[Leaplist] Benchmarks of mini-PCIe, not SATA, NAND EEPROM (flash/SSD) drives? -- WAS: MicroSuck and Worst Buy

[Bryan J. Smith]

BS wrote:  
> My over year old personal laptop is a Best Buy-only Gateway P-7811FX,
> a model configuration solely sold at Best Buy at a loss.  Gateway
> doesn't support it and I have to go to Geek Squad if I have an issue.
> I haven't had an issue because I run Linux.
The day after I sent this my 5100AGN wireless stopped working.  I'm
going to verify whether it's the switch or the mini-PCIe card shortly,
although I'm considering just getting an WLAN ExpressCard.

Why?

I'm thinking of putting in a 64GB mini-PCIe NAND EEPROM
(Flash/SSD) to complement my dual 2.5" drives, instead of taking
up a SATA bay.  Virtually all commodity SATA channels are
connected via a single (x1) PCIe channel, and so are virtually all
mini-PCIe and ExpressCard.  So it really doesn't matter.

I'm looking at 64GB which would give me 16GB for Vista ReadyBoost,
16GB for / (fairly static) and 32GB for /usr (virtually always static).
Swap, /tmp, /var and data filesystems would be on disk.  I'm not going
to be booting off of it, so that's not a concern either.  My boot device
would continue to be the first 2.5" SATA hard disk.

But what I'm having a great difficult time doing is finding any
benchmarks of mini-PCIe MLC NAND EEPROM devices.  Virtually all
are going to be MLC because mini-PCIe is quite small.  And even
SATA MLC (let alone SLC) NAND EEPROM devices vary wildly in
performance at various tasks.

E.g., Anand's recent study ...
Sequent:  http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=21
Random:  http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=22

Again, in my setup, I'm going to be reading and avoiding writes (assuming
Vista ReadyBoost isn't stupid, and I know Linux won't be with noatime and
other tweaks for / and /usr).  So even the worst performers should do well
over any disk at random (although I do love how people confuse and mix
the Intel X25-M and X25-E, when they are completely different designs).

I'm not really worried about power consumption, the GeForce Go 9800M
GTS kills that more than anything.  Ironically as MLC NAND EEPROM
densities are increasing, 2.5" disks are decreasing their power consumption
(let alone if you get a single platter unit), although the time seeking spent
seeking should be less with NAND EEPROM.  Which will help keep disks
idle as well, which makes the combination ideal in my book.

.  So the best read
performance is ideal.  




 -- 
Bryan J  Smith           Professional, Technical Annoyance 
Linked Profile:         http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith 
---------------------------------------------------------- 
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controlled distribution channels of forced bundle and lock


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