Is an SSD Drive even worth it?


Recommended Posts

I think alot of people who are making uninformed responses to a simple fact : An ssd isn't an replacement for a mechanical drive, if you are wise you would have figured out by now most consumer options recommended you load the OS on the SSD and use it in conjunction with a storage machanical drive. If you can't grip that and keep on complaining about the price differences, do yourself a favour and think about it for a second, won't you now>?

  • Like 2

I think alot of people who are making uninformed responses to a simple fact : An ssd isn't an replacement for a mechanical drive, if you are wise you would have figured out by now most consumer options recommended you load the OS on the SSD and use it in conjunction with a storage machanical drive. If you can't grip that and keep on complaining about the price differences, do yourself a favour and think about it for a second, won't you now>?

except in the cases of laptops (and other systems) where there is only one drive bay. I have no problems using a 128 GB SSD in my netbook. There is an SD slot, and 3xUSB ports, so I can expand storage that way, and I stream media/share files through my NAS.
  • Like 2

except in the cases of laptops (and other systems) where there is only one drive bay. I have no problems using a 128 GB SSD in my netbook. There is an SD slot, and 3xUSB ports, so I can expand storage that way, and I stream media/share files through my NAS.

You can actually remove the dvd tray and put a HDD in there, I did it this way.... plus, you can get an adapter to get the slim drive working on usb and it also works wonders.

You can actually remove the dvd tray and put a HDD in there, I did it this way.... plus, you can get an adapter to get the slim drive working on usb and it also works wonders.

You do realize not all laptops have DVD drives - especially ultrabook/ultraportables/netbook. My laptop actually came with an external DVD drive, which is nice to have, since my laptop is way too thin to have that.

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.

If Windows is swapping it out despite available RAM there's probably a good reason for it. The controller will break long before you wear out the flash cells, and the SSD will last much longer on your typical load that you will be using it for anyways. Why would you just go and disable core aspects of the system willy nilly? There's no benefit to it but can potentially have detriments. Doesn't make sense.

If Windows is swapping it out despite available RAM there's probably a good reason for it. The controller will break long before you wear out the flash cells, and the SSD will last much longer on your typical load that you will be using it for anyways. Why would you just go and disable core aspects of the system willy nilly? There's no benefit to it but can potentially have detriments. Doesn't make sense.

The reason to disable it is to save yourself quite a bit of space. I've disabled it ever since I bought the very first Vertex SSD, and I've never had a single problem come up. The reason behind that is because even though you disable it, Windows will still create a paging file if it feels it needs one. If your SSD isn't large, that wasted space is pretty valuable.

If Windows is swapping it out despite available RAM there's probably a good reason for it. The controller will break long before you wear out the flash cells, and the SSD will last much longer on your typical load that you will be using it for anyways. Why would you just go and disable core aspects of the system willy nilly? There's no benefit to it but can potentially have detriments. Doesn't make sense.

Of course there's a benefit. Electricity is ALWAYS faster than a platter. Core aspect of the system? It is for when you do not have enough RAM. If you have enough RAM, then disable it since it's going to page if its there. Simple. Nothing breaks. It just doesn't and it's been this way a looooong time. This is nothing new. Feel free to continue to page to disk for no real good reason other than fear.

Okay, pulled the trigger on the SSD and the Muskin 64GB thumb drive. ALL of my music and movies should be able to fit on the thumb drive so It's cool. My question is this, can I stream media from a thumb drive attached to the computer?

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.

As I said before, if it was unnecessary Windows would disable it. Windows is good at managing it's own memory needs. Leave it alone and let it do what it does best.

As I said before, if it was unnecessary Windows would disable it. Windows is good at managing it's own memory needs. Leave it alone and let it do what it does best.

We'll just have to disagree Javik. Lol. We're talking Microsoft here and legacy technology. I'm sure when 8-16GB of memory are in the Xbox, they will assume it will be in PCs and think about disabling it.

FWIW, the default for recycle bin is 10% I think? I can't remember the first thing I do is set it to 1G or less on all drives. You do know how much reserved for the recycle bin that is on a 1TB drive don't you? It still does it. Check your system and recover that space. Especially on large SSDs. You don't need 5G of recycle space lost. In fact, on an SSD I wouldn't move things to the recycle bin at all myself.

Okay, pulled the trigger on the SSD and the Muskin 64GB thumb drive. ALL of my music and movies should be able to fit on the thumb drive so It's cool. My question is this, can I stream media from a thumb drive attached to the computer?

Congrats. You'll have fun and yes, you can stream from a thumb drive like any other drive. Now I'm going to go order mine, but I'll prolly stop at 32GB :)

  • Like 1

We'll just have to disagree Javik. Lol. We're talking Microsoft here and legacy technology. I'm sure when 8-16GB of memory are in the Xbox, they will assume it will be in PCs and think about disabling it.

FWIW, the default for recycle bin is 10% I think? I can't remember the first thing I do is set it to 1G or less on all drives. You do know how much reserved for the recycle bin that is on a 1TB drive don't you? It still does it. Check your system and recover that space. Especially on large SSDs. You don't need 5G of recycle space lost. In fact, on an SSD I wouldn't move things to the recycle bin at all myself.

Congrats. You'll have fun and yes, you can stream from a thumb drive like any other drive. Now I'm going to go order mine, but I'll prolly stop at 32GB :)

I really hate agreeing with Javik here, but he is right. The reason you should never disable page file is that many apps rely on being able to obtain "Virtual Memory" handles when calling memory. Even if you have a terrabyte or ram, sometimes the app calls the ****ing virtual memory. That's why Microsoft don't straight up disable it. In fact you can no longer straight up disable it. If Windows finds it needs to page, it will ignore your settings and just do it anyway.

You can test that quite easily by running any of a dozen legacy java apps. They all call for the vm and if you had it disabled in XP it would crash the app, but in 7 and 8 it won't (because it just pages the sucker).

There were benefits in disabling paging during the XP days, but they're pretty much gone now that MS have much better memory handling.

... I feel dirty D:

I really hate agreeing with Javik here, but he is right. The reason you should never disable page file is that many apps rely on being able to obtain "Virtual Memory" handles when calling memory. Even if you have a terrabyte or ram, sometimes the app calls the ****ing virtual memory. That's why Microsoft don't straight up disable it. In fact you can no longer straight up disable it. If Windows finds it needs to page, it will ignore your settings and just do it anyway.

You can test that quite easily by running any of a dozen legacy java apps. They all call for the vm and if you had it disabled in XP it would crash the app, but in 7 and 8 it won't (because it just pages the sucker).

There were benefits in disabling paging during the XP days, but they're pretty much gone now that MS have much better memory handling.

... I feel dirty D:

I don't run legacy java app. I run Photoshop, InDesign, Office 2013 (World, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook), Games galore. Hyper-V machines, there is no issue. If you're running some legacy java that looks for it, I'd get a new applet. I would say it is more likely you won't ever have an issue. If you have 8-16GB system RAM and you're running XP or legacy java apps, why do you have 8-16GB of system RAM? :)

But I agree that is the answer to Javik's question. Why wouldn't Microsoft remove it. Those pesky ill-behaved legacy apps. That and 8-16GB system ram still isn't exactly standard. People are just getting to x64 and 4GB.

That would likely be because you can't actually turn it off.. That's what I was trying to get across to you.

I use Java as an example because it's particularly atrocious at it. It will disregard that you have the 16GB and still make the call to VM.

The other reason MS won't remove it is because there are tons of non-memory usage reasons to page RAM out.

Either way, /shrug.

I really hate agreeing with Javik here, but he is right. The reason you should never disable page file is that many apps rely on being able to obtain "Virtual Memory" handles when calling memory. Even if you have a terrabyte or ram, sometimes the app calls the ****ing virtual memory. That's why Microsoft don't straight up disable it. In fact you can no longer straight up disable it. If Windows finds it needs to page, it will ignore your settings and just do it anyway.

You can test that quite easily by running any of a dozen legacy java apps. They all call for the vm and if you had it disabled in XP it would crash the app, but in 7 and 8 it won't (because it just pages the sucker).

There were benefits in disabling paging during the XP days, but they're pretty much gone now that MS have much better memory handling.

... I feel dirty D:

You charmer you. Where are my flowers? :laugh:

I don't run legacy java app. I run Photoshop, InDesign, Office 2013 (World, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook), Games galore. Hyper-V machines, there is no issue. If you're running some legacy java that looks for it, I'd get a new applet. I would say it is more likely you won't ever have an issue. If you have 8-16GB system RAM and you're running XP or legacy java apps, why do you have 8-16GB of system RAM? :)

But I agree that is the answer to Javik's question. Why wouldn't Microsoft remove it. Those pesky ill-behaved legacy apps. That and 8-16GB system ram still isn't exactly standard. People are just getting to x64 and 4GB.

Due to the way Superfetch works, you're always likely to get paging happening when you run a memory hungry application but Windows is designed to handle the process efficiently, unless you have a pathetically small amount of memory it won't hinder performance. During the life of my SSD I've so far written about 3.7 TB of data to it (bare in mind it's only a 60 gig drive). I've never disabled my paging file, and my drive's health is still at 100%. The vast majority of "performance tweaks" are simply placebos and that's why you see some of the scene's more respected bloggers like Rafael and Chris123nt move away from doing tweak guides.

When I built this computer, I was finding it hard to justify the price to size ratio. Was convinced that it was a worthwhile purchase by various reviews. Purchased an OCZ Vertex 4 256GB.

So impressed I am waiting for my second drive to arrive.

Okay, pulled the trigger on the SSD and the Muskin 64GB thumb drive. ALL of my music and movies should be able to fit on the thumb drive so It's cool. My question is this, can I stream media from a thumb drive attached to the computer?

Congrats on the SSD, let us know how it works out. Yes, you can share files from your thumb drive and stream videos from one computer to another - just as long as it can read/stream the data fast enough (also depends on your network infrastructure)...
  • Like 1

Simple facts. Quieter, no heat, faster booting, near instantaneous response compared to a mechanical drive. Even a simple act of opening a folder on your disk feels painful when you go back to a mechanical drive over an SSD.

If you're a pretty casual PC user then it's not really worth it overall for the cost but if you're going to go for some epic rig for gaming it's a must.

The reason to disable it is to save yourself quite a bit of space. I've disabled it ever since I bought the very first Vertex SSD, and I've never had a single problem come up. The reason behind that is because even though you disable it, Windows will still create a paging file if it feels it needs one. If your SSD isn't large, that wasted space is pretty valuable.

We'll just have to disagree Javik. Lol. We're talking Microsoft here and legacy technology. I'm sure when 8-16GB of memory are in the Xbox, they will assume it will be in PCs and think about disabling it.

FWIW, the default for recycle bin is 10% I think? I can't remember the first thing I do is set it to 1G or less on all drives. You do know how much reserved for the recycle bin that is on a 1TB drive don't you? It still does it. Check your system and recover that space. Especially on large SSDs. You don't need 5G of recycle space lost. In fact, on an SSD I wouldn't move things to the recycle bin at all myself.

what's with the gigabyte pinching? if you can't spare a couple of gigs for virtual memory (mine's allocated only 1.7gb, have 12gb of RAM) you guys should get a bigger drive instead.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Build your own business with a Sellful lifetime plan now at 76% off by Steven Parker Today's deal from our Apps + Software section of the Neowin Deals store, lets you save 76% off Sellful: ERP Agency Plan lifetime deal. AI-Powered Software and Website Builder for Agencies Ever feel like a client’s needs simply can’t be met on a single platform? With Sellful, it’s all here, and all white labeled. Build anything from simple websites to complex workflows to automate your business in a few clicks. Manage everything from email & social media marketing, to payroll & invoicing. It’s got a white label website builder, online shop, CRM, ERP, marketing, memberships, invoicing, appointments, online courses, project manager, and point of sale functions. Sellful is the only white label platform in the world that is truly all in one, combining all aspects of your business in one place no matter the industry. What can you do with Sellful? Automatically generate amazing websites, funnels, & landing pages in seconds using AI Sell physical & digital products online Keep track of customers with native CRM Automate communication & outreach using AI Manage all aspects of your business in one place Collect emails & phone numbers via forms on your website, then send newsletters to customers with important updates, sales, and discounts Build membership programs with various levels of access for your customers Receive payments from your clients using any number of payment gateways including Paypal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Square & more Have your clients book appointments for services & meetings quickly Build powerful & robust online courses to sell to or instruct people Build communities on Sellful social networking sites with activity feeds, private messaging, & groups See & adjust a visual version of everything going on within your client projects Sync your online shop’s inventory with multiple offline store locations & registers Manage inventory, coupons, & sales through Sellful’s native POS app on your computer Manage employee recruitment, time clocks, payroll & leave requests Automate help desk tasks such as support ticket creation Communicate with your team on multiple chat channels Keep an accounting of your income & expenses Automate billing & website creation for your marketing agency What's in the ERP Agency Plan: White Label Unlimited 10 Sites/Sub Accounts Included 100% White Label For Your Brand Or Your Client's Brand Website Builder Sales Funnel Builder Online Shop Automation Builder CRM & Pipeline Management Email Marketing SMS Marketing Reputation Management 2 Way Communication (Email, SMS & Phone) Appointment Scheduler Memberships Subscriptions Forms, Surveys & Polls Client Portal AI Assistant & Chatbot Social Media Automation Legally Binding Contract Signing Project Management System Online Courses (LMS) Invoicing External CRM Connect Class Attendance & Event Booking Restaurant Builder Support Ticket System Team Chat AliExpress Drop Shipping Accounting Advanced Affiliate Program Community Builder Point Of Sale HR Suite (HR, Time Clock, Payroll & ATS) 5000+ App Integrations 20+ Payment Gateways (No Fees From Us) Custom Mobile App Agency Billing System Setup Wizard Builder Content Cloner Tool Digital Marketing Courses Actionable Marketing PDF Guides Unlimited Contacts Per Site/Sub Account Unlimited Pages Per Site/Sub Account Unlimited Blog Posts Per Site/Sub Account Unlimited Users Per Site/Sub Account Unlimited Products Per Site/Sub Account Unlimited Visitors Per Site/Sub Account 100 Gigs Of File Storage 50,000 Free Email Sends* Unlimited Domain Names Per Site/Sub Account *Email sending can be purchased in packs of 10,000 for $10/Month. You can also add your own external sending service to send without limits. Email sends are shared in a pool throughout all websites and email addresses on the account. System emails are always free. Good to know Length of access: lifetime Redemption deadline: redeem your code within 30 days of purchase Updates included Sellful: ERP Agency Plan (Lifetime) normally costs $1,497 but it can be yours for only $349.97, that's a saving of $1,147.03 (76%) off! For terms, and more details click the link below. Get a lifetime plan to Sellful at 76% off (was $1,497) Although priced in U.S. dollars, this deal is available for digital purchase worldwide. Support queries If you have queries or need support for any of the Neowin Deals, please use the contact form here. Neowin Deals are managed and sold by StackCommerce who represent Neowin on an affiliate basis. Why we post these deals We post these because we earn commission on each sale so as not to rely solely on advertising, which many of our readers block. It all helps toward paying staff reporters, servers and hosting costs. So for those that keep moaning and complaining, be thankful we're still online for you to even do that. Other ways to support Neowin Whitelist Neowin by not blocking our ads Create a free member account to see fewer ads Make a donation to support our day to day running costs Subscribe to Neowin - for $14 a year, or $28 a year for an ad-free experience Disclosure: Neowin benefits from revenue of each sale made through our branded deals site powered by StackCommerce.
    • No its not, there are ton of Youtube videos to get you started, what do you think people did before AI existed?
    • Read this in Humor Simpson 's voice, "Out of my way Moe".
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      B4dM1k3 earned a badge
      One Year In
    • One Year In
      DarkWun earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Dedicated
      Almohandis earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Dedicated
      JuvenileDelinquent earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      DrWankel earned a badge
      First Post
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      506
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      181
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      86
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      78
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      76
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!