Features - QOTW: Is now the best time to buy an SSD?

[TGWTHF]

i'm playing the waiting game gonna wait for them to drop to a more reasonable price for their size, I'd rather have a hard drive with 1TB for £80 than a SSD with 120GBs for the same price, speed doesn't mean much to me, its what, a few seconds?, big wow...

[Hicks12]

i'm playing the waiting game gonna wait for them to drop to a more reasonable price for their size, I'd rather have a hard drive with 1TB for £80 than a SSD with 120GBs for the same price, speed doesn't mean much to me, its what, a few seconds?, big wow...

But it's not just a few seconds, it's a few seconds on everything. People will spent 100 quid more on an i7 vs an i5 which in a lot of things is only a few seconds. Ssds performance difference is huge when you get one, it feels like a massive system upgrade.

[crossy]

(TGWTHF said "speed doesn't mean much to me, its what, a few seconds?, big wow...") But it's not just a few seconds, it's a few seconds on everything. People will spent 100 quid more on an i7 vs an i5 which in a lot of things is only a few seconds. Ssds performance difference is huge when you get one, it feels like a massive system upgrade.

This^. And I'm going to argue that faster access to OS and all the DLL's etc just makes a system feel more responsive all over. Heck, TGWTHF, if I was in the position of being able to afford an i7 with HDD boot or and i5 with SSD boot, then I'll unfailingly pick that i5-based system.

And it's not just Windows either - downgraded my Dell D620 (which is quite old - so no fancy SATAIII or even AHCI, and only Core2Duo - remember those?) from 300GB Travelstar to 128GB Samsung SSD last week - and now that has a button2button (power to "login") boot time of less than 20 seconds with Ubuntu 12.04. And that's on a system that's quite highly loaded (3 drives including boot, plus a PC Card controller supporting a further RAID1 array) with the operating system unoptimized apart from the "noatime,discard" mount tweaks to extend the life of the SSD and activate TRIM support. Oh, and a good chunk of that "<20 seconds" time is take up with the D620's POST checks.

So yes, TGWTHF it's a "few seconds" - but two seconds here and four seconds there very quickly add up to a very noticable lag. The other desktop Windows box we've got here feels like a complete sluggard loading - even allowing for that other system's one core to my six, although the "other" PC has a 300GB WD V.Raptor as it's boot drive!

The dilemma I've now got is whether to use that second Samsung 830 SSD I bought to replace the perfectly good, but getting a little tight, Vertex2E in my Windows rig - or offer my wife a similar "downgrade" for her Dell Inspiron, figuring faster boot and longer battery life might win me some "brownie points".

Really tempted to go ahead with my original plan and swap in the Samsung830 for the Vertex2E because folks here seem to be suggesting that the 830 is a better performing drive for hosting an OS. Especially as, unlike my D620, my Windows rig does support SATAIII/AHCI (or is it SATA600 - terms seem to be interchangable).

[Percy1983]

I would but I really can't be bothered with the reinstall, the cache drives do look more interesting as a good bridge.

[Niy]

64GB of Ram, why should I care a SSD xD

[CCODEZ]

64GB of Ram, why should I care a SSD xD

If you store your windows files on that ram then I'm sure everyone might agree no need for an SSD, untill you reboot/crash....

[wtfitskeagan]

Y u no buy ssd?

[danroyle]

I just purchased a Samsung ssd 830 256 gb to replace my 120 agility 3. But looking at the data on my pc I have so little on it I may keep both and have one as a steam drive

[crossy]

I would but I really can't be bothered with the reinstall, the cache drives do look more interesting as a good bridge.

If you get a decent kit then chances are it'll come with Acronis/Ghost/etc that'll let you do a lift n' shift with no reinstall needed. Heck, the Samsung 830 laptop kit I got even came with a USB-SATA cable, so no need to dig out my SATA drive cradle.

If a potential reinstall is all that's holding you back from an SSD-based solution then I'd say "go for it" and forget the halfway house of a cache drive, unless your space requirements are such that a suitably sized SSD would be unaffordable.

I need someone to do a cheap deal on a decent 256GB SSD now...

[jimbo90210us]

Same here. Just waiting for the prices of the 240GB ish ones to drop to a level that I can afford.

[Attila the Bun]

Intresting point here about the "waiting game", last week ARIA had the Crucial M4 256gb on offer for £149.99...today it's £134.99...in between these prices it was £165.99...NOW, if I wait another week what will the M4 256gb prices be then?

Also, I noticed that the Samsung 1TB HDD has dropped under the £60 mark this week so it looks like the drop in SSD prices is beginning to have a knock on effect.

[Skywalker]

Yup, remember the prices for 60Gb ones like a year ago? Prices have fallen drastically and I still don't have one

Luckily, I am about to get one in just few weeks hell yea! hahah