Solid State HDD's

[VladTepes]

So... tell me about 'em.

They sound like they ought to be blisteringly fast at loading the OS etc as they dont have to spin up and fart around but is this just wishful thinking?

[incisor]

big differences between brands....

do your homework ;)

PS i didn't bother on my latest box

[solmanic]

Brilliant. I use a 120GB one as my primary system and applications disk and keep the data on regular disks. Boot time is massively faster than anything with regular platter disks. Also my CAD package loads super-fast.

I am using an OCZ Vertex something or other which hasn't given any trouble at all for the last year since installing it.

[incisor]

just did a test in the workshop

the 128g ocz vertex 3 will load 64bit windows 7 in 19 seconds on a sata iii port

a western digital black 1tb sata iii 64mb cache 7200 rpm drive takes 40 seconds to do the same load

a seagate 7200.12 takes 39 seconds

the ssd is about twice the price of the 1tb drives (on average)

[Pedro_The_Swift]

Hey Vlad,, I thought we'd already covered SSD's??:confused:
maybe the great database crash of '11 deleted it,,,:eek:
there was a great link to a test of the fastest SSD's around,,:(

[Tombie]

Have our lives got so time precious that 20 seconds is an issue???

Dear me, we have got ourselves into bad shape.

Put the kettle on, hit the button.
Make a coffee and then sit at the PC ;-)
Much more relaxing!

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner

[Warb]

I had a nettop running on a Corsair SSD. After 11 months the drive died, no longer recognised by the motherboard. It took 3 months for the distributor to give me a replacement, and the new drive is labelled "refurbished". Whilst that may be a functional replacement, I do not regard it as a replacement on an equal basis, because a refurbished drive has a far lower $ value should I choose to sell it.

So, the drive was quick, and used less power. But it failed after 11 months. I have used hundreds of disk drives, starting with 10MB drives in the mid 80's, through large RAID installations through to the current crop of 2TB+ portable drives. In all that time I have had only a couple of unexplained catastrophic drive failures (lost all data without warning). I have owned one SSD, and it failed catastrophically in 11 months.

I did some investigating, just out of interest. I do not recall where the information was located, but the warranty return rate on laptops with SSD's was far higher (two or three times) than for those traditional drives.

My personal conclusion is that if the 4W of power saving, or the few seconds of Windows load time is important, then spend the money and get a SSD. But make sure it's completely backed up, preferably in a "one button restore" manner so that when/if it fails you don't lose either data or time. Either that or use several SSD's in a RAID (protection not performance) so that the failed drive will not impact you too much. Of course all data should be backed up, but most people don't bother because generally speaking disc drives are fairly reliable. SSD's just don't seem to be.

By the way, the replacement "refurbushed" SSD is still on my desk. The time taken from un-sleeping my PC is not reduced enough by an SSD to warrant the effort, and I rebuilt the nettop with a traditional drive because I got tired of waiting for the replacement drive.....

[VladTepes]

Tombie I came to the same conclusion as you. Cheers all

[Warb]

OK, I've just found a use for my SSD where its performance can help but any reliability issues should not cause problems.

I've built a new PC using a motherboard based on the Intel Z68 chipset. This chipset uses Intels "Smart Response Technology", which allows a SSD to be used as a cache. There are two modes of operation, the "enhanced" mode in which data is simultaneously written to the SSD and the normal disk, and "maximised" in which the SSD caches reads and writes, and the writes are sync'ed to the normal drive intermittently.

I have configured a mirrored pair of 1TB hard drives, providing data protection (no performance increase) and then used the SSD with Intels SRT in enhanced mode to provide a cache from which data is read.

The system now automatically caches any reads to the SSD, so that future reads are far quicker (being SSD speed rather than spinner speed), but because all writes are made to both spinner and SSD, the write performance is not improved (writes are normally fairly minimal compared to reads) but a failure of the SSD will not kill the system.

And yes, it seem to work. Windows 7 load time is much reduced, opening programs is far quicker, and the system feels faster. All at minimal risk, and all using a 32Gb SSD that I already had.

So, whilst I still would not make myself dependent on an SSD, I have found a way to utilise the SSD performance advantage without (hopefully) creating a reliability issue. Obviously a mirrored pair of SSD's rather than spinners+SRT would give better performance, but for the far lower cost of a 32Gb or 64Gb SSD it would seem that with SRT we can have almost the best of both worlds......

[incisor]

in my experience, raid 0 and ssd's is a no go zone if you want any serious life out of them... and you lose the windows 7 trim support

ocz's new pcie hybrid drive looks like something that will really lift performance / reliability to the point i would be interested but the price might frighten me off.

[djam1]

I work on Computers at least 14 hours a day and appreciate the performance increase.
I have been using the OCZ versions on the OS without issue with Hybrid drives for data and RAM Drives for browsing caches I find it an excellent setup.
In regards to the comments about the miniscule savings in time and how we should get over it.
Should we all drive Series Land Rovers with a cruising speed of 80 Kmh I was more than happy to do that back in the 70s and 80s must confess I find it difficult today.

[twr7cx]

They make a big difference. Every laptop I've owned over the last few years I've run one in. Ideally I buy the laptop with the original manufacturers unit (e.g. in my Macbook Air or before that Lenovo ThinkPad X300), but in my Apple Macbook Pro 17" I have a decent Intel unit that I fitted. It was recommended on the Mac forums as being of good performance and compatibility.

As for reliability. I have had one unit die on me (out of 8 that I think I have or had) - it was a cheaper brand that was new to the market. Out of the three laptops I've owned with factory SSD's all survived at least 3 years with me without any issues - I'm currently typing on one and my mother has one other. All of the big name brand SSD's that I've purchased have been fine and reliable.
I have had both a Samsung and WD HDD die on me in the last 4 years though - so for my personally, at the moment reliability between SSD's and conventional HDD's is about equal.
My Macs primary HDD's are all backed up by Time Machine to a Time Capsule and the storage HDD's are RAID 10 and another is RAID 1, so I have some redundancy anyway...

I don't run one for my main desktop rig though due to the expense of them for large capacities and the low capacity limit.

Another option is the hybrid drives, such as Seagate Momentus XT. It is a typical 7200rpm traditional hard drive with a small SSD. I found this was a good unit in my Mac Mini. My brother and dad also run these and have been happy with them. They're cheap and faster than the standard hard drives in most laptops.

And for the comments on whats the big deal on saving 20 seconds on boot times, it's nothing. Your right 20 seconds on boot times is nothing. But if you save a second per process, and you do 60 processes in a day, after 60 days you've saved an hour of your time... It's also much nicer and less frustrating to use a zippy speedier computer. I've found that faster HDD's can put some more breathe into older machines!

[Warb]

I'm impressed that people have had such good experiences with SSD's, especially "at least three years" from laptops, because they were really only just starting to be fitted to laptops in late 2008.

I believe Intels first generation drives were announced in 2007, revealed in August 2008 and released shortly afterwards, so these units are only just three years old!

[twr7cx]

I'm impressed that people have had such good experiences with SSD's, especially "at least three years" from laptops, because they were really only just starting to be fitted to laptops in late 2008.

I am currently sitting working on a 2008 Apple MacBook Air fitted from factory with a 64GB SSD (it's the original first model, I believe perhaps one of Apples first offerings with an SSD in it?), which I believe is non removable soldered to the main board. My mother has the exact same computer. It's 2011 now, so that's 3 years, perhaps with a little rounding up...

[Warb]

I don't doubt it for a moment. I was simply surprised that anyone had gone out and purchased three, very expensive laptops containing what was at the time a brand new technology!

At the time, as you know, SSD was in excess of 10 times the price of spinners. In the AirBook the 64Gb SSD was an option (replacing the "iPod" hard drive) costing AU$1400 extra, taking the 2008 SSD AirBook to AU$4000+. I am sure you can understand why I was surprised that someone had spent in excess of $12,000 on laptops in a few months.