Re: [tlug] Memory upgrade and CPU bit-width question

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 9:35 AM, Kalin KOZHUHAROV <me.kalin@example.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 4:31 PM, Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com> wrote:
>> On an unrelated point to David's original query, I was looking at
>> portable SSDs recently on a recent visit to Japan.  At Yodobashi
>> Camera, they sold 512 GB ones at these prices:
>>
>> 22990 Lexar
>> 37180 Samsung
>> 72130 Buffalo
>>
>> How can Buffalo's be 3 times the price of Lexar?  Is it "3 times more
>> reliable"?  The wide range in price (at least in this case with
>> portable SSDs) makes me feel there is something I'm still missing
>> about SSDs.   I think the Buffalo was "Made in Japan" whereas the
>> Lexar is "Made in China".  But triple the price?
>>
> Every train has its passengers (or they stop it).
>
> Please note that there are currently only 3 manufacturers of
> hard-drives and they make/made alliances with SSD/memory
> manufacturers: WesternDigital/SanDsik, Seagate/Samsung,
> Toshiba/Fujitsu... And buffalo is mostly doing OEM (and doing it
> good).


I wasn't aware that there were only 3 HDD manufacturers.  Thanks for
mentioning it!


> On a(nother) side-note, if anyone is looking to get decent speed out
> of their recent machine, do not overlook NVMe on M.2 socket:
>
> # smartctl -d scsi -i /dev/nvme0n1 |grep -P 'Product|Capacity'
> Product:              Samsung SSD 950
> User Capacity:        512,110,190,592 bytes [512 GB]
> # hdparm -t /dev/nvme0n1
>
> /dev/nvme0n1:
>  Timing buffered disk reads: 7368 MB in  3.00 seconds = 2455.46 MB/sec
>
> Write speed is a tad slower but around 2GB/s, so no issues. Ah, yeah
> and there is like no seek time for random IO :-)
>
> That pleasure costed me about 5man (so 1$/GB), but hey that is 20-25
> times my good 7K RPM SATA drives!
>
> And since USB3 was mentioned, there are external pen-type SSDs that
> are relatively fast. I currently use a few of SanDisk's SDCZ88-128G
> for about 250MB/s R/W and 1man for 128GB.


Those are impressive timing results!  I forgot to mention that I'm
thinking of using the SSD drive as a backup.  So, in theory, if it
failed it is still "ok" since I have the original.

Anyway, seems recent USB 3.0 SSDs are worth considering as a portable
USB device.  I'm not quite ready to consider having it in a desktop as
one of its internal drives, but maybe some day.

Thanks all for the advice!

Ray