Loving SSD

[anthonyparsons]

I know, I know... I mention it too much, but I just updated the missus business notebook yesterday to SSD, and OMG, what a performance improvement. The system is a Dell XPS M1530 with 4gb and from a cpu / power angle, it has heaps of grunt, but it all failed at the hard drive, using a 250gb sata. So I ripped that out yesterday and swapped in a new SSD... the load and shutdown time is about half now, but the improvement is in the use itself, being opening, closing, saving, installing, etc... near instantaneous / extremely fast now. You double click and it just opens. With around 250mb per second read and 150mb per second write, what a vast improvement it now is to use the notebook once again. Doesn't matter how much data is on the drive, it just does what you want it to do instantly.

I installed MS Office 2007 onto it and it took under 3 minutes to be fully installed. Love that performance, especially from a notebook.

I have a few more systems to fully swap to SSD, and I can't wait.

[eJM]

I've built computers for years, but stopped doing it about 4 years ago and haven't kept up with the technology. I really thought my last computer would outlive me, but I'm happy it didn't. So, I'm in the process of building a new machine - a SFF box - and am just hearing about this SSD stuff. It looks to be pretty expensive, so I'm not sure I can afford to do it. But then, I have had to take a lot longer to build this machine than any other because my income is a fraction of what it used to be. Maybe I should just add this to the budget and not worry that it may take an extra month to finish?

Jim

[anthonyparsons]

I know what you mean eJM... I did my electronics tech course just after I finished my electrical apprenticeship, being when I was 20... so coming around to nearly 19 years now. Computers where a completely different beast back then to what they are now. Whilst I kept up with the technology for some years, I then lost focus of it all for some years whilst in the military, then picked it back up again, but never to the same level. I just tend to find out bits and pieces myself these days, learn something new all the time and still only scratching the surface. When I studied microprocessor control near 20 years ago, well... things are far superior now with current tech than then. Architecture changes, but the principles and concepts are still the same. I built myself two systems last year, being older machines for linux only, one a firewall and one a server for some learning and testing. Even that took me a little to relearn and work out new aspects.

I think the same still holds very true though today... in that the majority of I/O is now at the hard drive... with current processors pretty much far superior now only awaiting the hard drives to actually catchup in order to use their full potential. The one I got the other day was around $300 for the missus notebook... which I don't see as that much more expensive. I have looked at the larger storage and superior specification SSD's, ie. server use, and they are extremely expensive for their sizes. From memory one of the higher end grade, server spec, built-in error handling, etc... was around the $700 range for about 150gb. Saying that though... when I got my 15k SCSI's two years ago, I think they cost around $400 each with only 70gb storage. End of the day, the SCSI has a life expectancy of years, the SSD has a lifetime expectancy, usually around 1,000,000 hours, which equates around the 100 year mark, and even the write limits in the heaviest of environments are around 50 years. Big cost now, saves money over the long term as I see it. As I buy them nowadays, I will be pulling them and using them in the next machines as I go.

[Zachery]

If i had the money, I would have an OS drive on SSD, an app drive on SSD, and then for everything else, I'd be on standard SATA.
I'm sure one day

[Shamil.]

I chose to stay on a normal drive rather than an SSD when my drive failed earlier this week. I just cannoy justify the cost for a 160GB SSD.

I'll be moving partially over to an iPad though.

[Joe Gronlund]

It's a pretty good idea to research your pro's and con's before buying into SSD's right now, or before 2011, with the required use of "TRIM" on SSD's to properly unmark and/or clear previously used sectors/blocks "even after a full format", the blocks are now marked no longer in use, and those blocks can then be wiped "they/re never actually wiped, they're just marked that way."
As seen below, it's not always that simple!! RE:"non-compliance"

Also, alot of these drive/s, "mostly non-intel", have been failing < * 365 days / < 1 cycle year... After all, 100,000 hours has been known to fail, 20 - 30% failure in Dells alone, as of last month. New Technology equals new knowledge, the knowledge that we no longer have, and we will only know more, many years from now..

MSFT: Only Windows 7 can successfully utilize SSD with "TRIM" properly.
Windows XP and even Windows Vista can't be adopted to support SSD, and i really would not want to test that theory, according to SanDisk!! Though i know it can work!!
Apple: Apple's product line, with Leopard & Snow Leopard, have had success with SSD's, being based upon Unix, their use of "TRIM" is also native.
Unix/ BSD and Linux do in the kernel as well!!

The problem with "non-compliance" , when data is written into sectors and blocks, they/re for some trivial reason, marked as writable or just simply written to, via the SSD, and when they/re written upon , your previous data is now lost, no longer recoverable...

TRIM - - Can be downloaded directly from Intel, HP, SanDisk, Kingston and Dell | also third parties as well !!

[Floris]

As soon as the prices are within my range, I will get a 80GB SSD and stuff it in my Mac Pro from 2006, and put Snow Leopard and the Apps on it. Then move the /home to SATA2 drive. Use a second SSD drive for caches, scratch disks, swap and other temp data that writes a lot.

[Zachery]

As soon as the prices are within my range, I will get a 80GB SSD and stuff it in my Mac Pro from 2006, and put Snow Leopard and the Apps on it. Then move the /home to SATA2 drive. Use a second SSD drive for caches, scratch disks, swap and other temp data that writes a lot.

Get enough memory and forego a swap

[anthonyparsons]

Thanks for that Joe... always good to know more about these things. I did know about being specific in which drive I purchased due to writing issues and failure aspects, though obviously didn't know all the detail, but just to avoid specific one's and don't go the cheap option with an SSD for those reasons. The one I have in my other system, has some built-in automatic failure redundancy aspect and takes care off all that... as it is a server grade one... 64gb for near $800, not exactly cheap little buggers the higher quality you get, but worth it I figure for the longevity.

My favourites to run the OS and programs is the Intel 80 GB SSD X25-E Extreme - AUD$400. The missus notebook I am trying the new Kingston range in that one, which seems pretty damn good so far. I hope to have all SCSI and SATA drives reduced to storage tasks only over the coming months, with the SSD being the OS and programs only.

I'm actually looking forward to my next move in 2 years, when we will be within the 100mbps fibre optic network within the city, at which point I will be testing to run my own servers using SSD, which obviously works out far cheaper for me over the long term than paying growing hosting costs. I couldn't obviously achieve this now from home with the traffic coming in, but would be able to from the 100mbps direct connection. Finally Australia is beginning to pull their finger out with broadband speeds to play catchup to the rest of the world.

[MRGTB]

Shows how much I've fell behind now with computer stuff, I was wondering what the hell you was talking about (SSD). Now I know though after searching Google on SSD Drives. I use all Seagate SATA drives myself, 4 of them in my custom built PC I made a few years back now. Don't think I'll be in a mad rush to upgrade 4 of them, would cost too much!

[Floris]

Get enough memory and forego a swap

You can put 32gb memory in the mac pro, but photoshop will still find a reason to use 64mb swap ..

[Martz]

Yeah I'm been an instant convert to using a SSD for my desktop machines OS drive. (Windows 7). Intel X-25 M 160GB.

SATA is still a requirement for mass storage stuff you need online but don't need exceptional performance for (downloads, music, etc).

Once you pop, you can't stop!

The fractions of seconds saved all add up and make a machine feel really responsive.

[anthonyparsons]

Yep, couldn't have said it better myself. With 8 systems at home and 3 in storage, upgrades can be a little expensive around here, so upgrading our systems to SSD has been quite a viable solution to gain a lot more performance wise from existing systems, without the total expense of all new systems. I usually run all our systems on a rotating update, so something is always being updated within nothing outside off about 3 - 4 years old. Our 2 year old systems are now all being progressively updated to SSD, giving excellent results, and even with 2 of our high performance systems, I doubt I will need to upgrade them for even longer than 4 years now due to the significant improvement experience SSD is providing. An SSD and video card upgrade, and we'll clearly get more years from 2 of these bad boys.

[George L]

Loving ssds myself too using the following

256GB Crucial RealSSD C300 <-- very very fast!
80GB Intel X25-M G2
120GB OCZ Vertex
4x30GB OCZ Core V1

AS SSD Benchmark
80GB Intel X25-M G2 vs 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300

On Asus P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard SATA2 port hence slower reads on C300 than rated 355MB/s as it's a SATA3 based ssd

[MRGTB]

I think you all need to shut-up now making me jealous.