Solid state drive SLC or MLC?

[Blu]

I read where their are different types of solid state hard drives, SLC and MLC. Are they both good for music playback or is one better than the other?

 

Chris, what type was used at the symposium?

 

Also where are the write ups from the symposium stored?

All the best.

 

[silverlight]

This is a good read on the state of SSD, and a recent update article:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3605

 

Bottom line, probably can't go wrong with the new Intel x25 2nd gen's. they plan to provide a firmware update to partially resolve the key shortcoming of SSD technology (for Windows, unclear what Apple will do in the next OS). Also their performance is excellent.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Blu - So far I only use SLC drives because I like the underlying technology much better. I am not sure if there is a difference in sound or performance for a music server by using either MLC or SLC.

 

At the Symposium all the drives were SLC from Samsung or MTron.

 

I installed a new SLC SSD in my MacBook Pro yesterday. It's a MemoRight GT 64 GB drive. Great performance on all the real world stats. SSDs can be just like audio components. Don't let the higher numbers fool you without doing some solid research. Random IOPS is a good stat to check Some of the others can be misleading.

 

The Symposium write ups from users are on the forum. Reviews from the press are forthcoming and I will link to them as soon as they are published. One may be in print so it will be hard to link to but I'll let everyone know.

 

My write up is almost complete. It will be a little different from a typical review but will contain a lot of information as well as a different perspective on the event. It's kind of hard to review my own event without too much bias :~)

 

 

 

 

 

[Blu]

Thanks silverlight for the link to the technical information, it outlined some good info I didn't know about solid state drives, and highlights that it is still early days.

 

[Blu]

for the symposium, it certainly highlighted a lot of cutting edge info, which is useful for us in getting our own systems together, I look forward to your write up. I found the user comments on the symposium in the General Forum.

 

[Vincent Borrelli]

You can pick up a used MTRON Pro 7500 SLC SATA2 SSD on eBay fairly easily (or the 7000 series for SATA1)... since the OS and apps take up only about 5GB on my Mac G5 music server, I picked up a used 16GB SLC drive for about $40. There is a 3.5" drive listed now, but 2.5" drives are also listed from time to time. Since the SLC drives are so reliable, I have no problem with a used drive (although I would not do the same with a spinning disk drive). It's really really fast and never a problem.