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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
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24 SSD RAID array opens ALL Microsoft Office apps in 0.5 sec!

By | March 10, 2009, 9:06am PDT

Geeks at Samsung took 24 256GB SSD (Solid State Drives) and hooked them together into a monster RAID array. The results are very impressive indeed.

The setup could hit transfer speeds of over 2GBps. In real world terms this translates into:

  • Being able to open ALL Microsoft Office apps in 0.5 seconds
  • Open 53 programs installed on the system in 18 seconds
  • Defrag the entire system in 3 seconds (that said, SSDs and SSD RAID arrays don’t need defragging)
  • Transfer a 700MB ripped DVD in 0.8 seconds

Pretty impressive stuff!

Take a look at the video below for all the action.

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Topics

RAID Array, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Corp., RAID, Storage, Hardware, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

Disclosure

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

All opinions expressed on Hardware 2.0 are those of Adrian Kingsley-Hughes. Every effort is made to ensure that the information posted is accurate. If you have any comments, queries or corrections, please contact Adrian via the email link here. Any possible conflicts of interest will be posted below. [Updated: February 23, 2010] - Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other actual/potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted so far on this blog.

Biography

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology -- whether that be by learning to program, building a PC from a pile of parts, or helping them get the most from their new MP3 player or digital camera.

Adrian has authored/co-authored technical books on a variety of topics, ranging from programming to building and maintaining PCs. His most recent books include "Build the Ultimate Custom PC", "Beginning Programming" and "The PC Doctor's Fix It Yourself Guide". He has also written training manuals that have been used by a number of Fortune 500 companies.

Adrian also runs a popular blog under the name The PC Doctor, where he covers a range of computer-related topics -- from security to repairing and upgrading.

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FusionIO still beats it, and for less money.
Gaius_Maximus 15th Mar 2009
Search youtube for the video where they copy something like 50 dvds from one drive to another in under a minute.
View in thread
0 Votes
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OK ...
Ludovit 10th Mar 2009
How much, and how soon can I get one?

Ludo
0 Votes
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Answer:
Wolfie2K3 11th Mar 2009
An arm, a leg, and both of your family jewels (they're not gonna wait around for your first born)...
0 Votes
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RE: 24 SSD RAID array opens ALL Microsoft Office apps in 0.5 sec!
jteasdal 10th Mar 2009
now if they could only develop a single drive with those kind of speeds, i still want to know what their raid configuartion was, how was everything striped
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RE: 24 SSD RAID array opens ALL Microsoft Office apps in 0.5 sec!
nazarenorodrigues@... 10th Mar 2009
So, what kind of results some Database Test like TPC-C can be improoved?
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You could get even better performance for cheaper...
olePigeon 10th Mar 2009
You could get even better performance for cheaper if they
had used 15000 RPM SAS drives instead of SSD drives.
0 Votes
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15000 RPM drives still have slower seek times
LiquidLearner 10th Mar 2009
since Seek times are practically eliminated on SSDs. An SSD is more than capable of outperforming a 15k SAS drive, the tech just isn't quite there yet.
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No Extra Crud....
VONDRASHEK@... 10th Mar 2009
Hard Comp Is That 2 Gb/s of Real Data thats pertinent. Not Just Some swipe To Be assembled, It'd Make heck Of Workstation & About that Much Molee', Thats HOT.

Signed:PHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART von DRASHEK M.D.
0 Votes
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Illustrating ...
johnfenjackson@... Updated - 11th Mar 2009
... its not so much that the tired old x86 architecture has little life left in it ...

... but that the major players (eg M$ and HP) just don't do any innovative engineering targetted at performance.

RAID was invented in 1989!
What did we get last year?
The HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server.
MediaDumb would be more appropriate.

Guess you can tell Jason P. that you have the disk subsystem for his extreme homebrew PC sorted!
0 Votes
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Impressive BUT Meaningless
no_zd_user_name 11th Mar 2009
nt
0 Votes
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Cool, but useless.
Spiritusindomit@... 11th Mar 2009
If this somehow segue's into a marketable product, I'll be impressed. It's similar to how the memory configuration on a cray works, but a good deal slow due to the interface.
0 Votes
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RE: 24 SSD RAID array opens ALL Microsoft Office apps in 0.5 sec!
angelisnight2000@... Updated - 11th Mar 2009
The cost of the system for the CPUs, Video cards, the SAS Controller used to make the raid, the PSU's, 24 256GB SSD drives (about $700 a piece)and such came in at around $24,000 that is not counting the little stuff like the case and cables and such. That is an estimate though. could be a little less or a little more, depending on where you buy the parts.
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I knew it! So there IS a way to make Windows faster
ksarkies@... 11th Mar 2009
Fish
0 Votes
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Way back in Win-3 days
oldbaritone 12th Mar 2009
the way to make the system scream was to add RAM and disable disk swapping. Then came Win-95 and if you disabled swapping, it wouldn't boot.

Now we've come full circle - all you need is to add an array of RAM disk drives (SSD's) and Windows runs faster again.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

wink
0 Votes
+ -
FusionIO still beats it, and for less money.
Gaius_Maximus 15th Mar 2009
Search youtube for the video where they copy something like 50 dvds from one drive to another in under a minute.

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