Solid Stae Drives - Nice to Have / Boast About or Real Performance Improvements?

[Benedict_Arnold]

Bet this comes out blank.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Oh! It didn't! The Tippex fairies must be on strike or something! 🙂

Anyway, SSDs.

What are the advantages of regular SATA-III mechanical / magnetic hard disks?

Data transfer rates (burst) are both quoted at 6 gigabits (bytes?) a second, so no advantage there unless the SSDs maintain a sustained 6 giga-whatever per second rate?

Reliability / up time?

Seek times?

Please let me know if they're worth it or just a luxury. The only benefit I can see for me, with my powerr apps being CAD and finite element analysis, are seek times, accessing lots of .lib and .dll files over and over again.

 

[John Duncan]

Real performance benefits. It makes most sense to have your OS and apps on one (for cost if nothing else), and storage on a normal hard disk. Note that reliability of SSDs is lower than ordinary HDs.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Note that reliability of SSDs is lower than ordinary HDs.

That kills it for me I'm afraid. I REALLY wouldn't want to be 23 hours into a 24 hour finite element run and have the SSD go "transistors up" on me. |(

Think my (much less) money better spent RAID-ing the boot disk. The data disks are already RAID-10'd (4 x 1 terabyte Western Digital Caviar Blacks giving 1.82 terabyte true capacity) on a separate RAID card, which may or may not need upgrading for more speed. The motherboard will support RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, and RAID10, but I can only fit one more hard disk in the case, so I have to go RAID0 or RAID1. Which do I go for for reliability, which for speed?

 

[scene]

If it's for a root/boot disk, I'd consider an SSD hybrid drive - one of those where you get a smallish (32GB) SSD strapped to an old fashion lump of spinning rust (500MB-1TB) - A number of manufacturers use these in their laptops / onebox solutions to keep cost down while upping performance. As the SSD is mostly used read-only (for boot) less issues with flash redundancy.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

If it's for a root/boot disk, I'd consider an SSD hybrid drive - one of those where you get a smallish (32GB) SSD strapped to an old fashion lump of spinning rust (500MB-1TB) - A number of manufacturers use these in their laptops / onebox solutions to keep cost down while upping performance. As the SSD is mostly used read-only (for boot) less issues with flash redundancy.

Not worried about boot speed so much as data reliability (first and foremost) and sustained read / write performance. Not sure a hybrid drive will improve reliability - if the SSD bit goes transistors up then surely the spinning rust follows suit (or at least isn't available) - or make it worse.

Think I'll stick to spinning rust - the gramp-ophone solution 🙂

 

[AnotherJoe]

Note that reliability of SSDs is lower than ordinary HDs.

I would argue against that. Most reports show that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs.

First gen SSDs were poor, but modern SSDs (gens3/4) are much better.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/articles/SSD-MORE-RELIABLE-HDD/news.aspx

 

[tino]

Just fitted one to a 3 year old laptop and the performance boost is most definite. Boot up time is approx 10 seconds with Windows 8. The reported Windows Performance index is about 50% greater. I too was worried about reliability ... I noticed that some of the consumer drives are guaranteed for three years, but there are pro-sumer drives that are guaranteed for at least 5 - a little bit more expensive but not overly so. I went with the latter - 250GB for a shade over £150.

 

[abacus]

Reliability is fine these days (Unless you buy a cheap and nasty one)

Access time is almost instantaneous

The 6GB/s relates to the SATA III interface not the drive speed

Performance, if you have 2 x 10,000rpm Raptor HDD in a Raid 0 array, then they will seem like you are using a floppy compared to an SSD. (And if you Raid 0, 2 x SSD then make sure you hold on tight)

Hope this helps

Bill

 

[Papalazarou75]

I have an OCZ in this lappy & it has been a great boost, I think reliability was poor on early ssd's now they are fine,windows 7 & 8 are geared up for them,easy to install, cool, fast & quiet, just a little expensive is my only con.

 

[Dougal1331]

As others have said, SSDs are much, much better now than when they first popped up.

As long as they are set in AHCI mode in the BIOS, Windows 7 will automatically use the TRIM function to manage the disk and keep it in good shape- remove garbage, defrag and optimise the free space.

I built my current rig in January 2012, and my SSD has not put a foot wrong yet- and my diagnostic software reports zero bad sectors.

I use a 60GB OCZ Agility3 for Windows, Antivirus and anything which runs at boot. Everything else is on a couple of 1TB Samsung HDDs.

An SSD, currently, is the biggest bang-for-buck performance upgrade you can make. I thought the same as you til I bought one- I'd say do it, you'll be amazed at the difference!

 

[Cofnchtr]

Hi,

I also installed an OCZ SSD last summer. Speed boost is more than apparent - programmes open quicker i.e. Corel Photoshop XI4 opens random pics quicker.

Had no reliability issues and my PC is only switched off/restarted after any updates.

You will love it.

Cheers,

Cofnchtr.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

I've just set up my media PC with twin SATA 3 gig / sec hard disks in a striped RAID array. I'm getting 60 megabytes / sec continuous transfer rates, so not too worried.

As for the main PC, everything is RAID'd just in case and I really don't want to replace 3 terabytes of effective storage space with SSDs 🙂

 

[iMark]

We have recently bought 2 new Macs to replace a 7 year old MacBook Pro and a 6 year old MacBook.

I bought a Mac Mini with a regular hard drive for my office and my gf bought a MacBook Air.

The MacBook Air with SSD is much snappier than the Mini. The Mini will get a bit snappier if I add more RAM, but it won't be as fast as the Air if I don't swap the hard drive for SSD. Maybe that's a future upgrade because SSD is still quite expensive and the Mini has got a 1TB hard drive.

 

[techboy]

SSDs are a nice real world boost, but the least important when compared to your cpu, motherboard, ram, gpu.

Nevertheless, some stuff only a good SSD can solve. Though you need to have ample budget to get one of a decent size, no point in compromising in other areas for a big SSD.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Well, my RAID10 array cooked itself again this week, 4 x 1 terabyte hard disks and a shedload of data lost again due to overheating inside the case, I think.

If I can't resussitate it I'm seriously thinking about progressively switching to 1 terabye SSDs and relying on the spinning rust for backups.

GRRR!

Note to the reader - Western Digital Caviar Blacks run VERY hot.

 

[Xanderzdad]

Why not save a fortune and get proper NAS spec HDD that much cooler and are optimised for that usage?

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Why not save a fortune and get proper NAS spec HDD that much cooler and are optimised for that usage?

NAS drives are slower, right? I was hoping for speed as well as security.

Anyway, I've bitten the bullet and just ordered a 1 terabye Samsung SSD, 600 Imperialist Yankee Petro-Dollars from Amazon. Should be here tomorrow. From now on spinning rust is for backups only.

Linkey:

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-7TE1T0BW/dp/B00E3W16OU/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1382369031&sr=1-1

Three or so of the disks that fried are still under warranty (one is less than a week old - grr) and the replacements will be u to build a USB-connected backup drive for the wife's business - with LOTS of cooling. :wall: :wall: :wall: :wall:

 

[bigboss]

I don't think they're particularly slow. They're designed for NAS use specifically & are more reliable.

 

[Xanderzdad]

Why not save a fortune and get proper NAS spec HDD that much cooler and are optimised for that usage?

NAS drives are slower, right? I was hoping for speed as well as security.

As big boss mentions they are optimised. The newer 'Red' ones are a lot faster than my 3 yr old expensive 7200rpm HDD's. They have exceeded all my needs and are silent and run cool. The optimisation and cache also makes them theoretically more reliable as they tactically use the disk space.

 

[Xanderzdad]

This is the type I bought.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-WD30EFRX-Network-Attached/dp/B00D0243C6/ref=pd_cp_computers_1

UK link I'm afraid but I'm sure you've got them 'over the pond' 😉

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

133 Dollars here, about 80 Quid? The price difference is mainly the VAT, I expect.

Anyway, I'm done with rust.

Here's a poem on the subject of rust:

'RUST'S A MUST'

Mighty ships upon the ocean
Suffer from severe corrosion,
Even those that stay at dockside
Are rapidly becoming oxide.
Alas, that piling in the sea
Is mostly Fe2O3.
And where the ocean meets the shore,
You'll find there's Fe3O4.
'Cause when the wind is salt and gusty,
Things are getting awful rusty.

We can measure, we can test it,
We can halt it or arrest it.
We can gather it and weigh it,
We can coat it, we can spray it.
We examine and dissect it,
We cathodically protect it
We can pick it up and drop it.
But heaven knows we'll never stop it!
So here's to rust, no doubt about it,
Most of us would starve without it.

T.R.B. WATSON (DECEASED)
CORROSION SERVICES COMPANY, LTD.
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA

 

[AnotherJoe]

I've just lashed out on a 240GB OCZ Revodrive3 SSD which has read/writes speeds of 1000/900 MB/s.

Now thats fast.

Windows 8.1 now boots in under 10secs.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

I've just lashed out on a 240GB OCZ Revodrive3 SSD which has read/writes speeds of 1000/900 MB/s.

Now thats fast.

Windows 8.1 now boots in under 10secs.

So I'm running the Currys boom-box and you're running the [insert your favourite expensive hifi brand name here] version. B*gg*r. 😳

Mind you, all I do is a bit of gentle CAD these days. If I was still doing finite element analysis I'd want one :cheers: