SSD Vs HDD

[Skotty]

As per topic, Solid State Drive vs Hard Disk Drive...

How many people here run SSD's in their machines and what are you're views over a HDD's?... I've had one in my desktop now for a couple of months (just a cheap 30gb Kingston one with 2x 1tb mechanical storage drives).. not really noticing the difference... Since my laptop killed a hdd dunno if I should just put my SSD in from my desktop and use a mechanic drive again..

choices choices

[PHANTMXR6]

Only reason I didn't even contemplate a SSD was the ridiculous price for such small storage space.

I hope they've come down alot since i looked 3 years ago.

[Baby_phantom]

I spent alot of money on computers never really considerd a SSD, they arn't really all that much faster for what its worth buy a bigger HDD.

[Skotty]

My current SSD was $75 for 30gb :o... then I got a WD black 1tb for $100 lol!

[5L]

suppose running a SSD would be good to use to store program files and windows on. so your computer and programs boot up really quick.

i looked at it when i built my computer but i didnt see the point. hopefully when i upgrade or build a new pc in about a year the price will come down for a decent amount of space.

[ohzone]

Check this out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

[cupic]

Best to get a SSD of about 40gb and use this only for your OS and separate HDD as backup(Ghosting programs works well).With a lifespan of 2,000,000 hrs @ 24/7 its 200+yrs of life so this will be on my shopping list

cheers

[FGII-XR6]

the ideal compromise is the seagate hybrid drive which has a small SSD incorporated in a standard drive for frequently used files but the system sees it all as 1 drive http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...ops/laptop-hdd

The Seagate® Momentus® XT drive is a solid state hybrid with Seagate® Adaptive Memory™, enabling the drive to deliver SSD-like performance along with higher capacity. Designed with high-performance core components on an innovative platform, the Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive consists of a 7200-RPM hard drive with 32MB of cache, 4GB of solid state SLC NAND flash storage and Adaptive Memory technology.

[GT 160]

After switching to SSD's a few months back i will never go back to using a platter drive.

If your going buy one stick to OCZ they make the best drives on the market.

[StealthAu]

SSD is going to take over and leave HDD's obsolete within a couple of years. When they start producing them in the same qwuantites as the HDD's at present they will be cheaper to manufacture as well as faster and more reliable.

[FGII-XR6]

Originally Posted by StealthAu

SSD is going to take over and leave HDD's obsolete within a couple of years. When they start producing them in the same qwuantites as the HDD's at present they will be cheaper to manufacture as well as faster and more reliable.

current SSD technology will not completely take over platter drives although they will take a significant slice of the market. servers with their high level of write to the drive will need to retain platter drives as the number of times a sector of a SSD can be written to are limited. of course that is only as the technology tsands at this time and things may change.
another option for speed on a desktop is using 1500 RPM sas drives in a raid 0 or 1 array raid 0 is faster but less reliable but raid 1 gives you speed gains with the trade off being loss of capacity. this setup would rival current SSD technology with greater reliability for constant writes

[Cam]

The newest SSD SATA 3 drives are incredibly quick, guy from work has just built a gaming machine with 2 150gb SSD drives in raid 0 for his OS and games, to say the thing flies is an understatement.. If your interested in SSD I'd check out http://www.ssdfreaks.com/ Good info there..

[pauljh74]

Corsair and OCZ have drives with the new Sanforce 2 controller and are highly regarded. These are their 3rd gen drives Corsair "Performance 3" or OCZ "Vertex 3". The Vertex 2 drives had issues. Another highly regarded drive is the Crucial M4. Apparently they are best at random reads and writes - which would have real world benefits. The Sanforce 2 drives have the best peak speeds. Crucial have been a supplier of quality memory for years. They haven't been in the Australian retail market much - in the past people bought from the USA and had it shipped over.

SSDs are still a premium/performance item - they do have a high cost, that and platter drives are quite cheap now. Most enthusiasts mix an SSD as a boot drive with a platter drive or drives to do storage. If you are buying a $1000 computer, then an SSD takes up a fair chunk of that price. If you are spending $2000 or more, then at that price an SSD is probably going to be part of it.

As for the size to get - I wouldn't get less than 64GB if you are running Win7. My Win7 OS install plus programs is currently using 45GB. I have allocated 75GB to the C: partition. Using WinXP, I would need closer to half that. All games are installed on another partition. My upcoming build will have an SSD, most likely a 120GB

[Polyal]

I thought the main benefit of SSD was stability over speed?

[z80]

The read speed of an SSD is fantastic now...especially OCZ brands.

I have converted all my customers to SSD drives for their mail servers.

In laptops they are absolutely bullet proof....you can't break them.

In a Toshiba laptop we can boot windows XP in less than 6 seconds from power up, once past the bios checking.

The battery life of a laptop is also greatly increased in our case.

Much less heat, less noise in a DVD recorder application, the list goes on and on.

Overall a fantastic way to go...as long as it's a SATA drive, use it in the event of a drive failure as a great replacement drive.

[aussie muscle]

Originally Posted by z80

boot windows XP in less than 6 seconds .

yeah, but windows is designed to absorb ever increasing amounts of resources over time. in a year it'll take the same laptop 15 minutes to boot, and will be called 'slow'.

[Professor Farnsworth]

Originally Posted by aussie muscle

yeah, but windows is designed to absorb ever increasing amounts of resources over time. in a year it'll take the same laptop 15 minutes to boot, and will be called 'slow'.

As long as you keep on top of it, don't install 5 thousand startup programs, and don't fill the NAND to the point of confusion, there will be very little difference in the boot time.

[Polyal]

6 secs...damn

My Toshiba laptop HDD failed and I got it replaced under warranty...I probably should of extra for SDD.

[Franco Cozzo]

I'm doing a build for a friend and I've been asking around, I'm looking at a 120GB SSD as the OS and applications drive, 1TB drive for data, etc.

For randomly accessing files anywhere on the drive, they're king of the hill.

[Professor Farnsworth]

my desktop has an OCZ Vertex2 120GB 3.5" SSD, connects straight up to a normal hdd bay being 3.5".. Win 7 used to take 1 min 15 seconds to load from the loading screen, now it takes 17 seconds. Loading files is a bit quicker, depending on the program and how efficiently it's written. Installing programs is far quicker. It's used as a primary drive (boot, and programs) and i have optical media for storage.. They're far more reliable these days and i paid about $245 for the drive which is bloody good for a quality SSD.

I also put a 2.5" version of the same 120GB OCZ SSD in my netbook, 1 day after i bought it (warranty void? :P) and it made a massive difference. Win 7 starter now boots in 15 seconds, programs load and install very quickly and it turned a sluggish netbook into something nearly as quick as my i5 desktop. It made a huge difference to battery life as well having no moving parts.

See below for speeds, the first is the 3.5" SSD in the desktop, the second is the 2.5" SSD in the netbook. Notice the netbook suffers lower write speeds, nothing to do with the drive, it's a limitation of netbook architecture. For those of you who have used optical drives for a long time, you can appreciate the speed. I will never go back to optical media if possible.

[Rodp]

I'll be going at least 1 SSD in my next box. For OS and any I/O intensive games.. relegate swap to one of a couple of 2TB drives I have.

The benefits are there if you configure your system to take advantage of them.

[Redrum]

I run a 64g SSD drive and just have running system on it, then have 2t HDD, works a charm, nice and quick, especially to boot up

[DJL351]

Just built a new machine for the misses. Dropped a 60GB SSD (OCZ) in it.
Boot up is just so quick its hard to explain.
Machine also has a 500GB WD Black for apps and games plus a 500GB green for videos and pictures etc.

Using SSD's are fine, as long as you can adjust your habbits and are willing to install non-critical programs on another drive.
There are a few programs/services/tools that should be turned off - while not difficult to do, having some knowledge is not a bad idea.
http://thessdreview.com/category/ssd-guides/

[GT 160]

PC Case Gear have 128gb OZC Vertex 2's for $199 atm.

[z80]

Originally Posted by fitzwa

PC Case Gear have 128gb OZC Vertex 2's for $199 atm.

Good price and fantastic drive as well.

Look at the kingston units, some have a sata as well as micro usb on the drive....very handy feature..

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by DJL351

Just built a new machine for the misses. Dropped a 60GB SSD (OCZ) in it.
Boot up is just so quick its hard to explain.
Machine also has a 500GB WD Black for apps and games plus a 500GB green for videos and pictures etc.

Using SSD's are fine, as long as you can adjust your habbits and are willing to install non-critical programs on another drive.
There are a few programs/services/tools that should be turned off - while not difficult to do, having some knowledge is not a bad idea.
http://thessdreview.com/category/ssd-guides/

Excellent link, I'll be doing that on my friends system and my own when I pick up an SSD for me

[Professor Farnsworth]

120GB is the size.. good price

[ch33z1l]

Those who aren't interested in a SSD, this may suit?

http://apcmag.com/giving-ssd-a-run-f...-hd-review.htm

[StealthAu]

Originally Posted by ch33z1l

Those who aren't interested in a SSD, this may suit?

http://apcmag.com/giving-ssd-a-run-f...-hd-review.htm

Hopefully more reliable then their green label hard drives.