Any of your computer guys buy a SSD (solid state disk) yet?

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geepondy

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If so, please relate your experience. Is there a huge difference on how quick windows and your software applications start? Newegg is selling an OCZ 120 Gig SSD for $289. I guess these aren't quite the cutting edge compared to Intel models. When I can get at least a 160Gig for maybe the low $200's I might bite. The way things are going, maybe less then a year.
 
i watch a tech show thats awesuem thats live there is something new comeing out id wait prices will drop and they will be faster i dont recall all the details but wait the show is on wednesdays on twittv
 
I put one in a new MacBook Pro I bought my sister for her birthday. It's very fast, very noticeably fast, but as with anything else there are significant differences among all these things so when looking into getting one check BOTH the write as well as the read speed.

There are 2 technologies of SSD's. See Wikipedia's introduction to SSD's, especially the difference between SLC vs. MLC designs. It used to be that SLC was always way faster than MLC, but difference is now being diminished by clever caching and other goodies.

Forgot to mention that I use large flash drives all the time and they keep getting faster. My current fastest is a Kensington Hyper-X 32GB. I back up Windows partitions to the drive. I suppose it's not by definition a true SSD, but at 32 GB even more than an OS can fit onto it, it seems like a real, useable drive to me.
 
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Prices are going to drop quickly over time, everyone buying now will be embarrassed by next year. The only real reason to buy now is if you have a notebook that sees a lot of abuse.
 
I have a 64GB SSD in my Sony VAIO P. It runs a little faster I suppose, but I don't have an identical hard drive equipped unit to run for comparison. The main thing for me is that it is quiet and would probably withstand knocks better which will occur with such a small computer.
 
The stupid uncommon 1.8" drive in my thinkpad X41 died last year (about a month before the warranty was up) and I bought a 8GB CF card to replace it. My thinkpad now runs much smoother now. Everything loads much quicker and I don't think I'll need to worry about this storage medium crapping out - not before something else like the HSF/display/keyboard/etc.
 
The problem with SSD is that is has a definite lifespan. You can only write to any particular spot a certain number of times. The SSD uses some clever tricks to keep the writes spread around, but if you have write intensive applications you will find it failing in 2 or 3 years.

On the other hand, a premium spinning hard drive is likely to work for many years in ideal conditions, though it could crash after only a few months.

As our SUN rep said, they figure in 2 years the current tech would be obsolete and replaced by newer bigger better faster anyway. Yes, they are talking about a 3 year lifecycle as being acceptable. I guess that they may be right as I've worked at a few places that leased so they could replace all their systems every two years.


Daniel
 
I'm waiting to buy one for my gaming machine but the SSD's just aren't quite there yet. I'm looking forward to them though. Tom's Hardware has done some good testing on SSD's if you happen to make it over there.
 
I configured my Dell notebook to include a 64G SSD. It was a $700 upgrade which was very expensive for 15 months ago, but I really like it. Completely quiet, fast, and virtually shock proof. Now prices are way down and capacities are up.

The only moving parts I have on my computer are the DVD drive, the fan, and the keyboard/buttons/hinges. That can't be a bad way to go.
 
I ran into a "great deal" on a used ASUS minibook with a SSD, seemed a LOT slower than a standard HDD. Used it, tried it, certainly didn't like the compressed keyboard either.

I like a large "Enter" & "Shift" key on the right specifically. It had a big "Enter" key, but the "Shift" key was the same size as the letters. My little finger (RH) kept "getting lost".

It's gone, sold it for what I paid for it...at least I got a better "tryout" than just standing by one in a store.

I'm not totally against them yet. One needs to make sure the physical keyboard is compatible with their own typing style/hands.

Back OT...I don't plan on any SSDs soon, at least until they've improved.
 
gadget_lover said:
The problem with SSD is that is has a definite lifespan. You can only write to any particular spot a certain number of times. The SSD uses some clever tricks to keep the writes spread around, but if you have write intensive applications you will find it failing in 2 or 3 years.

On the other hand, a premium spinning hard drive is likely to work for many years in ideal conditions, though it could crash after only a few months.

Daniel
Click to expand...

Daniel - I think you are right when it comes to servers and desktops, but as someone who had a HD crash while flying / hitting turbulence, I think the greater shock resistance is quite interesting. The main challenge for me is capacity, especially now that I have started putting digital pics on my laptop. I scanned some medium format film this past week and the file size was 960mb per negative. :eek:

I am not entirely sure how fast prices will fall further, even though we are used to this trend. Flash memory makers have already been loosing money for a long time, some have gone into bancruptcy, and some facilities have closed. Perhaps a good combination would be enough flash on board to run 95% of the time on replaceable flash, and the rest with a conventional HD.
 
With the recent price drop on Intel X25-M drives with the release of the 2nd generation I'm getting a 80GB for my new MacBook Pro. When I had my ThinkPad, I told myself I would get a SSD for my next notebook. The MacBook came faster than expected and the price drop from Intel came just in time! ;) Sure, they are more expensive than traditional hard drives but I don't need that much space on my notebook. I lived with a 80GB hard drive for many years on my ThinkPad, I can still live with 80GB for a few years and anyway, USB 2.5" hard drives are cheap for when I need storage. On the other side, the speed improvement, the lower power consumption and the shock resistance are really attractive.

Now... I'm just waiting for these 2nd generation X25-M to be available for sale...
 
gadget_lover said:
The problem with SSD is that is has a definite lifespan. You can only write to any particular spot a certain number of times. The SSD uses some clever tricks to keep the writes spread around, but if you have write intensive applications you will find it failing in 2 or 3 years.

On the other hand, a premium spinning hard drive is likely to work for many years in ideal conditions, though it could crash after only a few months.
Click to expand...

I agree with what Daniel said. Write intensive applications will shorten the lifespan somewhat. This might not matter as much as you think in a corporate environment where a failed drive is simply reimaged and user data is stored on a network drive, so the increase in speed and productivity might be worth the tradeoff in possible lifetime reduction. On the other hand, if you keep everything on your personal machine's internal SSD and you're not too fastidious about making backups, you might have a rude awakening in a couple of years.

I'm toying with the idea of installing one on a machine that I've built specifically for video editing, where all of the content is eventually offloaded to external media so a catastrophic failure might not be so bad, and I will definitely benefit from the speed improvement.
 
SSDs (or any hard drives for that matter) don't have all that large of an effect on gaming, since basically everything is loaded into RAM (unless you have to use the paging file, in which case you need more RAM). Having an SSD would only improve load times, and not overall frames per second, so it wouldn't really result in smoother gameplay.
I am probably going to wait until SSD's become more mainstream, since they aren't cost effective. If I want to spend $600 on storage, I could literally get 6TB (or more) worth of 7200 RPM hard drives in all sorts of different RAID arrays, or less with RAID 1 or RAID 5. OR, I could get 2 WD velociraptor 10,000RPM hard drives in RAID0, which would be plenty fast.
 
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