swaaye wrote:

The Microdrive results are interesting. It looks like it could be bottlenecked by an interface. HDDs don't usually have such flat performance.

Same drive, including a Hitachi, are featured in one of my YT videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSWCDusmLxg

They are only like 3000 rpm.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Same drive, including a Hitachi, are featured in one of my YT videos: […]
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swaaye wrote:

The Microdrive results are interesting. It looks like it could be bottlenecked by an interface. HDDs don't usually have such flat performance.

Same drive, including a Hitachi, are featured in one of my YT videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSWCDusmLxg

They are only like 3000 rpm.

Looks like the HDTune results are more typical for a HD. ATTO is just testing different aspects now that I think more about it.

Well there is a version of HD Tune for W98. But I haven't had much luck in finding it...

I guess one can just test these drives on a modern PC. Might be the best option. But my thinking was that the chipset, controller, DMA mode and all of that can also make a difference. Because it would be interesting to see if a PCI controller boosts performance and things like that.

For conventional PCI 32-bit @ 33MHz the max theoretical transfer rate is 133MB/s. In practice this drops to about 100MB/s tops in the real world, then even less thru PCI adapter losses.

^ SSD Corsair F40 on 32-bit 33MHz PCI controller in retrocomp.

Same SSD on SATA II in a modern comp:

Way better than CF speeds.

Yep, SSDs are just in another league.

And don't worry too much about your Vertex Turbos being SATA II 300MB/s, as seen above they will be capped at somewhere below 100MB/s tops anyway.

^ OCZ Vertex Turbo 30GB in relatively modern ~2009 comp

For the same reason there is no need for over-provisioning SSDs in retrocomps.

TELVM wrote:

Yep, SSDs are just in another league.

And don't worry too much about your Vertex Turbos being SATA II 300MB/s, as seen above they will be capped at somewhere below 100MB/s tops anyway.

For the same reason there is no need for over-provisioning SSDs in retrocomps.

Correct. I'm using OCZ Vertex 30GB SSDs as well. As said in this thread, they are in another league compared to CF and spinning drives.

No need to spend money on buying top modern SSD drives, second hand first generation drives are more than good enough (and getting very cheap) 😀

I believe small SSD drives will quickly become very undesirable and should be cheap as chips 😀

Keep an eye our for the good brands I guess. Intel is always mentioned as being good, especially the early stuff when others had firmware issues.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I believe small SSD drives will quickly become very undesirable and should be cheap as chips 😀 ...

Indeed, SSD prices are dropping like a rock. Three years ago a 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 cost almost 200€. Today you can get a 256GB Crucial M500 (double the size, more than double the speed) for just 128€. At this rate in the next decade spinners will be as retroish as floppys.

Instead of using a PCI SATA controller, might also be worth re-visiting these cheap IDE <> SATA adapters and get some real-use experience.

TELVM wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I believe small SSD drives will quickly become very undesirable and should be cheap as chips 😀 ...

Indeed, SSD prices are dropping like a rock. Three years ago a 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 cost almost 200€. Today you can get a 256GB Crucial M500 (double the size, more than double the speed) for just 128€. At this rate in the next decade spinners will be as retroish as floppys.

Not until they have the same amount of storage with at least the same price.

I don't see my desktop game drive where I store 1+TB of just steam files (not even counting videos/non-steam games) and my file server which is currently 24+TB using SSD any time soon

But yeah for the majority of people with computers it will be nice to finally see them all on SSD. Then they can drop their computers all they want without issues. (well HD ones anyway).

Sorry maybe I wasn't clear enough. I meant that SMALL capacity SSD drives are / will quickly become undesirable. When people build new computers and go for a SSD, they usually get 120 GB minimum, but most go with a 250GB or maybe even higher. Over here you are only looking at around A$200 for a 250GB drive.

Drives with 32 or 64 capacities are already harder to find and will be quickly impossible to buy. So these will be available for little money just like small capacity USB flash drives for example.

Here a list of products available from a popular shop in Australia:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page … 2_909&vk_sort=1

Only three drives with capacities under 120GB.

The good news is that we aren't limited to small capacities. When you use a storage controller with its own BIOS, you can use any size as long as you keep the partition within limits. My recommendation is to stick with a single 30GB FAT32 partition for a Windows 98/DOS hybrid machine.

DosFreak wrote:

my file server which is currently 24+TB

Jeezes... You ripping Blu-Rays or something? That's a buttload of storage..

DosFreak wrote:

Not until they have the same amount of storage with at least the same price.

I don't see my desktop game drive where I store 1+TB of just steam files (not even counting videos/non-steam games) and my file server which is currently 24+TB using SSD any time soon ...

Please remember how, back then when dinos ruled the earth, spinners were once also slightly expensive per unit of capacity 😁 :

^ $350,000 per GB 🤣

And yet time passed, technology advanced, prices dropped, and now you can have 25TB of spinners without expending 9 billions of bucks 😀 .

New 2.5/3.5" drive bay is working great and these OCZ Vertex Turbo SSDs are much better!

Beautiful!

Heading to the post office later. Hoping that my new drive bay has also arrived!

Just for laughs 🤣 , the obscenely insane paces that can be achieved RAM caching a fast SSD:

BTW Artex, a tip to keep performance degradation at bay and maintain those OCZ Vertex Turbos in good health onboard vintage comps.

No Windows previous to Se7en supports TRIM. And lack of TRIM is bad medicine in the long term for SSDs.

However there are applications that allow manually sending the TRIM command to the SSD, the OCZ one is OCZ Toolbox.

This application runs in Win XP SP3 (but not in anything previous), and can manually send the TRIM command directly to the SSD controller (even though XP doesn't support TRIM).

We should use this button from time to time to optimize the SSD, much like we defrag spinners from time to time (BTW we must NEVER EVER defrag a SSD, djudju).

'Ancient' OCZ Vertex Turbos may need a firmware upgrade beforehand, if I recall correctly early firmwares didn't support TRIM.

That tool is handy to have!

Just eject the drive and once in a while run it. Too easy 😀

A question related to W98 storage, but maybe not worth opening another thread.

Do you guys also use SATA optical drives?

I have this issue with them not showing up in Windows. Fine under DOS, but for some reason after installing W95 or 98SE no show. I tried finding W98 drivers for the controller but didn't have much luck yet.

I'm hoping that there will be a CD emulator like the one for floppies 😀 One that can do BIN / CUE and play Audio CD tracks 🤣

TELVM wrote:

BTW Artex, a tip to keep performance degradation at bay and maintain those OCZ Vertex Turbos in good health onboard vintage comps.

To my surprise, NewEgg took both of these drives back and agreed to a full refund vs. an exchange for more of the same issues. For now, I'm happily chugging along with my SATA 2.5" drive and I'll prolly keep it that way for a while.