fonts, and printer drivers - since many printers rand off "EPSON" mode).Belard - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
You're a youngster... 2GB drives came around 1995.My first HD, used - was a 25MB drive for my Amiga 1000. That "M" as in Megabytes.
The SCSI controller itself was about $250+ and the drive was $150 (again, used).
Then I bought my Amiga 3000 (new, but was being replaced by newer models) for $850 and it came with a 50MB HD & 25mhz CPU (original MSRP was $2500). But it had the fastest SCSI controller on the market at that time.
What we get nowadays for $300~500... or full blown notebooks for $600~800 (good ones) - I laugh at people who think these prices are HIGH.
Spending $1000~2000 for a root canal and cap when the Dentist does about 1 hr of work while the rest is assistants, but the whole thing takes about 2hours.
Snooper - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Yeah! When I bought that old Seagate, it was the fastest non SCSI drive out. Biggest too. Most of the drives were still in the 540MB range. That ST32401A was a huge leap at the time.Now that I think about it, I might still have that thing buried in one of my electronics stashes somewhere...
medi01 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
So, is Seagate trying to do Apple like marketing, or you were just trying to sound funny?It's hard to tell, these days...
JohnMD1022 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
lol... in 1986 a 20 meg HD was $2-300neoflux - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
"This primarily hurts in write-heavy scenarios, and the 64GB C300 is still rated for read speeds of up to 355MB/s and write speeds up to 75MB/s. While we wait for 25nm NAND devices to double capacities at current price points, the 64GB C300 is a very tempting option that's available now."How can it do over 300MB/s when the box says it's only SATA II?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Technically there is no such thing as "SATA II" or "SATA III"; those are marketing blips AFAIK. SATA specification 3.0 lists a variety of items, including 6.0Gbps transfer speeds. The old SATA 2.x specification was limited to 3.0Gbps, and the latest revision was 2.6. You can find the full list of 3.0 specs here:http://www.serialata.org/technology/6Gbdetails.asp
As for the C300, I have no idea why the box says SATA II, but it supports 6Gbps links:
http://www.crucial.com/company/media/releases/pres...
TheRealAnvil - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
It's just the wrong image.The image used is for another model.
The 64GB shares the same sticker as the other models in the C300 series
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Crucial sent me the correct image and I have updated the picture. Sorry for the confusion. :-)numberoneoppa - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
They logically done the following math: 355MB/s*8 = 2.84Gb/s, which is within SATA II specifications. Sounds reasonable to me.GullLars - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Actually, SATA uses 2 bits ECC pr 8, so it's 3Gbps/10=300MB/s.The controller of C300 64GB is identical to the 128 and 256GB versions, and unless they limit firmware it will be SATA 6Gbps. The interface is identical for 3 and 6Gbps (and 1,5Gbps for that matter).
Guspaz - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Where's the rest of the review? It wasn't labeled as a "this just in", so I finished the first page and expected to move on to see some benchmarks and other analysis. How does it hold up to other similarly priced drives?jaydee - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Agreed, was looking forward to a full review! The OCZ Agility 60GB is $120 after $10 MIR at newegg right now (I've seen this deal a few times, it's a fairly regular price), I'd be interested to see how these stack up.The Corsair Reactor 64GB is $100 after $30 MIR, but reading the newegg reviews, they have some major issues with the BIOS not recognizing the drives it looks like.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
It has the "News" tag... our new way of doing things. We're still working on separating the news out in a clean fashion, but it's coming. :-)wheat_thins - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
One Please.DukeN - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Price gouging at it's finest I believe.Roland00 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Both Lexar Media and Crucial Technologies are subsidiaries of the parent company Micron Technologiesoborden2 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Man I really want one!!!Impulses - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Nice drive, decent price... But I've already got a 40GB X25-V for my netbook and an 80GB X25-M for my desktop so I'm waiting it out 'till 25nm NAND.I gotta say, a few months ago (around Feb., when I got my X25-V) I wasn't expecting a lot more low-end models to come out before the end of the year (when 25nm flash arrives) but I've been pleasantly surprised. Between models like this and Indillix/OCZ's aggressive pricing/rebates we've actually seen a steady creep on prices over the last 6 months, which is way more than we saw the 6 months prior to that; when everyone was still price gouging like crazy on the X25-V drives.
Competition is a grand thing... A lot of people (particularly laptop users) won't ever jump on anything smaller than 100GB, but we're getting there. I've seen 120GB Indillix drives for as low as $250 after MIR, once drives like that break $20 they'll start moving even faster imo. OEM upgrade choices still seem awfully overpriced tho, SSD aren't gonna catch on big 'till the OEMs start pricing them better as built-in options (and 'till they start offering better SSD options to begin with).
crimson117 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
What's the best way to utilize a 30gb or 40gb boot/system drive?The OS has to be on there, of course.
What sort of programs should you install to it? What should you avoid?
Etern205 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Looks like the photos shoot has been changed since this morning I've remembered it was in a white packaging.Etern205 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
nevermind, saw the comments.PAVOB - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Why do security programs do so many writes? Will that not use up very quickly the number of re-writes for this type of memory in SSDs?John Dune - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
what's the deal with these drives, no ACHI mode at all or is it just when you want to flash the firmware? I'm a bit confused as to what and why.Thanks
JMcGrath - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link
I hear everyone talking about 25nm flash but I was under the impression Intel was going to introduce 20 or 22nm in the new G3's later this year...Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, or is this going to be Intel specific?
fteoath64 - Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - link
Sweet, time to get that AMD board with 880 Chipset + 850 SouthBridge. ie USD3 and 6 SATA3 ports!.Let see, SSDboot, 2X HDD500 Raid0, 3 X HDD1TB Raid5. One cool server on Ubuntu Lucid.
jwoolard - Monday, October 18, 2010 - link
I bought this drive.It's very quick,on sataII reads at 280,on sata III reads at 375. Had to buy an Asus Sata III contrtoller card for my P5E,but it installed with no trouble.Linux 10.10 recognized it with no problems and without installing any drivers.I am also new to Linux, so I'll See how it Goes.Paid 135Dollars at NewEgg,20 dollars for controller.It's been a good experience so far.