Xerxes Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 For me they are still too expensive (but what isn't in Australia? :p) and I'm concerned about their relatively short life spans (when compared to mechanical HDDs). I mean realistically a SSD would most likely last long enough till I eventually get a new machine but I just don't see the value of them right now personally. Until they are significantly cheaper, I'm happy with just using mechanical drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luis Mazza Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 Not everything. Is spending money for optimal performance a preference? Yes. Is SSDs having noticeable performance improvements over a HDD a preference? No. the performance gain is simply not important due to the high price. If you like to believe it is, then good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagisan Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 the performance gain is simply not important due to the high price. If you like to believe it is, then good luck. That is preference. The performance gain is there, that is a fact no matter whether you think the performance gain is worth it or not. Whether or not the performance increase is worth the money to you personally, that is preference. To me, it is worth the money. A good SSD gives better overall system performance than a second GPU does, so what your saying equates to basically why would someone pay for a second GPU? The performance gain (compared to a single GPU) just isn't worth paying double the price for the same hardware. But people still buy SLI and crossfire systems, despite the price:performance being worse than just buying a single GPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xilo Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 Installed Windows 7 in about 5 minutes. Not to mention any type of loading or installing or copying is almost instant. Yeah, it's totally worth it. What people fail to realize is that they think they need a drive big enough to hold all their crap and then **** and moan because there isn't enough space. You get 1 drive (40gb-80gb) and use that for all your programs and Windows and another drive for all the rest of your crap. Works beautifully. I have: 40gb SSD for programs and Windows 1TB for games 1TB x 3 for storage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob_c_b Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 I'm tempted by a Crucial 64GB M225 SSD which go for around ?130. I don't actually game that much so won't appreciate the load times for that, but I was just wondering if anyone had dropped the fairly large amount of money they cost on one and ended up regretting their decision at all? No regrets, wish the 256Gb models were a little cheaper and I'd grab one for my data drive. Okay, a lot cheaper. like it's your preference to play an idiot trying to teach me what the word preference really means. How old are you? Are you retarded or what? Actually you do seem to have an issue seperating your opinions and preferences from fact. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protocol7 Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 What's the situation with the current gen SSDs? One of the things that put me off them was that the speed degrades over time (how much time I don't know). I think Trim was introduced to help this but they still sound like they have a shorter lifespan that regular drives. Particularly when using them as the main OS drive where there will be a lot of writes. Is it still the case that SLC beats MLC but costs a hell of a lot more? Or has MLC tech improved to the point where there's no reason not to get one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagisan Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 What's the situation with the current gen SSDs? One of the things that put me off them was that the speed degrades over time (how much time I don't know). I think Trim was introduced to help this but they still sound like they have a shorter lifespan that regular drives. Particularly when using them as the main OS drive where there will be a lot of writes. Is it still the case that SLC beats MLC but costs a hell of a lot more? Or has MLC tech improved to the point where there's no reason not to get one? From what I understand, current gen SSDs have little if any performance degradation, but I do not own one so I cannot speak with 100% accuracy. I do know that my gen1 SSD, while it doesn't support trim, there are ways to circumvent the performance degradation. Essentially you do a manual TRIM operation over the entire drive by consolidating free space, then using a special program to write 0's to all the free blocks on the SSD. I have done this once or twice and it definitely helps keep performance up on my Gen1 drive. As far as lifespan goes, under normal operation (that is, you install a system and leave it relatively alone, only installing or uninstalling stuff every once in awhile, and storing basic data on the SSD, as well as running the pagefile on the SSD) even a gen1 drive will last 5+ years. Newer SSDs have a normal operation lifetime of over 10 years. Intel claims that their SSDs will write 100GB per day for 5 years before they fail, and unless you run a fileserver on a SSD, you are unlikely to write 100GB per day (and that is on their MLC products). Here's an article you can use to learn a bit more about the lifespan of SSDs: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motoko. Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 If I can get a 128GB SATA III SSD for about $200 then that's the day I buy one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athlonite Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 I'd buy one if only the price/GB was a lot less than it is now example Intel X25-E 64GB SLC SSD = $1912.96NZD that's $29.86 a GB Intel X25-M G2 80GB MLC SSD = $448.88NZD that's ?$5.61 a GB? WTF who's gonna pay that sort of money i could buy a very fast computer for a lot less than that X25E or an brand new pair of Velociraptors an run them in RAID0 for less than the X25-M ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argi Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 Despite their high price SSDs are arguably one of the best general performance per $ out there. I'm ordering a new comp soon but I think I'll wait on an SSD until the new Sandforce chips mature and go down in price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagisan Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 or an brand new pair of Velociraptors an run them in RAID0 for less than the X25-M And still have slower access times and barely faster (if at all) read speeds. http://www.overclock.net/ssd/674524-intel-ssd-vs-wd-velociraptor-raid.html That tests 3x VelociRaptor drives in raid, against a single X25-M (well, the 40gb, 80gb, then 2x 40gbs in raid). In short, against THREE VelociRaptor drives, the X25-M has lower access times (not surprising), and less than 30MB/s slower read times. If it were against 2 VelociRaptor drives like you mention, the 2x VelociRaptor drives would have been stomped in performance by a single X25-M. So, like you said, SSDs have a high price per GB, but if you want performance over all else, they are the best option. Even 2x VelociRaptor drives cannot compare to a good SSDs performance. EDIT: Oh, and putting 2x X25-M's together will give you ~450MB/s read speeds with even lower access times than a single SSD on its own has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frbubba Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 Totally love my SSD. It is only 64Gb but that is plenty for the OS and software. I have a 500GB second HDD for storage. Great combo. I can't imagine going back to a regular HDD for my OS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raa Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 If I had 3 velociraptors together in raid I think i'd get faster speeds than were claimed. Few more benchies to back that one up might help. The there's the fact i'd have a lot more space. And more money in my pocket. And drives that still work after 5 years. Yeah, I'll wait a bit longer... Not knocking SSD's, just saying it's not mature enough for me - yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SyntaxError Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 When the price and capacity of SSDs equals current mechanical hard drive sizes and prices, which is 2TB and ~$0.07/gig, then I'll buy one. I'm not so pressed for time in my day that I need to shave a few seconds off my boot time or general computer use. The warranties suck too. The drive listed below has an expected 2 million hour lifespan, which is 228 years, yet the warranty is only 3 years. Intel X25-E 64GB SLC SSD = $1912.96NZD that's $29.86 a GB versus Intel X25-E 64GB SLC SSD = $704 USD = $11/GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167014 Sucks to be in AU/NZ. Never will understand why computer hardware is so expensive there, when it's all made not far away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hjf288 Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 X25-E are enterprise drives... X25-M are mainstream Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+shift. MVC Posted March 25, 2010 MVC Share Posted March 25, 2010 Only reason I don't already have one is because of the $/GB ratio as mentioned before. Otherwise I would love to get an X-25M :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Prowler Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 Space is a concern to me equally with speed. That's why I trade off by using a 300gb raptor for my main drive, and a pair of 2TB RE4's in raid 1 (mirror) for my storage. Until SSD's increase in space and speed (Yes, im serious), I can't justify the extreme cost to move to them. I'm also concerned about lifetime of data on them too, sure they have algorithms to help lengthen their lifespans, but they're still less than what a "long lasting" hard drive could have, in theory. I'm of no doubt that SSD is the way of the future, and i'm definately interested in it, but it's not a mature enough product for my tastes yet. :) I just used my Raptpr 150GB for my boot drive and it sounded like a trashing machine. So glad to here nothing from my PC after removing the Raptor and installling the SSD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob_c_b Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 What's the situation with the current gen SSDs? One of the things that put me off them was that the speed degrades over time (how much time I don't know). I think Trim was introduced to help this but they still sound like they have a shorter lifespan that regular drives. Particularly when using them as the main OS drive where there will be a lot of writes. Is it still the case that SLC beats MLC but costs a hell of a lot more? Or has MLC tech improved to the point where there's no reason not to get one? Get a TRIM enabled drive and that is not an issue, and the lifespan issue I think is pretty overblown. I'd expect a mechanical drive to fail in about the same number of years. Check out Anand's SSD articles for a pretty realistic perspective n the whole thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leph555 Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 My only regret is buying it directly from Apple Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmatic Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 If I had 3 velociraptors together in raid I think i'd get faster speeds than were claimed. Few more benchies to back that one up might help. The there's the fact i'd have a lot more space. And more money in my pocket. And drives that still work after 5 years. Yeah, I'll wait a bit longer... Not knocking SSD's, just saying it's not mature enough for me - yet. theres just that small matter of having to defrag your hard disk and have data be inevitably slower than others because of being on different parts of the hard disk platter...? you could say that trim is like defrag in a way, but trim is done almost entire on hardware on newer ssd's and you dont need to run a 'defrag' program just for it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToneKnee Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 People can compare Raptors to SSD's, and generally if you RAID a few raptors you'll get the same throughput as an SSD (Let's say like my Vertex SSD), but that's not what makes SSD's shine, it's the random access speeds being below 0.1ms (some benchmarkers measure them in 'nano-seconds'). That's where all the "speed" comes to play. That's why you don't need to defrag SSD's, because getting from one sector to another is virtually instant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamwhoiam Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 I don't regret it a bit. 2 in RAID for the OS. 1 for essential apps and multiple mechanical drives for games and storage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagisan Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 People can compare Raptors to SSD's, and generally if you RAID a few raptors you'll get the same throughput as an SSD (Let's say like my Vertex SSD), but that's not what makes SSD's shine, it's the random access speeds being below 0.1ms (some benchmarkers measure them in 'nano-seconds'). That's where all the "speed" comes to play. That's why you don't need to defrag SSD's, because getting from one sector to another is virtually instant. Yup.......lets say you need to load 200 files at once (such as when you boot and multiple things are going on), that are scattered all around your HDD. With a VelociRaptor HDD you have maybe 4ms seek times at best, with a SSD you have 0.2ms at the worst (that is, some Gen1 drives). Now, randomly seeking for those 200 files would take 800ms on the raptor drive, but less than 40ms on the SSD. Thats just the time it takes to find the files too (overall), if you run in raid the raptor drives are going to be even slower in finding files, but make up for it by having similar read speeds to a SSD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xilo Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 I don't regret it a bit. 2 in RAID for the OS. 1 for essential apps and multiple mechanical drives for games and storage. +1 It's what I said earlier. Anyone that whines about the price per gigabyte and how 80/120/etc aren't enough aren't doing it right... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Salty Wagyu Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 Yeah, and if you wanted to run a certain Steam game off an SSD but couldn't due to the restriction running games out of the steam directory or didn't have the space to store your 20-/+ games, then looking into NTFS symbolic links will solve this :) Maximumpc.com has an article on this afaik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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