Have you tried using SSDs, and would you recommend using them?

[mikeo01]

Haven't read this whole thread, but simply put, I feel like I've wasted money.

To add onto Saracen's car theory, what's the point in having a Lamborghini if you can't fit all your shopping into it? Yes a Lamborghini's performance shines on the motorway (0.1ms access, fast read/write) but your average road probably limits you to 30/40 m/h, so a Ford KA will probably suffice at the task in hand.

Besides once your program is in RAM then your SSD is out of the question. The only thing your Lamborghini is better at is those sharp corners and agility (4K random W/R).

Sometimes slow and steady really does win the race (cost, pure capacity)

Simply put I want to sell my SSD and go back to a big chunky hard drive so no I don't recommend them.

... Unless you're rich

[Saracen]

Well, being a bit contrary .... buy a Lamborghini AND a 4x4.

Getting your program into RAM is one thing, if it all fits, all of the time, along with the OS and all other apps. But that still leaves data. And in reality, almost everybody has a lot of paging going on much of the time.

And, you have to save data too. It's not just about read/load times.

If an SSD is not big enough to comfortably hold everything that needs holding, either use a bigger SSD, or an SSD/HD mix.

I'm not saying SSDs are a bad thing. Just that they're not necessarily always necessary, and that the extent of any benefit depends on what each specific user uses the machine for. The more demanding the use, like disk-intensive gaming, or lots of application-swapping with big apps, the bigger the benefit.

I wouldn't ALWAYS recommend they are used, or ALWAYS hugely beneficial, but they clearly will be to many people, and the more demanding the usage, the more that's likely to be true. It's the absolute "definitely get one" approach I do disagree with. It's more nuanced than that.

[Gareth@scan]

SSD All the way!, The Samsung EVO IS FASTTTT!

I wouldn't mind using a SDHD for a storage drive (ST2000DX001)

[ik9000]

Besides once your program is in RAM then your SSD is out of the question.

autosaves, opening additional files, needing to load fonts/ctb files/print settings/loading help menus - it all goes to the storage drive. As Saracen says paging also goes on, and then what happens when you want to sleep/suspend/hibernate.

As people say SSD give much better responsiveness. To stick with the car analogy you get away from the lights quicker, it has more "torque" to shove you back in your seat even when going uphill. I would liken it to clearing the road of cyclists, pedestrians and speed bumps so you get a clear run without having to slow down all the time. Now if you have all year to get where you're going you might not care. Fine spend it on 4TB HDD instead. If you need to get stuff done and find constantly waiting for ACAD to open that block in editor then get an SSD and enjoy the zippiness.

... Unless you're rich

But that's the point - you don't have to be rich anymore. A decent 120GB EVO is about £70, and a 250GB £130. Money well spent IMO, but each will have to make their own choice.

[mikeo01]

autosaves, opening additional files, needing to load fonts/ctb files/print settings/loading help menus - it all goes to the storage drive. As Saracen says paging also goes on, and then what happens when you want to sleep/suspend/hibernate.

As people say SSD give much better responsiveness. To stick with the car analogy you get away from the lights quicker, it has more "torque" to shove you back in your seat even when going uphill. I would liken it to clearing the road of cyclists, pedestrians and speed bumps so you get a clear run without having to slow down all the time. Now if you have all year to get where you're going you might not care. Fine spend it on 4TB HDD instead. If you need to get stuff done and find constantly waiting for ACAD to open that block in editor then get an SSD and enjoy the zippiness.



But that's the point - you don't have to be rich anymore. A decent 120GB EVO is about £70, and a 250GB £130. Money well spent IMO, but each will have to make their own choice.

I do agree with that. SSDs are great, especially heavy read and writes. That said due to the capacity only a handful of programs actually benefit from it in my opinion.

I personally would rather spend £70 on a 2TB drive or even 1TB then add a SSD cache drive. Also leaves open RAMDisk for things


From my experience with an SSD I'd say it's OK. Just a bit pricey.

[MrRockliffe]

Update:

After having used the SSD for a few days now JESUS MOTHER OF POTATO. Lightning quick. Bootup times are quicker than my chromebook and opening apps is almost instantaneous!

Using a standard hard drive is horrible now, but I don't have the money to buy 2x SSDs for windows and mac

[james.daly91]

Since building my PC with an SSD and HDD, I can honestly say I regret nothing. It's a pain having to tell every single program to download to the HDD instead of the SSD due to the limited space. As Saracen said, you get the Lambo for the speed and the 4x4 for the space - excellent analogy.

I haven't noticed much of a difference in the loading speeds of programs that are located on the HDD, but what I have noticed (and frequently commented on) is the speed that the computer boots up now the OS is loaded on the SSD. From turning on, I'll be browsing the internet in 20 seconds (or more, depending on how many times I fail to type a password in), compared to the 1 minute+ of my previous computer. All in all, never looking back

[young_one]

From a personal perspective:

Notebook/Laptop - SSD all the way
Desktop - SSD for boot and HDD for data

Work perspective:

All new Laptop/notebooks we are buying are having SSD's (256gb Samsung 840 Pro's) put in before imaging - We are a Thinkpad only place now (finally stopped ordering Elitebooks) so its a easy swap and end users seem to be amazed.
Desktops are all being purchased with 128gb OEM (usually Dell Optiplex which use LITEON) as they are always connected to network storage so less likely they will ever need more than that.
Servers are still HDD with the occasional one having a OEM SSD for CacheCade or whatever LSI calls it.

We are of the opinion, from everything read recently, that reliability of SSD vs HDD is pretty much the same this generation so why not put them in, if they die in four years, thats fine as the machine will be gone anyway and the increased productivity will have paid for itself.