SSD Overall Experience Poll

[Polarman]

I thought about making this poll to see what's the general census about Neowin SSD users.

 

I don't use a SSD yet! I guess I'm not the only one either.

 

You can share your experience here good or bad.

 

We will see how SSD's have matured since they initially came available and now more affordable.

[Scott Hellewell]

SSDs are a no brain required upgrade decision if you have the money.

 

When going new, I would make that upgrade decision before most if not all others.

 

Even going for a 128GB SSD is worth it.

[Max Norris]

Had a bad experience with SSDs with one of the first gen devices, but nothing but smooth sailing with the current generation of hardware. Totally worthwhile upgrade in my opinion. Even one of the smaller ones will give your system a kick in the pants for performance. Still too pricey for the high capacity drives, got a couple terabytes on my main system that's still on a mechanical drive array, but that's ok as that sort of data wouldn't really benefit much (if at all) from an SSD to begin with. OS, "core" software, etc on the SSD and the thing flies. Haven't tried one of those hybrid SSD's yet however, on the to-do.

[Astra.Xtreme]

I've used SSDs in my PCs since the very first OCZ Vertex came out (in 2009 I think).  Haven't had a single failure.  The difference it makes is insane.

You get used to everything loading instantly, and then using a PC with a normal HDD is almost painful.

 

A SSD is an upgrade that pretty much anybody can do, and you'll get the highest performance boost to price ratio.

It's a no-brainer, imo.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

I've had 4 SSDs now, and 1 at work. Ive never had a bad experience. All have been fantastic. Even my original Vertex 30GB was way faster than a hard drive.

[MillionVoltss]

Best price to performance ratio you can make, on my second SSD and it pains me to use computers that don't boot the OS on a SSD.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

I have been using SSDs for a few years now (or at least close to that point). Currently, I have an 840 Pro 512GB in my Desktop. Every computer in my house (outside of servers) use SSDs as their primary drive...

 

That being said, I think you need to weigh SSDs like any other hardware purchase. Is it effective for your needs? Depending on your usage patterns and the specs of your machine you may not see as much of an impact from SSDs as you expect. They are decent devices and I recommend them, but they aren't a silver bullet (what is?).

 

For starters, the price of SSDs have come down considerably. They are still quite a bit more expensive than spinning platters, but they are at a point now where you can get an SSD of a proper size allowing you to actually put the applications you use onto the SSD. IMHO booting from an SSD only to load your apps from a HDD is really silly... Unless you reboot a lot.

 

Additionally, depending on your usage case an SSD may not give you a massive speed boost. For me the impact of going from a spinning HDD to an SSD was nice, but not as monumental as others have experienced. My usage patterns and overall machine specs are what gave me the results I experienced. I usually spec my machines out with a lot of RAM (my previous desktop had 24GB of RAM, my current has 16GB and will likely be getting bumped to 32GB) and I don't reboot often. In this scenario there is ample RAM for Windows to preload the majority of your applications into RAM instead of pulling them from the HDD (and RAM is faster than an SSD). So I already had instant application load times before I went to the SSD.

 

I will admit my boot times were no where near as good as they are now, but since I reboot very rarely it wasn't, and still isn't, an issue that I care about.

 

The too long, didn't read (TL/DR) version: SSDs are great. Make sure you get a large one if you do. If you already have a high end machine don't expect the massive difference expressed by users with lower spec machines... Also, if you reboot rarely you'll experience less of a boost than if you reboot frequently.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

I'm about a month short of having owned SSDs for 'over 3 years'.

 

The drives certainly do give older/less powerful machines quite significant leases of life.  I first put a 96GB Kingston SSDNow V+100 into my Nehalem i3 ThinkPad (i3-380UM) which has 8GB RAM.  The performance gains were outstanding in comparison to the 250GB 5400 RPM drive that it came with as well as making it quieter and giving it slightly more battery life (although this was may have also been attributable to a fresh Windows 7 installation).

 

My desktop is very old (Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 4GB RAM) and had 2x250GB 7200 RPM in RAID0.  The data was moved onto one of these and the other was replaced with a 128GB Crucial M4 which held the OS and applications.  This did make fairly a massive difference to loading times of both the OS and the applications I have installed, especially the heavier ones such as Photoshop.  I did find that opening large files (such as RAW images) was still comparatively slow (worse still because the drive was no longer in RAID).  In an effort to improve this large file access, I eventually replaced the 250GB data drive with a 256GB Samsung 830 SSD (only because it was the cheapest 256GB drive available at the time) which did improve performance fairly significantly.

 

My desktop boots up in seconds and large applications such as Photoshop now take less than 7/8 seconds to start (down from 15-20).  I would thoroughly recommend an SSD to anyone for any desktop, laptop and workstation computer.  The performance gains will vary depending on how performant the machine is, but there will always be some compared to a spinning platter drive.  SSDs are especially recommended for laptop because they usually come with more energy efficient hard discs which are slower but also potentially prone to damage through significant vibration (although in about 15 years of owning laptops, this has never happened to me).

 

I have never had to RMA an SSD I have owned (I still have them all).

 

I have also put 64GB Crucial M4's in other machines.  My parents-in-law's laptop (Dell Lattitude D620) and also my HP Microserver, as the drive where my ESXi installation lives and certain VMs have their datastores in an effort to improve performance.

 

I think the days of complete horror stories have gone and that SSDs have now hit that minimum reliability threshold such that they can now be considered a mature technology.  I would recommend anyone considering one to stick to one of the recognised brands (Crucial, Samsung or Intel) as I have heard nothing but good things.

 

Experiences of others of brands such as OCZ (now part of Toshiba, at least in name), whilst they were trailblazers in the performance stakes at one point, have suggested that they are either great or appalling in terms of reliability.  The voices of the vocal minority are often amplified on the internet so I don't know how much credence to give to the volume.

 

The price of SSDs is also tumbling, with bigger drives now giving the best bang for the buck (price per GB compared across a range).  I think it shouldn't be too long before the sub-$200/?200/?200 1TB SSD comes along (currently around ?340 in the UK).  

 

Sorry for the long post...

[James123]

I bought my first SSD 18 months ago, now I have 5 of them, one or more in every computer I use... can't believe I waited so long, definitely one of the best upgrades for your money in my opinion. Only downside is they make you impatient, it's painful to use a computer that doesn't have an SSD now :p.

[Ambroos]

My laptop has two Toshiba SSD's in RAID0 and is almost three years old and still going strong. I upgraded my desktop with a Crucial m4 a few months back too, I don't use it anymore but my mom noticed the difference.

 

An SSD is the single most important upgrade you can do on any recent computer. Even my desktop with a first-generation Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM performs absolutely great since it has an SSD.

[cork1958]

Don't have a single SSD in any of the 9 computers around here at the moment, but sure would like to. Only problem is the computers don't stay here very long before one gets sold and replaced, some how! ;)

[Aergan]

I have 3 in my laptop, 1 for OS and 2x in RAID for games / storage. It's one of the best investments I have made.

[Olly-]

Where's the option "no notable difference", it might be faster at startup (which doesn't matter as I'm getting a cuppa) however once it's booted the speed is the same.

[Boo Berry]

Had tons of SSDs, currently using Samsung 840 Pros. If you're considering a SSD, do yourself a favor and get a Samsung 840 EVO - those drives are FANTASTIC!

[James123]

Where's the option "no notable difference", it might be faster at startup (which doesn't matter as I'm getting a cuppa) however once it's booted the speed is the same.

 

What SSD are you using and what are the rest of your specs? Every computer I've upgraded to an SSD has a massive increase in overall responsiveness, not just a faster startup. 

[Olly-]

What SSD are you using and what are the rest of your specs? Every computer I've upgraded to an SSD has a massive increase in overall responsiveness, not just a faster startup. 

 

Windows 7 64bit

4GB RAM

Core i5 2.5 GHz

SanDisk 120GB SSD with full TrueCrypt disk encryption

[Sir Topham Hatt]

Had mine less than a year.

I am very pleased, although I am sure it's slower now than when it was brand new.

I would not look to buy another "traditional" hard drive.

 

My current rig has one traditional hard drive (500Gb), which I use to store things for archiving (external traditional hard drive) and documents, plus a SSD (500Gb) for programs, games and the OS.  So I get the best of both worlds.