Is an SSD Drive even worth it?

By mrchetsteadman
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Grand Master

mrchetsteadman

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You'll never go back. You should have a system with USB 3.0 so I'd consider putting your music on an external USB Hard Disk or even Large Flash drive. USB 3.0 is fast. FW800 fast.

That was kinda my thought process but when I looked and saw that a 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive is as much as the 1TB WD black drive and I don't even see how that's worth it. The movies I download I rarely watch more than once and I could easily watch and then delete them. I have a TON of HD movies I like to stream. My entire music catalog is about 3-4GB so that could easily fit on the SSD.

As far as games, I left PC gaming a long time ago but with a faster system I might get back into it. I'm mostly on my PS3.

If it's not about the money, why don't you get both? A good SSD drive plus an HDD drive. That way you get the best from both worlds --> loads of cheap storage space for media files etc. and lightning fast drive for OS & programs. If you already have an external HDD, just get the SSD. It's well worth the money and it really makes a difference.

I considered that this morning but wouldn't I cut down on heat & noise if I cut the HDD? I already have a 1TB drive, the only reason I'm not keeping it is because my system is SATA III 6.0GBs and the drive is SATA III 3.0GBs. I know it doesn't matter since it's only storage but I might give the old system to my dad.

EDIT: JUST realized I was linking to a laptop drive. NO, I'm done building a desktop.

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Grand Master

MorganX

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That was kinda my thought process but when I looked and saw that a 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive is as much as the 1TB WD black drive and I don't even see how that's worth it. The movies I download I rarely watch more than once and I could easily watch and then delete them. I have a TON of HD movies I like to stream. My entire music catalog is about 3-4GB so that could easily fit on the SSD.

As far as games, I left PC gaming a long time ago but with a faster system I might get back into it. I'm mostly on my PS3.

Unless you have a ridiculously large HD collection, 32GB should be fine, or get a couple. Some 64GB are reasonable, they'll keep getting cheaper. The Ventura Pro's support UASP in Windows 8 and on a current USB 3.0 chipset are just superfast. For size, I'd look at WD's my passports (and the slim) 500GB and 1TB. For flash you should try Directron.com. I've posted a few links. the 64GB Mushkin Ventura Pro is on sale right now for $55. I might have to get one myself :), but I have to control myself. The 32GBs are $25 on average.

http://directron.com/mknufdvp64gb.html

http://directron.com/psf32gxpusb.html

http://directron.com...2glsel3usb.html

http://directron.com/pef32gsbusb.html

Me too on gaming, only Xbox. But with ATI's HD 7xxx series allowing me to play 1080p on high, I'm slowly moving back to PC. Of course, the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming receiver helped too. I'm not a mouse/keyboard dude.

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Grand Master

Noir Angel

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I use my machine as a dev environment and gaming machine (because I can >.>).

I had a 120GB disk. It worked well and I rarely bumped up against the limit with a couple of games installed, but I had to keep an eye on it.

Now I have a 240GB disk and I don't even look at my storage space anymore.

Only thing I would suggest is install rarely used stuff on the HDD rather than the SSD. Then, learn how to use the mklink /j command.

I have a folder called "cache" that I copy my steam games into from the HDD and mklink /j them, steam is none the wiser and I get insane load speeds.

Ironically, the thing most people don't mention when talking about SSDs is the enormous speed with which updates/installs and uninstalls run. All of the little writes all over the registry happen nigh on instantly with an SSD whilst taking a substantial amount of time with a HDD.

Either way, you have your answer :)

Agreed. Installing Windows Updates is so much nicer on an SSD

Correct me if I'm wrong but if both mechanical drives and SSDs offered today are SATA-III 6GB/s, how is one faster than the other?

That's the speed of the interface not the speed of the drive. With a mechanical hard disk, even with a REALLY fast mechanical hard disk you're looking at a max of 170 MB/s read and 160 MB/s write... Barely even fast enough to saturate a SATAI interface. Solid state drives, apart from providing significantly faster contiguous speeds (around 550 MB/s read and 475 MB/s write with a good SSD) the fact that they contain no moving parts and are made entirely from fast flash memory means that you don't have to wait for the drive to spin up, which means near instant file seek times (around 0.1 ms on an SSD compared to about 12ms on a mechanical drive). That also means that for small reads and writes (which you get a particularly high amount of on a boot drive) they're significantly faster.

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Grand Master

Astra.Xtreme

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So basically you should buy an SSD if you can justify spending a hundred dollars or so just to reduce a few seconds of application startup and boot time. Hmm I think I'll pass.

If you do a lot of work on the computer, then your productivity will rise by a considerable amount over time. That alone is worth it.

Plus games load much much quicker.

There are plenty of SSDs you can get for under $100. The capacity won't be huge, but even 30GB is enough to hold the OS and a few other apps/games. For the price of a 360/PS3 game, you can make your PC about ten times faster. That's a crazy amount of value for the price.

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briangw

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Another recommendation is this.

Generally speaking most modern cloning/imaging software should be fine for transferring HDDs to SSDs, so long as they line up the start of the partition to a number divisible by 4096 bytes(?).

Thanks for that; I'll have to try it in the future. I did get Samsung's tool to work but I needed a 20 percent free space buffer. However, now it won't boot. I see the Windows 8 flag screen and it just hangs there. I read it needs to be in AHCI mode but when I change it from IDE, it hangs up. So, I'm removing my storage spaces drives and will disconnect all other drives and try again.

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primexx

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You underestimate how often apps read from disk, or write for that matter. The OS as well. Even web browsing. I also recommend 16GB RAM and disable virtual memory.

there's no point in disabling virtual memory. it could break some applications that assume it's there and won't be used for anything that can use actual RAM anyways.

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Grand Master

mrchetsteadman

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Unless you have a ridiculously large HD collection, 32GB should be fine, or get a couple. Some 64GB are reasonable, they'll keep getting cheaper. The Ventura Pro's support UASP in Windows 8 and on a current USB 3.0 chipset are just superfast. For size, I'd look at WD's my passports (and the slim) 500GB and 1TB. For flash you should try Directron.com. I've posted a few links. the 64GB Mushkin Ventura Pro is on sale right now for $55. I might have to get one myself :), but I have to control myself. The 32GBs are $25 on average.

http://directron.com/mknufdvp64gb.html

http://directron.com/psf32gxpusb.html

http://directron.com...2glsel3usb.html

http://directron.com/pef32gsbusb.html

Me too on gaming, only Xbox. But with ATI's HD 7xxx series allowing me to play 1080p on high, I'm slowly moving back to PC. Of course, the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming receiver helped too. I'm not a mouse/keyboard dude.

Thanks for the links. As far as a video card I actually got this one so I guess I should at least game a bit to push it.

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Shadrack

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Yes, an SSD is worth it. In fact, I would argue that most computers from even 4+ years ago would greatly benefit from an SSD upgrade.

When I put an SSD in my 2009 MBP last year it was like I was using an all new machine.

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MorganX

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Thanks for the links. As far as a video card I actually got this one so I guess I should at least game a bit to push it.

That'll do it. I have the low profile 7750 in my current SFF. You can play most games at 1080p high detail no prob. Drop down to 1650 and there's not much you can run you can even push some DX11 to ultra.

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Noir Angel

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there's no point in disabling virtual memory. it could break some applications that assume it's there and won't be used for anything that can use actual RAM anyways.

Yes, I never will understand why people are so insistent on advising others to disable them, it's not as if Microsoft put them there just for fun.

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xWhiplash

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I have 2 512GB Corsair M4 in RAID0.. Pretty damn fast.. but not that much faster in real life than 2x Raptors in RAID0

If your system is only SATA II, the SSDs are severely bottlenecked. It requires SATA III to take full advantage of SSDs potential.

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chillaaa

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Only thing I would suggest is install rarely used stuff on the HDD rather than the SSD. Then, learn how to use the mklink /j command.

I have a folder called "cache" that I copy my steam games into from the HDD and mklink /j them, steam is none the wiser and I get insane load speeds.

Steam will allow you to have games on other drives now at least in beta mode...

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Grand Master

MorganX

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Yes, I never will understand why people are so insistent on advising others to disable them, it's not as if Microsoft put them there just for fun.

With that much system RAM there is no need for it and if it is enable, Windows always swaps something. always. I've never heard or seen disabling VM with enough RAM breaking any modern program on a modern UI (Vista or above).

But most importantly, there's no need to unnecessarily wear on your flash. The same reason you should disable hibernate if you don't use it. Just wasting disk space. How many people actually reduced the amount of storage on their partitions from the defaults? Wasted disk space, potentially expensive.

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Grand Master

+Red King Subscriber²

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^

As long as you don't run out of memory you will never have issues running without a page file.

Here are speed scores for my Kingston SSD, SATA2 vs SATA3

post-478688-0-89502900-1361495686.png

post-478688-0-85041300-1361495688.png

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Grand Master

sanctified Veteran

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This thread helped me to make the jump. I just ordered a mSATA SSD (256 gb) for my boot & apps drive for my ideapad y400. The internal 1 tb will be for storage.

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Beyond Godlike

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Personally, i only consider an ssd an option if your computer has room for a 2nd drive. My gaming laptop has 2 bays, my desktop has many obviously, and my compact notebook i converted the dvdrom into an HD bay using a cheap 15 dollar kit.

SSDs are amazing, beyond amazing, but i cant justify it unless i can also have lots of storage...and aplace to store image backups in case the SSD fails(which they have a much higher chance of)

PS...also make sure to check for firmware updates for the SSD asap...in my case, TRIM wasnt working on my sandisk extreme..which can severely reduce the speed and life on an SSD...and the update fixed it.

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Denis W. Veteran

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^ agreed, finicky SSD firmware is one (potentially major) annoyance about SSDs.

Example being my Crucial M4 drive. Thought the drive was faulty when it became undetectable by the BIOS (managing to freeze Windows prior to a forced reboot). I got a replacement M4, only to find out a few days later that it was a known issue in the firmware - SATA link dying out, requiring a full power cycle to revive.

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fusi0n

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If your system is only SATA II, the SSDs are severely bottlenecked. It requires SATA III to take full advantage of SSDs potential.

My motherboard has Intel ICH10R controller which is SATA III

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