Well iam wondering if a Solid-State-Disc (short ssd) is worth its price nowadays.. (for example 200€ for 80 gb is quite huge if you ask me)
i've read much about the advantages in speed/sound etc. but iam still unsure to buy one for my OS/Program/Game- Data
Does anyone have experience with ssd's and stuff? :)
The cheap SSDs are sometimes slower than hard drives or suffer from performance degradation and/or lower lifetimes. Nothing I'd want in my computer. And the expensive SSDs are, well, expensive.
Right now, I'd rather stick more RAM into my computer. Another 4 GB can be had at ~50€, and it'll improve your computer's speed by a lot. The first time I start a program, it's as slow as before. The second time, everything's in RAM anyway, and RAM is faster than a SSD.
Best thing is: the RAM cache will contain the data I'm currently using. It doesn't make me choose which of the ~2 Terabytes of data are important enough to be squeezed onto a 64G SSD and which aren't. Not to mention that I really don't want to split my work data over two file systems.
SSD are nice if you
a) write a lot (databases, large virtual memory, ..)
b) care about boot-times or the time to start an app for the *first* time
c) actually have a large set of files that are accessed regulary, overflowing your RAM-cache
I currently have 6 GB of Ram, it's a little slow after booting or when changing activities, but after a while everything's fine. SSDs will improve over time, in speed, reliability and price, so I see little reason to buy one yet. 128GB for ~100-150€ at good speeds? I'll buy. But not yet.
Of course, YMMV.
And anyway, want to invest 200€ in your productivity? My primary suggestion would be a 24" monitor and proper input devices before going after moar horse power.
I have an Intel X-25M SSD and I like it a lot. There is a clear difference in the speed of random (non-cached) file access over my previous WD Caviar HDD, and the boot time (from GRUB to login) went from 12 to 8 seconds. And of course, it's dead silent.
If you use GNU/Linux or another *nix derivative, disable journaling and mount /var/log and /tmp as tmpfs, and the SSD will last longer.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Tub wrote:
The cheap SSDs are sometimes slower than hard drives or suffer from performance degradation and/or lower lifetimes.
This is one of the big letdowns of my EeePC 1000. It has two solid state drives; an 8gb and a 32gb. The 8gb is pretty good performance; possibly slightly better than a traditional hard drive, however the 32gb SSD is terrible. While the burst read speed is pretty good still, the sustained read/write speed is awful, and this is really noticable when loading an operating system off of it. So yeah, stay clear of cheap SSDs because you might end up with something that's only really useful for lower power consumption (and possibly not even that).
Of course, these aren't likely to be problems for PCs...
Also, you might consider looking at Samsung's Spinpoint F3. I bought one recently and it's pretty impressive. While platters will never be as fast as SSD overall, it's still fast enough for all my needs.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
And it's pretty much the best SSD you can find too. I've read quite a bit about that. There's a lot of crap in the SSD market. But Intel seems to do a pretty good job on the benchmark test.
It's still costing quite a bit, but if you are in search of a big increase in performance for your computer. Go for it.
Be sure to read a couple of review and article about the SSD you want to buy. It will give you valuable information.
There is a clear difference in the speed of random (non-cached) file access over my previous WD Caviar HDD, and the boot time (from GRUB to login) went from 12 to 8 seconds.
certain words bolded for emphasis. :) Those numbers are always impressive, but may only be a fraction of your real-world use cases.
Johannes wrote:
And of course, it's dead silent.
which would only help if an SSD allows you to get rid of all the mechanical HDs. At 200€ for 80GB, I don't see that happening for anything but mobile computers OR casual computer users which wouldn't need an SSD anyway.
I have a mixed opinion on SSDs. Theoretically their technology does allow a lot better performance as well as longevity margins. But practically they have only recently started surpassing top-of-the-line HDDs in non-random performance while still retaining a very high per-GB cost and longevity issues with certain OS/filesystem combinations producing a lot of small writes that wear down the cycle count really quick.
Currently I see two possible uses for an SSD.
1. System/temp storage drive. It will likely surpass any amount of surplus RAM in overall performance gain due to eliminating one of the main bottlenecks, and it doesn't have to be large (32 to 64 GB is already enough). Disadvantage: will probably need an increase of rewrite cycle count by an order of magnitude to be safe (by my notion of being reasonable).
2. Laptop drive. Will save a lot of battery, drastically improve speeds, and decrease the amount of moving parts, which is very good. Disadvantage: needs to be larger (below 128 GB just won't cut it, and I'd rather have 256+) and less expensive.
That is all assuming using a good drive like the aforementioned Intel X-25M.
As the technology progresses SSDs will fully surpass HDDs at the point where the latter will approach the limit of data density (which is already pretty close at hand — modern drives are close to storing data at molecular level).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
moozooh wrote:
2. Laptop drive. Will save a lot of battery, drastically improve speeds, and decrease the amount of moving parts, which is very good. Disadvantage: needs to be larger (below 128 GB just won't cut it, and I'd rather have 256+) and less expensive.
You'll be disappointed with me then.
I get away perfectly fine with just 160gb total space, you just need to manage it well.
My laptop has 80GB and I get along just fine. I just don't store massive amounts of media on it. I guess if you're the kind of person who needs to carry their entire media library with them when they travel 80GB wouldn't cut it; personally when I travel, watching TV isn't exactly high on my priority list. If I'm on an airplane, well, that's why I carry books with me.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
If you're using your laptop for work and your work (or hobbies, for instance) happens to involve large amounts of data it's not going to be productive to have a small drive. I'm rather the kind of person that doesn't enjoy having to carry an external USB drive wherever I go.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Ahh, yes, work is a different matter. I'd wager that most jobs don't require carrying more than 10GB worth of data around, though.
I do have to admit it's rather distressing how quickly FCEUX's AVI capture can take up space...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
