SSDs

[Wingnutt]

Ill be doing a system upgrade in about 2 months or so.  And im considering replacing my Western Digital Raptor with a SSD.

such as: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227462

I would use it to store the OS, and Games.. I keep my machine pretty lean, and use very little space, I will probably sell the raptor, I have a 1TB external drive for bulk storage. (music, movies, backup/whatever)

anyone else playing with one of these yet?
 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

SSD:s are not completely finished technology yet. When Windows 7 comes out and the drives start supporting the 'trim' technology then SSDs will become an option.

As of now with no option to trim the drive the SSD will be fast only untill the point when it gets overwritten with data once. SSD's have load balancing systems which ensure that you will use all of the SSD evenly for two reasons:

First of all SSD's have a limited rewrite amount. You can rewrite a memory block only so many times. So the data needs to be evenly split all over the whole SSD to avoid premature breakdown. They should last at least 5 years but they _will_ fail in the end.

Second which I'm sure is very much intentional too, is the fact that writing on an SSD is fast only if the memory block is 'virgin' meaning it doesn't contain already older information. When the SSD needs to delete a block it slows down to a crawl, even slower than 5400rpm laptop drive! It means your new SSD will absolutely fly but then slow, slow, slow untill it's a crawling expensive brick. Chalenge has some experience on this I think..

A function called 'trim' will clean those used but stale memory blocks so that they're again ready for fast writing. Last time I checked there were maybe 1 SSD model that supported TRIM and that's intel x25 super expensive SSD.

[Skuzzy]

What Ripley said is very true.

It is too bad Microsoft has not organized the operating system installation by allowing the static content to be placed in one folder and dynamic content in another folder.  Loading the static data onto an SSD would make for a really fast system.

[TilDeath]

All SSDs are NOT created equal.  OCZ just happens to be at the forefront being the only manufacture / distributor doing extensive RD.  As they release each generation of SSDs the knowledge learned is implemented.  This is also reflected in the price.  For instance the SSD (Vertex series) chosen by the poster shows a cost about 340.00 Their Vertex-EX series for the same 120GB of storage has a dealer cost of 1,112.00 and is the neighborhood of 140% faster in all aspects.  I would wait a year or two more before making a purchase.  Let the drives and the technology catch up to each other.

TD

PS a 1TB drive has a dealer cost of 3,327.00 where as a WD 1TB can be had for about 109.00

[MrRiplEy[H]]

All SSDs are NOT created equal.  OCZ just happens to be at the forefront being the only manufacture / distributor doing extensive RD.  As they release each generation of SSDs the knowledge learned is implemented.  This is also reflected in the price.  For instance the SSD (Vertex series) chosen by the poster shows a cost about 340.00 Their Vertex-EX series for the same 120GB of storage has a dealer cost of 1,112.00 and is the neighborhood of 140% faster in all aspects.  I would wait a year or two more before making a purchase.  Let the drives and the technology catch up to each other.

TD

PS a 1TB drive has a dealer cost of 3,327.00 where as a WD 1TB can be had for about 109.00

OCZ is releasing or released a firmware update that gives beta support for trim by the way. Still for a gaming computer it's just a huge waste of money.

Professional work such as database queries where fast access time is really important is where I'd see use for the SSD's. I wouldn't pay double the price to get a quarter shorter loading time on a game though.

[Hamltnblue]

I've been running a Gskill Titan 256Gig for 4 months now and love it.  It makes the raptor look like a 5400rpm drive.  I previously was running raptors.  Wear will not be a problem for you.  SSD's have built in wear leveling and can be continuously be written to for years without wearing out. There are plenty of forums on the topic.  I would agree though that if buying a new drive, get one with trim to prevent the drive from slowing writes over time.
Good Luck.

[Bino]

Here at work I've been asked to test an SSD in one of our standard laptops...  and WOW is this sucker fast!!!  

I'm running a Corsair CMFSSD-128GBG2D drive in a Dell Latittude E6500 (Intel T9800 @ 2.93) with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and it makes an enormous difference in the "user experience."  I ran this same laptop with the original spinning platters HD for about a month, so the improvement is very obvious.  Programs load in the blink of an eye.  The box boots up from cold in a little under thirty seconds.  And according to the Corsair support forums, this latest version of the Samsung controller has firmware that will perform a "self trim" kind of operation on NTFS file systems.  I'm going to keep a weather eye on this little machine for any signs of performance degradation.

Stay tuned...

[Spikes]

May be time to invest in a 64gb one for Windows and core files such as FF and what not.

[sethipus]

I bought an OCZ Vertex 120gb for around $350 or so in time for the shipping of Windows 7.  I installed Win7 on it, and the various applications I've got running on this machine, including Aces High.  The boot time is speeded up quite nicely, as well as the application load times.  My computer is running a 4+ year old chip, so it's not the speed demon it could be with today's latest and greatest cpu tech, but with this SSD it still feels nice and snappy in the user experience.

As has been mentioned, the wear-leveling and whatnot make the whole "you can only write to it so many times" thing really a non-issue.  Most of us would probably take a few years longer to wear this thing out than we're likely to be using it at all - in five years, won't we have upgraded to something even larger and faster?  I rather think so.

If $350 is out of one's reach at the moment, then OK, wait, this isn't going to make anyone cream their jeans or anything.   Certainly don't let your family go hungry so you can buy an SSD.  But if one has the $350 or whatever and wants to spend it on toys for their computer, the SSD is a good one.  I am very happy with the OCZ Vertex.