Solid state drive (SSD) - any experience?

[DJL351]

Both my home machines have OCZ VII 120GB drives in them.
One is the misses machine; Outlook/Office, Facebook and general web duties.

Mine is a gamer toy with the SSD having only the OS. Games are on a 600GB Raptor and apps on a 2TB WD Black.

I've heard all the arguments before and having used the two I have now for 12 + months I'd be happy to go again.

Are they a must? - Ah no. Cost v's Speed V's size will see them with a big cross against them for the average home PC user.

[cs123]

Not sure why you would use SSD in a small office server. A SAS drive will have more throughput for your network anyway, so if you're sucking data off the machine then network will be the bottleneck.

For high performance servers (Database) SSDs have very limited applications. Ours use delayed write to the drives though battery backed cache. Write performance of these devices is not up to scratch yet.

For home computing, using SSD is fine if you are aware of the limitations and possible problems with failure.

SSD will become mainstream soon enough. I still prefer round spinny things currently.

[z80]

Originally Posted by Professor Farnsworth

In 21 years of owning, programming, using, fixing, building and problem solving desktop computers, and having owned dozens upon dozens of mechanical HDD's, i have never had one fail instantly, ever. Plenty have failed over time, allowing for easy backup if not done already.

.. You're yelling the praises of this format yet you don't seem familiar with the architecture, or timeline of their models. .

Your experiences differ from mine.

Thanks for the link, but it's journalistic opinion.
I have a rough idea about solid state drives, installed my first SSD in 1988 so reckon I have a bit of an idea about the alternate byte technology, hamming correction and electronic cyclic check workings.
We were repairing them to component level then, run a test routine, compare data, unsolder chip.
yeah...they slow down as alternate locations are allocated, but so do mechanical drives.

Last year and a half I tested and installed 1300 Toshiba laptops with SSD drives...
Less than 3 SSD failures in that time.

Last year I retro fitted approx 100 SSD drives into various systems as their mechanical drives failed, mostly laptops, and a handful of HP Proliant small business servers.

I installed and have maintained a site with 48 HP Z600 CAD workstations with OCX Revodrive 480Gb Pci express SSD drives.

Zero failures, zero blue screens...fast and furious performance.

You get what you pay for in speed and quality..

VertexII drive? yeah...got one as a workbench mule.

[Professor Farnsworth]

Journalistic opinion?? lol. Now you've lost me.

[z80]

Originally Posted by Professor Farnsworth

Journalistic opinion?? lol. Now you've lost me.

Always check the credentials of the author.

He graduated in journalism so is therefore offering journalistic opinion.

Probably something he overheard at Harvey Norman from the pimple faced nerd who overclocks his AMD fluro/neon empowered bedroom box...

[Professor Farnsworth]

Originally Posted by z80

Always check the credentials of the author.

He graduated in journalism so is therefore offering journalistic opinion.

Probably something he overheard at Harvey Norman from the pimple faced nerd who overclocks his AMD fluro/neon empowered bedroom box...

Uhh. I simply pasted a couple of handy links. The credibility of the author is irrelevant. SSD drives slow down, FACT. For someone who claims to have been involved with solid state since the choir boys had their most popular hit, you're not displaying much knowledge of the tech.

I could sit here and highlight all the contradictions you've made but it's quicker to just come to the realization that you're just trolling, or back pedaling. Or both.

fact: SSD is still far from reliable for the masses

End of story.

[z80]

fact...mechanical drives slow down as much as SSD drives.

End of story.

[cs123]

Originally Posted by z80

fact...mechanical drives slow down as much as SSD drives.

End of story.

In what way?

[flappist]

Originally Posted by z80

Always check the credentials of the author.

He graduated in journalism so is therefore offering journalistic opinion.

Probably something he overheard at Harvey Norman from the pimple faced nerd who overclocks his AMD fluro/neon empowered bedroom box...

Credentials?

You mean that there are people who hide their identity and pretend to be experts on everything when posting on a forum?

Surely not........

[SB076]

Good thread, I have some toys here that have SSD (industrial machines) Glad I read this thread as I have no knowledge of SSD's The commisioning agent that set up one of the machines said no need to back up - SSD's are very reliable (normal hard drives suffer a bit due to the enviroment I work in) No moving parts I was told.

Went straight out and backed up the machines after reading this thread.

[Tribal]

Spot on SB076 - nothing is infallible regardless of how modern/hi-tech/mind blowingly fast it is, and being able to recover from any kind of failure should always be a priority.

SSD's are great for the portable/home user market, but from my experience in working with SME/Corporates over the last 14 years, spindles still rule.

This whole discussion reminds me of when CD's first came in to replace cassettes. They had much more storage space, high-fidelity and no moving parts - but they scratched easy

[burnz]

my son is running a seagate momentus hybrid type drive 64gig ssd 500 gig platter on one drive sataIII
has not reported any problems so far..

me i run an old platter WD 10,000 rpm velociraptor 350gig on sataIII no problem in 8 months

we both have 2tera ext WD drives for backup.

[charles_wif_xf]

Just bought a heap of Intel 120GB SSD's (mix of 320 series and 520 series). Installed one of the 520's on my workhorse lappy and it screams from the excessive fasts. As for long term reliability, does one day of awesomeness count?

FYI, they come with 5 year warranties, and the fully configured disk image and monthly backups are done as per normal.

[burnz]

whats the price of the intels? if you dont mind..

[charles_wif_xf]

Originally Posted by burnz

whats the price of the intels? if you dont mind..

I bought the 520 series for 190 and the 320 series for 155. Mind you, I bought like 10 of each.

[dawsman]

I've had mixed experience with SSD's, but mostly good and I'll never go back to a mechanical boot drive.

I have an OCZ Apex (250GB) which is still going strong after 2 years, although it's a bit slow now compared to the latest SSD's. It was in my Macbook Pro and then the boot drive in my iMac for a short while.

I bought an OCZ II Vertex (240GB) from eBay for my iMac, but that failed after 5 months.

I recently replaced the failed Vertex with a Crucial M4 256GB ($460 delivered) and I highly recommend it. Performance is on par with the more expensive Intel drives of equivalent capacity (based on online comparisons). Mac OSX Lion boots in 7-8 seconds, and Windows 7 Pro 64-bit boots in a bit over 10 seconds.

Speed is one thing, but there's also nothing better than having a silent computer (i.e. no HDD noise).

[burnz]

Originally Posted by dawsman

I've had mixed experience with SSD's, but mostly good and I'll never go back to a mechanical boot drive.

I have an OCZ Apex (250GB) which is still going strong after 2 years, although it's a bit slow now compared to the latest SSD's. It was in my Macbook Pro and then the boot drive in my iMac for a short while.

I bought an OCZ II Vertex (240GB) from eBay for my iMac, but that failed after 5 months.

I recently replaced the failed Vertex with a Crucial M4 256GB ($460 delivered) and I highly recommend it. Performance is on par with the more expensive Intel drives of equivalent capacity (based on online comparisons). Mac OSX Lion boots in 7-8 seconds, and Windows 7 Pro 64-bit boots in a bit over 10 seconds.

Speed is one thing, but there's also nothing better than having a silent computer (i.e. no HDD noise).

the loudest thing in my computer is the intel cpu fan, cant hear my hdd

[creative]

Originally Posted by burnz

my son is running a seagate momentus hybrid type drive 64gig ssd 500 gig platter on one drive sataIII
has not reported any problems so far

I replaced my failed had in my laptop with one of these.... No problems at all but then the laptop died.. Lol been thinking I may install it in my desktop now and use as my main drive.

[dawsman]

Originally Posted by burnz

the loudest thing in my computer is the intel cpu fan, cant hear my hdd

It's probably actually the power supply fan that you're hearing.

My answer to that is.... get an iMac (or any Mac for that matter) . Mine doesn't make a sound except when the cooling fans kick in occasionally during heavy use.

[ch33z1l]

http://apcmag.com/killer-upgrade-how...c-with-ssd.htm

Worth a read. Industry leaders are currently Sandforce, Intel and OCZ.

Just make sure you get the synchronous type.

[marcyeo]

How much space would be necessary for a SSD these days? Would 80GB be sufficient for your average PC user with Windows 7 and to store all your office documents and programs, or would upgrading to a 120GB SSD be better and safer?

[Professor Farnsworth]

with HDD's, always buy the biggest you can - 80GB would be 'sufficient' yes but 120 would be better.

[ch33z1l]

Originally Posted by marcyeo

How much space would be necessary for a SSD these days? Would 80GB be sufficient for your average PC user with Windows 7 and to store all your office documents and programs, or would upgrading to a 120GB SSD be better and safer?

Get your SSD, but also a mechanical drive to store your document and program data on.

For best results, its best to utilise the SSD for the OS, and for games such as Battlefiled 3, Call of Duty, etc.

[ch33z1l]

Another handy link:

http://apcmag.com/how-to-pick-the-ri...our-system.htm