Is an SSD Drive even worth it?

[Knife Party]

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>?

[tsupersonic]

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.

[Arceles]

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.

[tsupersonic]

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.

[Shaun N.]

My drive came today, Windows Index went from 5.9 to 7.8 :D

[primexx]

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.

[Astra.Xtreme]

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.

[Dinggus]

If you "Keep hearing that" then why do you have to ask?

Skip to 5:38

Sorry, but I'd rather wait a few more milliseconds and get more space.

To be honest, my computer opens applications just as fast as those in the video.

[MorganX]

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.

[mrchetsteadman]

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?

[Noir Angel]

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.

[matt4444]

Yes defiantly, use it as your Primary HDD and you will notice its greatness. Obviously due to the cost of SSDs, you will most likely need a normal SATA hard drive for additional storage space.

[MorganX]

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 :)

[articuno1au]

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:

[MorganX]

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.

[articuno1au]

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.

[.stan]

*did not even read the first post or any of the others* YES

[qdave]

I got intel 520 ssd in January, and its amazing! Even on sata 3 I still love it!

[Noir Angel]

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.

[HoochieMamma]

Sorry, but I'd rather wait a few more milliseconds and get more space.

To be honest, my computer opens applications just as fast as those in the video.

Have you ever used an SSD?

[+hedleigh Subscriber²]

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.

[tsupersonic]

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)...

[primexx]

with <64 gig of music & movies you can comfortably fit that directly onto the SSD itself.

[Sandor]

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.

[primexx]

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.