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SanDisk CEO blames its SSD performance woes on Windows Vista

Solid state disk (SSD) news has been coming in fast during the past few weeks.  Most of the big revelations have been at the low-end of the SSD market with multi-level cell (MLC) based products, but single-level cell (SLC) based products have had their fair share of coverage as well.

Despite the hype surrounding the promising technology, SanDisk is placing blame on Windows Vista for not providing enough of a speed boost when using SSDs. SanDisk CEO Eli Harari went so far as to say that Vista is the reason why SanDisk is being left behind by competing solutions.

"We have very good internal controller technology, as you know...That said, I'd say that we are now behind because we did not fully understand, frankly, the limitations in the Vista environment," explained Harari. "As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk."

"The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls," Harari added. "Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we'll start sampling end of this year, early next year."

Those comments are quite a departure from SanDisk's own press release from mid-2007 regarding its SSD performance in Windows Vista:

SanDisk Corporation today announced that the Microsoft Windows Hardware Qualification Lab (WHQL) has certified the new SanDisk 1.8-inch UATA solid state drive (SSD), which is being used as a substitute for hard drives in selected laptop computers. The product also earned a high score on the Windows Experience Index, indicating that it is suited to a variety of Microsoft Windows Vista applications .

Additionally, the SanDisk UATA SSD scored 5.4 out of 5.9 when tested with the Windows Experience Index utility, a new feature in Windows Vista. The results indicate that the new Windows Vista operating system will run optimally when installed on the SanDisk SSD.

It is quite true that SanDisk's SSD are woefully subpar in performance when running Windows Vista. Numerous benchmarks from around the web have shown SanDisk SSDs getting outpaced by the competition.

In fact, it's not uncommon to see SanDisk SSDs rank last in testing in almost every benchmark and by a large margin -- even in Windows XP. Recent testing showed that MSI's Wind netbook was no faster with a SanDisk SATA 5000 SSD than with the standard 80GB HDD -- an Eee PC 1000h featuring similar specifications was significantly faster with a competing SSD from Samsung.

While Vista may be a performance inhibitor compared to Windows XP for SSDs, it appears that most new, current-generation SSDs are having no problems performing well with the operating system. The problem appears to be SanDisk's low reads and writes (67 MB/sec and 50 MB/sec respectively) compared to the competition (i.e., OCZ’s new Core Series SSDs which clock in at 120 to 143 MB/sec for reads and 80 to 93 MB/sec for writes).

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I also blame Vista...
By 67STANG on 7/22/2008 11:30:54 AM , Rating: 5
for the power going out at my office last week and for my dog running away.

Listen, I'm no fan of Vista by any means, but everyone blaming everything on Vista is getting a bit old.




RE: I also blame Vista...
By Radnor on 7/22/2008 11:39:05 AM , Rating: 2
Old as the Crysis Jokes.

Honestly, toms hardware already showed that a they don't really increase battery life. Only in certain environments. SSDs will take their sweet time to reach the Joe Consumer Environment.

I wouldn't touch one for several reasons. Price per GB is one, decay is another. Really, i do some files hashing and rendering on-the-fly. Still have several raid 0 going strong after 4 years. I doubt SSd would take that punishment. New technology yes, better technology ? we shall see.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By Lonyo on 7/22/2008 11:50:14 AM , Rating: 5
And other comments/breakdowns show THG's article to be nothing more than a complete load of crap.
No, I can't be bothered to link to the specific one I'm thinking of, but if you want to put your faith in THG, a site which showed an SSD with max power draw under load of lower than the mechanical HDD's idle power draw getting lower battery life, then please, go ahead and believe their numbers.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By DASQ on 7/22/2008 1:02:14 PM , Rating: 2
Funny how they've now deleted all the older power consumption graphs... and stubbornly refuse to change their stance from 'SSD power savings is a hoax!!!'


RE: I also blame Vista...
By livelouddiefast on 7/22/2008 1:38:09 PM , Rating: 5
didn't they post a partial retraction article?

new article- http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hard-drive... - summed up, some ssds are great with batteries. some suck.

old article- http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-batter... - ssds are the battery devil


RE: I also blame Vista...
By jonmcc33 on 7/22/2008 2:55:46 PM , Rating: 5
Anyone that even visits THG is wasting their time.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By Clauzii on 7/22/2008 6:20:32 PM , Rating: 2
Not if You are in a bad mood. I can go there and leave ROFLed up :)


RE: I also blame Vista...
By B3an on 7/22/2008 11:39:24 AM , Rating: 5
Exactly. Other SSD makers can make well performing SSD's. SanDisk just have a poor product that cannot compete so are blaming Vista.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By Souka on 7/22/2008 2:15:35 PM , Rating: 3
just too funny... "SanDisk SSDs rank last in testing in almost every benchmark and by a large margin -- even in Windows XP"

So let's blame XP too....

*sigh*


RE: I also blame Vista...
By jonmcc33 on 7/22/2008 2:57:47 PM , Rating: 4
Just do like Jason Mick and blame Microsoft!


RE: I also blame Vista...
By Flunk on 7/22/2008 5:53:24 PM , Rating: 2
Then they have the problem explaining away their poor Linux performance as well. I think it's clear where the problem is.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By FITCamaro on 7/22/2008 12:21:02 PM , Rating: 5
Beat me to it.

"Its not our fault our products suck compared to the competition, its Vista's fault."

That said probably OSes do need to be optimized to deal with SSDs. But when other SSDs are performing better than yours, I don't see how you can blame the OS. You have to make your product work with the Microsoft's OS, not the other way around.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By Lerianis on 7/22/2008 2:57:04 PM , Rating: 1
What kind of optimization would they have to do, in all honesty? Unless you are doing extreme amounts of downloading off the internet (as I do), there should be nothing that changes on a hard drive that frequently (unless you are stupid and haven't disabled the swap/page file).

That is the biggest bit of advice I give to my friends who are looking at SSD's: DISABLE THE PAGE FILE AND UPGRADE YOUR MEMORY!
Because once you do that, the benefits of an SSD go up extremely.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By ChronoReverse on 7/22/2008 4:18:46 PM , Rating: 4
That's pretty worthless advice right there.

Disabling the Page File does not in fact stop paging to the hard drive nor is there any benefit to doing to if you had enough RAM in the first place.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By jketzetera on 7/22/2008 9:29:15 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
That's pretty worthless advice right there.


If you are going to categorically dismiss someones advice you better have a good factual grounds for it, which you do not have.

quote:
Disabling the Page File does not in fact stop paging to the hard drive


That is incorrect. If you disable the Page File, the OS will not page memory to disk. It will create a "virtual" page file in RAM though.

quote:
nor is there any benefit to doing to if you had enough RAM in the first place.


That is also incorrect. In a situation where your RAM is significantly larger than your usual memory usage, disabling the page file will enable you to instantly switch between minimized applications, something that you are unable to do with a page file even if you have lots of unused memory.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By mikefarinha on 7/23/2008 12:38:05 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
That is also incorrect. In a situation where your RAM is significantly larger than your usual memory usage, disabling the page file will enable you to instantly switch between minimized applications, something that you are unable to do with a page file even if you have lots of unused memory.


This used to be a big deal back in the pre WinXP days, however Microsoft made the swapping and virtual memory efficient enough that there is no performance loss when using a swap file, even if you have 2GB+ of RAM.

This is simply internet lore that, for some reason, refuses to die. I have fruitlessly looked for performance comparisons to prove me wrong. I'm tired of this tidbit of 'advice' that keeps popping up.

Please, prove me wrong!


RE: I also blame Vista...
By mindless1 on 7/23/2008 3:28:22 PM , Rating: 2
You are clearly wrong. No matter how efficient it is or ever will be, it is still something additional being done, taking a time period, and resources.

Perhaps what you meant was that in some kinds of usage, the different can't be perceived by the user, and in a limited artificial benchmark scenario which only tests one application AFTER the paging activity, you won't see the difference because it wasn't something the benchmark was designed, or able, to test.

I don't understand how you can't see this, that accessing a page file takes longer than not accessing it, no matter how fast it does. SSD and mechanical hard drives are much slower than main memory, this shouldn't need to be written. The main issue is only that you have to have enough physical memory to allocate if the page file is diabled, in which case there is no sense at all in keeping it enabled except that someone with dynamic use of a PC may not be able to fully estimate what that peak memory usage would be ahead of time.

Be tired, rest a bit, then get up the energy to intelligently think about what the system is doing and how you are trying to measure it. I am not claiming a typical usage pattern will have a large performance increase but technically, there is an increase w/o paging to disk and it can be significant depending on what is being paged out, especially other application code or data because it is a multi-tasking OS environment.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By ChronoReverse on 7/23/2008 6:30:31 PM , Rating: 2
The whole point is that with a modern operating system, data doesn't get paged for no reason.

The only time things are paged is if the RAM is needed or if the data is specifically marked to be paged out.

In the first case, if paging isn't performed, the program you're trying to run that needs the memory simply fails.

In the latter case, it's intended behavior. Thus, if the program is doing a lot of paging despite RAM being available, the program itself is culprit and not Windows.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By mindless1 on 7/24/2008 2:02:39 AM , Rating: 2
IN a modern operating system, the designer makes a best guess about what should be done with artificial logic, because they dont' actually know what you will do next!

At best it is a very minimal performance penalty, and drive access, but at worst it does slow down the system.

Yes, things are paged out if ram is needed, I already wrote previously that a precondition was having ample ram. Data marked to be paged though is not done in a universally effective manner. The fact is, I and many (everyone?) other people can easily see the reality that you can have over a GB of free unused memory and still significant pagefile activity. There is no denying the flaw in the logic when this happens, nor the performance benefit when you prevent this constant paging.

You write "it's indended" but it's only intended by ignorant assumption based logic that the OS does not know what you are going to do next, it is taking the most conservative action of paging more than you might need paged, which again is a performance hit.

No, the program is not ever the culprit if there is paging with ram being available. The program does not make virtual memory calls, it only allocates an amount and the OS does handle where this allocation is reserved.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By eldakka on 7/24/2008 4:48:12 AM , Rating: 2
Most modern OSes (Windows, Solaris, AIX, MacOS, Linux, BSD etc etc) will pre-emptively page out 'unused' data in memory.

If some app/whatever hasn't been used for a preiod of time (based on current amount of free RAM, used RAM, age of the data in memory, disk activity (larger disk cache if lots of disk I/O) etc etc).

Therefore they WILL page out to disk stuff even if there is plenty of free memory because it doesn't know what you are going to do next.

The OS doesn't know if you will fire up Crysis or (shiver) Lotus Notes or the GIMP with a huge image in it or a huge database or watch some HD porn^H^H^H^H (*cough*) family movie or whatever. Therefore it doesn't know if 100MB free RAM is adequate, or if you need 4GB of RAM for what you may be planning to do next. Therefore if it thinks you aren't using some in-memory data it will swap it out depending on lots of variables/ratios etc.

And, historically, Windows has been more agressive at this than most other OSes, Windows XP and 2K at least, were really annoying. I have a 4GB RAM system, with my pagefile on I'd have 1GB memory in use by applications, and something like a GB for file caching and it'd be using a 500MB pagefile....with 2GB of free RAM.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By mikefarinha on 7/25/2008 1:31:57 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
You are clearly wrong.


Sheesh... you're simple logic.

quote:
you won't see the difference because it wasn't something the benchmark was designed, or able, to test.


If it cannot be tested then how can a gain in performance be declared? It's a placebo effect.

quote:
I don't understand how you can't see this, that accessing a page file takes longer than not accessing it, no matter how fast it does.


The page file is only accessed when you run out of memory, if you have enough memory to not need a paging file then the paging file won't be accessed and no 'swapping' will occur. Thus no HDD access performance penalty.

Also, when programs are launched and running, memory first has to be allocated before it is used. So if you have a bunch of programs running, you'll have more memory allocated than is being used, each program will have a little extra set aside. So theoretically you can run out of memory even though not all of it is being used.

So you risk the chance of getting 'out of memory errors' in order to NOT get any performance increase.

quote:
Be tired, rest a bit, then get up the energy to intelligently think about what the system is doing and how you are trying to measure it.


Oh please...

I used to be a proponent of optimizing the swapfile, then I got a clue.

I used to do all the tricks, fixed sized swapfile. Placing it on a different partition. Removing the swapfile.

The only effect I ever got was out of memory errors.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By mindless1 on 7/26/2008 7:17:18 PM , Rating: 2
False. The page file is not only accessed after you run out of memory, you can see it yourself in Task Manager!

Yes you do have a chance of running out of memory with it disabled, that would indeed be a reason not to disable it IF you don't know how much memory you need, but it does not bare on the conversation which was the performance benefit.

You want to assume you know something but have simply never bothered to use or test a system for the benefit. I already described one way to see the difference, when you have a large app running then exit it, having to wait for the paging back into main memory. With pagefile disabled this waiting is gone.

It's very easy to see the effect, the only remaining issue is that when you tried to do it you didn't have enough memory in the system, but systems support more memory today and it is cheaper as well. Think about why there is/was virtual memory, for cases where there isn't enough real memory. Today you can have enough real memory, inexpensively, and still observe pagefile activity. Preventing addt'l activity will always be faster.

You basically drew the wrong conclusion from the evidence, were unable to realize the benefit but others do.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By michaelheath on 7/22/2008 5:12:28 PM , Rating: 2
I don't think the OS needs optimization, or SSD hard drives for that matter aside from firmware updates that would improve general performance, much like a BIOS/firmware update would help performance of a motherboard or a graphics card.

AnandTech did a HDD swap-out when they tested the MacBook Air, and the real-world speed of application loading and file access improved immediately without any OS or firmware update of any sort (other app benchmarks performed better on the magnetic HDD, but not by much):

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3226

Apple doesn't release any Air-specific OS updates, and no OS update came about when the Air released, so we know the performance improvement doesn't come from software optimization.

Also worth consideration is TechReport's recent notebook HDD shootout, which included three SSD hard drives:

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15079

While the platform used for testing is rather old (Intel 955x/ICH7R with Windows XP SP2), what can be derived from their testing is even with an system design prior to the production of SSD hard drives immediate performance gains can be seen with a good SSD drive. The only SSD drive that failed to impress was the Super Talent, but it cost 1/3 to manufacture and never claimed the same performance of the OCZ or Samsung drives tested (but a firmware update allegedly will improve performance, but that update has to be done at the factory).

SanDisk probably needs to spend time testing and updating their products or researching faster flash-memory solutions to use for their drives rather than wasting time pointing fingers. I'm no Microsoft fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I know corporate BS when I see it.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By mindless1 on 7/23/2008 3:37:25 PM , Rating: 3
The OS does need optimization, because MS has allowed incessant, unnecessary writing to disk by design.

Have you ever seen a computer running DOS? This is a crude example, but nevertheless you can load up an application and have zero writes to the hard drive until the end of time, if that application itself isn't trying to do so. Even on a win95 system if it's set up for it, you can have the main OS hard drive go to sleep and stay asleep for quite a while. Do you see that happening with Vista? What is Vista doing instead? Things like prefetching to try to combat the large overhead of a huge code base.

It's not that I'm trying to place blame on this, the codebase was going to grow. It was a design and philosophy choice that didn't seem as important then once diverging down that path under the same model the disk I/O just kept increasing more than they ever could have realized when they first decided on the OS design perpetuated since pre-NT5 code.

Some will want the writing windows allows, or causes, and others won't. This heavy write condition and design was based around an idea that you won't wear out a drive in a reasonable amount of time, and that there isn't any retail desktop OS competition so there is some latitude in MS' choices of how much they need to cater to demands of a smaller subset of people who dislike this aspect of windows versus the push to keep adding more features in the most expedient and cost effective way they can.

To drastically change from their current strategy would cost a fair amount in recoding and research. It may happen eventually but not as fast as SSD will be adopted.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By wvh on 7/22/2008 8:31:04 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
You have to make your product work with the Microsoft's OS, not the other way around.


Hardware that has to learn to work with (high-level) software? No, THAT's the wrong way around.

That said, there are a lot of challenges for all operating systems to adapt to all these new technologies that didn't exist when the operating systems were thought out.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By walk2k on 7/22/2008 12:28:12 PM , Rating: 5
Vista slept with my girlfriend, kicked my dog, erased my iPod, dinged my Lexus and didn't even leave a note.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By FITCamaro on 7/22/2008 12:53:42 PM , Rating: 4
Oh. Sorry. That was me with your girlfriend. Was wearing a Vista t-shirt that day. Sorry for the confusion.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By Sulphademus on 7/22/2008 1:58:51 PM , Rating: 5
Vista Enterprise doesnt care about black people!

Also, Vista Home Premium is the cause of global warming.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By phxfreddy on 7/23/2008 12:02:39 AM , Rating: 1
I hate vista. Sorry....but I do. I love Bill Gates. I think he's cool. I do not think MS played unfair for the largest part.

But Vista.....yuk. Lots of money for something that does nothing additional for me.


RE: I also blame Vista...
By rudolphna on 7/23/2008 12:39:53 AM , Rating: 3
Vista wrecked my car, caused gas to skyrocket, supports terrorism, elected bush president (no offense to any bush supporters i just dont like him :) )


RE: I also blame Vista...
By mlau on 7/23/2008 2:15:05 AM , Rating: 2
He's not so wrong. Flash media require different write strategies (and in essence, a filesystem which knows about wear levelling, bad blocks, ...). For years now flash media producers have implemented
workarounds for certain file systems to ease wear of certain areas (the FAT for example is located somewhere in the first sector, and flash media try to spread the majority of writes to these places around
the whole chip).

Ironically, the linux and BSD people already have flash-aware filesystems but cannot take advantage of them on flash media because ssd makers don't expose the low-level interface because windows wouldn't know how to handle it.


Let me get this straight
By HaZaRd2K6 on 7/22/2008 11:38:04 AM , Rating: 5
SanDisk is blaming Microsoft for its own lackluster performance? So why don't we hear any other SSD manufacturers crying foul?

Sounds like a case of sour grapes to me.




RE: Let me get this straight
By Polynikes on 7/22/2008 11:40:37 AM , Rating: 2
Yep. If their SSDs run like crap in XP, too, you know it's their fault.


RE: Let me get this straight
By lifeblood on 7/22/08, Rating: 0
RE: Let me get this straight
By FITCamaro on 7/22/2008 12:22:53 PM , Rating: 2
Why would you be willing to believe Vista was to blame when every other SSD company isn't complaining about Vista causing a problem? Is everyone else just too stupid to realize it?


RE: Let me get this straight
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/22/2008 12:32:52 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
Why would you be willing to believe Vista was to blame when every other SSD company isn't complaining about Vista causing a problem?

Because he, like many, believes Vista to be the source of all problems.


RE: Let me get this straight
By kc77 on 7/22/08, Rating: 0
RE: Let me get this straight
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/22/2008 1:28:10 PM , Rating: 2
I don't recall them ever saying it was. Vista is designed with usability, security, and maintainability. Security was top on the list though.


RE: Let me get this straight
By kc77 on 7/22/2008 3:59:17 PM , Rating: 1
So when you buy a product you don't expect reasonable performance?


RE: Let me get this straight
By TomZ on 7/22/2008 4:46:12 PM , Rating: 2
Vista performance is fine. In my experience, Vista runs as fast as XP on machines where I've run both OSs. The only caveat is when you have 512MB or less of RAM, then Vista does slow down more than XP does.


RE: Let me get this straight
By ChronoReverse on 7/22/2008 5:07:50 PM , Rating: 2
Make that 1GB or less since you can't normally run Vista on a machine with less than 512MB


RE: Let me get this straight
By kc77 on 7/23/2008 3:42:31 AM , Rating: 2
Vista is slower than XP up to 2GB it is only at that level where Vista starts to pull ahead. Anything lower than that XP is faster.

Anyway I'm not saying that Sandisk is in the clear on this... not at all. I was responding to the question of why look to Vista.


RE: Let me get this straight
By ChronoReverse on 7/23/2008 6:32:24 PM , Rating: 2
And keep in mind that 2GB with Vista is equivalent to 256MB with XP.

Try using XP with 64MB (minimum) and see how fast it runs then. It certainly wouldn't be much quicker than Vista with 512MB.


RE: Let me get this straight
By kc77 on 7/23/2008 7:42:54 PM , Rating: 2
I know. That's the point. That's a lot of memory for performance that's just acceptable. You can run your basic server with that much memory without problem at all.

Also I've made this point elsewhere too, that 64MB requirement was a minimum that few computers shipped with. By the time Win 2000 came out just about everyone was running at least 128 MB. So when Win XP followed it's minimum was a spec that few people experienced. This is what made the Vista experience so poor.


RE: Let me get this straight
By jabber on 7/24/2008 7:31:04 AM , Rating: 3
Utter cobblers.

Vista runs very well with 2Gb of ram whislt XP would drag with 256mb.

I get excellent performance with 'just' 2Gb of ram on Vista 64bit. COD4/BF2 etc. run very smoothly indeed.

Often or not its not the OS or the hardware thats at fault for poor application performance. Its the fact that most users do not know how to look after, or configure a PC properly and populate their systems with resource hogging junk.

Hardware/software manufacturers should be named and shamed with the dreadful software they get less than clued up users to install for hardare such as cameras, printers, scanners etc. Do all these apps also need updater apps that all sit there from Start up pinging the web? No.

I get so tired of being handed laptops etc. with 40+ apps listed in the MSCONFIG list. The owner asks if its a problem and I state "well I only have 4 in my list!"

HP/Kodak/Adobe/Apple/Realtek/Real/Dell/Norton etc. etc. I'm looking at you!


RE: Let me get this straight
By kc77 on 7/24/2008 9:42:25 AM , Rating: 2
LOL. I agree the manufacturers need to stop installing all of their crap, a certain anti-virus program comes to mind.


RE: Let me get this straight
By FITCamaro on 7/22/2008 8:22:50 PM , Rating: 2
Vista boots faster than XP did for me.


RE: Let me get this straight
By Ratinator on 7/22/2008 1:47:41 PM , Rating: 3
You mean favors like actually releasing it on time and catching most hardware companies off balance because they didn't expect it to be released on time. Favors like hardware vendors writing crappy drivers(Creative) and then everyone complaining its Vista.


RE: Let me get this straight
By kc77 on 7/23/2008 8:40:50 PM , Rating: 2
Huh??? Just how thick are your rose colored glasses? Vista didn't ship on time at all. Are you serious?? MS hasn't made an OS date in ages. Vistas problems far outstrip it's drivers for video cards. Although they are pretty bad. You've got file transfer problems that many patches were issued to fix. You got printer directjet problems on Win 2K networks.

I work in IT so if you think that you are gonna tell me it either released on time when I have a MSDN subscription and actually saw the release dates change, or blame Vista's issues on "the drivers" you really are going down a course I would urge you to veer from.

Like I've said before Sandisk is wrong on this one but it doesn't mean that Vista is just peachy keen either.


RE: Let me get this straight
By Arribajuan on 7/22/2008 9:58:14 PM , Rating: 2
The worst part of the situation is that companies believe that clients are stupid enough to get away with this kind of excuses.

Crappy product = not our fault, probably vista.

While this is probably true for the average joe, prices are not yet there. The real customers for this disks right now are enthusiasts which are a bit more informed.

Shame on Sandisk


RE: Let me get this straight
By FITCamaro on 7/23/2008 6:07:59 AM , Rating: 2
The average consumer is stupid enough.

Why do you think they're buying these retarded Mac commercials?


How do you optimize for the non-existent?
By epobirs on 7/22/2008 12:48:23 PM , Rating: 5
Fascinating. Rather than own up to the inadequacies of his product compared to the competition, he instead chooses to blame an operating system for not being optimized for a product that had effectively zero market presence when the OS was launched.

Further, since the product in question emulates a conventional hard drive with the OS none the wiser, how could the OS possibly be optimized for that product? Meanwhile, this same OS has support for using flash memory in ways not found elsewhere and thus has contributed sales to any flash maker's bottom line in a way no other OS before could.

If Sandisk's SSDs are deficient, Vista users should likewise look elsewhere for Superfetch supporting products.




By djc208 on 7/23/2008 7:41:01 AM , Rating: 2
+1

Exactly! How does a company devlop a product that will primarily be used with Windows machines and not devlop it for the latest Windows OS?

Vista has been around long enough that either you were deficient in developing for the software (which is what Microsoft leveled at most software companies), or you developed the product so long ago Vista wasn't a consideration in which case you're long overdue for an upgrade and blaming Vista for why your Model T can't compete with everyone elses modern cars.


By Steve Guilliot on 7/22/2008 1:25:34 PM , Rating: 5
Exactly when was Vista supposed to be optimized for SSDs? In 2001, I suppose when Vista started development. Or perhaps even 2006, when Vista went gold. Yeah, right, Microsoft should have known.

SSDs as primary storage are new enough that I doubt there is an OS on the planet that's "optimized" for SSD. Not MacOS, not XP, not Linux, not Vista, etc..

Sad fact that SanDisk has a boob for a CEO.




All Vista's Fault
By ThatNewGuy on 7/22/2008 12:26:52 PM , Rating: 5
Vista caused my dog to die and is the reason for Global Warming.




RE: All Vista's Fault
By phu5ion on 7/22/08, Rating: -1
RE: All Vista's Fault
By FITCamaro on 7/22/08, Rating: 0
Write Block Size
By Slaimus on 7/22/2008 7:18:31 PM , Rating: 2
I know from using Sandisk's SD cards that they take very long to refresh after a write operation. The only way to get good performance is to write in big chunks.

Sandisk maybe was expecting MS to put in some code to write in bigger chunks to SSDs into Vista. I think they could, in the mean time, to put some write buffers on the device like a hard drive, so they can do fewer, bigger writes.




RE: Write Block Size
By epobirs on 7/23/2008 2:39:44 AM , Rating: 2
But first Vista would need to know it was talking to an SSD rather than a spindle of spinning platters. AFAIK, there is no standard for conveying that detail to the OS.

Sandisk could write a driver for XP and Vista that recognizes their drives by ID string but that would be Sandisk's job, not Microsoft's.


So SanDisk is having problems
By SilthDraeth on 7/22/2008 11:39:44 AM , Rating: 3
Why can't they just state: "We failed to design our products on par with our competition and are working diligently to make sure our next generation product outperforms out competition."




By dwalton on 7/22/2008 12:19:37 PM , Rating: 2
I had no ideal that SDD's adoption of any SSD manufacturer fell under the responsibility of MS.

Oohh right it doesn't.




bad press for them
By tastyratz on 7/22/2008 12:52:59 PM , Rating: 2
Man up Sandisk. Releasing a statement like this is bad press for you. Give me a break.

Some of vista blames you for performance on certain machines only ms is right (except for opposites day apparently)




VISTA DIDN'T SEE IT COMING
By DeepBlue1975 on 7/22/2008 2:36:27 PM , Rating: 2
My car is getting slower when doing 0-60.

This happens since the day I left a MS Windows Vista OS BOX laying on the back seat.

Now I guess I'll have to increase the RAM in my ECU and maybe even overclock my gasoline's octane number to make it perform like it did before.

Hell, as the damn box eats so much space, I'm gonna need to throw the auxiliary wheel out of the trunk to have enough space.

Oh, and thanks to Vista I'm getting psychotic, too. If you don't believe me, just read this whole post again.




so?
By omnicronx on 7/22/2008 3:57:04 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
SanDisk CEO Eli Harari went so far as to say that Vista is the reason why SanDisk is being left behind by competing solutions.
So basically what he is saying is that others have figured it out, but since we want to use the same techniques we have been using for 15 years, its their fault...
Sorry sandisk, but unless every manufacturer is having this issue, you guys are the ones to blame.




Tssss
By BruceLeet on 7/22/2008 4:25:32 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
...I'd say that we are now behind because we did not fully understand, frankly, the limitations in the Vista environment,"


And that is where I stopped reading the article, the culprit has been identified.




And how would that work exactly?
By epobirs on 7/22/2008 6:00:26 PM , Rating: 2
How would one optimize an OS for SSD drives as they currently exist? Is there some reliable way to detect whether a drive is a conventional spinning disc vs. a collection of flash chips? If there is, I haven't ever seen mention of it. The only way I could see it being done otherwise would be for the OS to have a database of drive ID strings that is updated frequently.

Even if the OS knows it is an SSD device, what then? The current drives are designed to emulate conventional hard drives so as to fully compatible. What can the OS do differently to extract better performance?




By Fenixgoon on 7/22/2008 7:50:36 PM , Rating: 2
damn you Vista! Maybe I'd have had chance with 64bit, but that tiny 32bit address just doesn't cut it =(

zing =D




By tygrus on 7/23/2008 2:46:49 AM , Rating: 2
The problem is not the max. read/write speed quoted. It's because WinOS likes 4KB blocks and can generate lots of them. To increase the max speed and capacity of SSD, they increased the block size. Only so many pages (blocks) can be used per second for reads and write performance relies on bulk erasure of entire blocks (64-512KB) and re-write it all back again with the small change (4KB write takes same time as 64KB for 1/16th performance).

Great for ideal conditions, slow for real life conditions as used by OS for program loading, page swaps, etc.




By shaunbed on 7/23/2008 7:42:58 AM , Rating: 2
Reserve 80% of available system memory for SSD.

Perform all writes and reads against system memory.
Only hit the SSD when more data can not be cached in system memory. Page memory out of system memory only at system shut down.

Maybe it is Vista's fault for not doing something about this.. They could provide an extreme caching strategy for SSDs given that their capacities are typically so small. Of course, extreme caching can also mean a higher risk for data loss if the system crashes or power is lost. There is a reason for BBUs on RAID arrays.

I just don't see how many SSD optimizations would benefit the majority of the market or consumers. Typically, Vista manages memory use very well. It could use more memory to hide problems with certain SSDs but then it would just have to page more applications users are actually using out (which might decrease overall performance). Of course, if you have a ton of ram, cache away but do realize the potential for data loss when something has been "written" but not really written (to disk).




It's vista's fault....
By Locutus465 on 7/23/2008 2:00:13 PM , Rating: 2
That only sandisc was unable to come up with a controller that provides a significant speed boost? Seriously now, this is just an obvious attempt to play up vista hate in order to cover up for a shoddy implementation... I hope sandisc fixes their issues.




The black and white of it.
By mindless1 on 7/23/2008 3:44:10 PM , Rating: 2
I'm reading comments and being reminded of how much people like to make things black and white instead of seeing the grey.

Yes Sandisk produced an inferior product with inherantly lower performance than competitors. If they could have forseen the kind of access Vista produced at the design stage, they likely would have used a bit different logic and would have had better performance.

Vista does make a system slower using SSD, not just Sandisk's products but the others as well. Is it not designed with performance access to SSD in mind, nor should it have been necessarily because the fact is that when it was released, most PCs didn't have SSD in them!

We could theorize that in an ideal state it would autodetect an SSD and change access patterns in that case, but there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of novel ideas that don't make the cut when it comes to developing an OS, what can be finished and implemented in a timely manner no matter how large the developer's resource pool seems to be. The same can be said of improvements to each successive OS, and someday we can expect to see OS having flash memory access in mind. I mean consumer desktop PC OS.




another chink in the Vista armor...
By Screwballl on 7/22/08, Rating: -1
RE: another chink in the Vista armor...
By Aarnando on 7/22/2008 11:40:54 AM , Rating: 2
This link might be of use to you, Screwball.

http://www.universalclass.com/i/crn/7318.htm


RE: another chink in the Vista armor...
By Screwballl on 7/22/2008 12:47:58 PM , Rating: 2
Who do you think is the teacher there?


By Aarnando on 7/22/2008 1:34:52 PM , Rating: 2
I doubt you'd qualify for a scholarship, but financial aid is available. You have no excuse. Go! Learn the art of humorous writing before you make another post.


RE: another chink in the Vista armor...
By B3an on 7/22/2008 11:42:58 AM , Rating: 1
Who let Screwballl out of his padded cell this time?!?


By Screwballl on 7/22/2008 12:49:57 PM , Rating: 2
I was let out on bad behavior... why do you think she let me out?


RE: another chink in the Vista armor...
By Topweasel on 7/22/2008 12:02:45 PM , Rating: 1
Its not even a Vista thing. How can the O/S be at fault when everyone else is using the same tech and getting better performance. The Fact is their rated speed levels are much lower then everyone else. Even if it was "vista's fault" the fact is everyone else (samsung really) got it right, so really it was Sandisks fault for not designing their hardware for vista instead of designing something and expecting vista to support it.


By Screwballl on 7/22/2008 12:55:15 PM , Rating: 2
I agree... why do you think I posted this originally? Performance sucks with their SSD on any OS, not just Vista, not just windows....

I was just making a joke about these pro-Vista whiners that always post about Vista has nothing wrong with it... ever...


RE: another chink in the Vista armor...
By walk2k on 7/22/2008 12:29:48 PM , Rating: 1
oh wow l33t-speak, I didn't realize it was 1992 again.


RE: another chink in the Vista armor...
By Spectator on 7/22/2008 12:47:12 PM , Rating: 1
Vista is still bloated.

I mean when you boot up vista and it sees that you have a new file. all 4+gig of a DVD. its dumb ass search indexing rocks up and reads the whole4+gig. and any other file that was not there previously.

That is all sht. I suppose its all good to learn how to disable services to make your PC less Bloated :P.

most extreme case i have seen is. trying to install a new driver manually. fooking search indexer got confused and when through a full scan of whole 200+gig on the Drive.. Madness. at least we have Resource Mon. to see what dumb sht vista is doing.

Spectator.


By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/22/2008 1:03:51 PM , Rating: 5
Vista does not index the optical drives unless your dumb ass told it to.


RE: another chink in the Vista armor...
By jonmcc33 on 7/22/2008 1:31:46 PM , Rating: 2
I think he's confused with the Autoplay feature in Windows that also exists in Windows XP. If you insert new removable media it will scan it for contents to give you the option of how to open the data (pictures, movies, music, etc) on the removable media.

Besides the fact that you cannot add optical drives to the Windows Search indexing options. Only physical volumes (hard drives) or folder paths on those volumes can be added.

But go figure that he blames Vista for this. So when it happens after I plug in my external hard drive on my Windows XP system at work I am going to blame Vista too. It's the new trend! JK


By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/22/2008 3:18:02 PM , Rating: 2
Your probably right with the Autoplay assumption.


RE: another chink in the Vista armor...
By walk2k on 7/22/2008 4:05:39 PM , Rating: 2
I think he meant a downloaded 4GB DVD file (FBI knocking down his door in 3...2...) But I don't think it reads every byte of the file, just the name and maybe the header to determine what type of file it is.

I do know that Vista does SOMETHING that caused my HDD to grind constantly. That was when I tried it in beta, maybe they fixed it since then... hell no I don't use Vista because, I already have XP...


By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/22/2008 5:49:22 PM , Rating: 2
Depends where he stuck that file. By default Vista only indexes specific folders mostly in your profile or in program files. Anything outside that requires the regular snail search unless you specifically told it to index everything


By Oobu on 7/22/2008 2:04:05 PM , Rating: 2
And you still sign your posts with your Internet alias!

Oobu.


I like how...
By HinderedHindsight on 7/22/08, Rating: -1
Sandisk, dont take it personally...
By drewsup on 7/22/08, Rating: -1
RE: Sandisk, dont take it personally...
By Jackattak on 7/22/2008 2:19:38 PM , Rating: 1
No one that uses inefficient, old hardware, you mean. I have a brand new computer with all the latest hardware and it runs Vista beautifully. On my outgoing PC (P4 3.2GHz HT, 2GB) Vista ran like a paraplegic dog.

I'd suggest that the majority of gripes regarding Vista stem from those who are either unwilling to or cannot afford to upgrade their hardware to a Vista-acceptable level. Is it a valid point? Perhaps...but personally I wouldn't dog an operating system based on the fact that my insufficient hardware cannot handle it. I would simply stick with an OS that my hardware was capable of handling.

That is all.

Jackattak


RE: Sandisk, dont take it personally...
By Choppedliver on 7/22/2008 2:58:20 PM , Rating: 2
Jesus man, do you consider a P4 3.2Ghz HT with 2GB of RAM old, and inefficient? So that's what, maybe 3 years old at max? Processors haven't advanced that much in 2 years... More cores, more IPC, less Ghz. Nothing stellar. Nothing that would make a 3.2 Ghz HT machine look like a paraplegic dog. Faster yes, but not to the point that Vista should run like shyte.

I don't have Vista, but I would say if Vista truly runs like crap on that kind of hardware then Vista deserves all the flack it gets.


RE: Sandisk, dont take it personally...
By Jackattak on 7/22/2008 3:36:57 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
So that's what, maybe 3 years old at max?


Actually 4. Purchased brand new in 2004 and it was quite the little runner then.

And if you think that multiple core systems (mine is 3.0GHz) aren't much faster than 3.2GHz systems with Hyper Threading, you should get out more.


By Choppedliver on 7/22/2008 7:10:15 PM , Rating: 2
I love how people have no manners on the internet. The things people say to perfect strangers would get there asses beat in real life. God forbid someone have an intelligent conversation where different viewpoints are expressed without the need to to resort to snippy remarks, insults, name calling, etc.

I didn't attack you or insult you...I "get out" plenty.

I have a core 2 duo laptop. I know how fast it is. I also had a p4 ht 3.2ghz at work. So its *gasp 4* years. My bad.


RE: Sandisk, dont take it personally...
By Motley on 7/22/2008 4:01:18 PM , Rating: 2
In short, yes.

That's 2 generations old for me. I have the current machine I am working on that I am about to upgrade (3.6Ghz dual core/4 GB ram/4-way raid 0). The system in the corner that was my previous system is very much like the one you describe (3.4Ghz HT/2GB ram/2-way raid 0).

My next system which I'll be getting next month will be a quad core processor, 8 GB ram, and I'm not sure on the drives yet. I'm considering a 2-drive raid-1 with a 32GB iRam type drive.