Intel launches consumer version of its insanely fast Optane SSD

[BadThad]

I remember paying a LOT for 1Gb RAM. and very high prices for parallel SCSI cards and drives to squeeze a few milliseconds off the hard drive access time of a speech recognition system. I don't currently need the speed this new SSDs offers but some folks might. Beside, with a windowed case the sleek black looks a lot more hi tech than pretty blue lights.

Back in the old days I paid $500 for a single 4MB module....at the time it was well worth it!

 

[BadThad]

Most people still don't understand that this is a definite upgrade to the user experience, even for users with conventional SATA SSD boot drives. This doubles down on the Intel 750 series NVMe drive, which I've been using for over a year, and still finding new things it does faster, still amazed by it's speed and low latency. Storage is by far the worst bottleneck to the flow of data, much worse than a slow CPU or RAM. The first time you completely realize this is when you first get an SSD and compare it to a conventional hard disk, it's like night and day. Then it becomes a bit more obvious when you upgrade to a PCIe x 4 NVMe drive, like the Samsung 950-960 series or the Intel 750 series. This Optane drive should be another step above that, in terms of latency, read/write IOPS at low Queue depths, and overall user experience. I want one...

Consumer SSD's have been the biggest leap in computer speed in a long, long time. Rotating disk drives are not good for anything other than data storage IMO.

 

[BadThad]

I've never seen an answer to this: I run conventional hard drives in a RAID 1. Can SSD drives be raided or is there another solution they use for drive redundancy?

Yes, you can RAID SSDs. But often times there is little point beyond trying to build a large, single drive in the eyes of the OS. They're so quick, the only speed improvements can really only be observed through benchmarks - some computers don't even have the bandwidth to even handle something like a RAID0 of SSDs. There are also no moving parts, there is less of a chance of failure, and so less of a reason to setup a RAID in a backup configuration.

tl;dr - you can, but the money is probably better spent on an offsite backup service if RAID1 is what you're interested in, and RAID0 is hard to realize human-tangible benefits from when using SSDs.

RAID1 with SSD's is a REQUIREMENT for instrument control PC's at my work. Losing an important instrument to drive failure is the worst thing in the world. I've only had one SSD failure in the past 4 years but without RAID1, it would have been catastrophic.

 

[mbrowne5061]

RAID1 with SSD's is a REQUIREMENT for instrument control PC's at my work. Losing an important instrument to drive failure is the worst thing in the world. I've only had one SSD failure in the past 4 years but without RAID1, it would have been catastrophic.

That is a work policy though (mine has a similar one), not a technical one. If they wanted to - and can - they could implement remote backups of drives. Would be more redundant that way too, since it is possible to cook multiple drives with the same power surge, but harder to cook multiple server farms. But I do get that some computers need to be air gapped for security reasons, so the backup must be done manually (either removable drives or hard copy print offs), or with a RAID1 like you point out.

For the purpose of the average user though, putting SSDs in any kind of a RAID configuration is just silly. Unless you're dealing with really large files (measuring in the several to tens, or even hundreds, of GB), you'll only notice the difference in the benchmark numbers.

 

[Phr3d]

Like -so- many things, speed measurements amount to a race, not necessarily actual benefit, but Knowing that your multi-gig data files are loading, temping and writing at the fastest possible speed is worth it to those that can afford it, as load is a Misery from days past. SSD RAID-10 delivers on that promise, for me. (awaiting a solution for NVM/what have you, in a nice Compact package designed for it - I can dream)
FWIW an'allthat