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Going to buy a new hard drive soon.
Thinking about getting a 32GB SSD for the Windows Vista installation and my programme files, mainly use Photoshop, Illustrator etc - And then in a second normal SATA drive, have all my games, media etc. Would this be ok? Also I know a SSD drive is quicker to access and write to, but are they less or more reliable than a normal hard drive?
I think a 32GB might be a bit small. My 64GB is half full with just Windows 7 and a few apps.
At a minimum I would grab a 64GB drive..
Ideally the Crucial C300 64gb retailing just under £100 these days... do you need to stick with Vista by the way ? Windows 7 ideally, so you can use the Trim support.
+1 Theodan - C300 and TRIM. Although most SSDs would be fine.
Good question. More reliable in many ways, as there's no mechanical moving parts to wear/fail. But there's other issues.Quote:
Originally Posted by 360bhp
Overall, I'd say more reliable, but it's not entirely cut 'n' dried.
As for size, 32GB is enough for OS and a few apps, but barely. What about Intel 40GB? It gives a bit more breathing space.
But personally, I'd go for 60GB-ish, and if the relatively small price difference was a problem, I'd wait a bit longer, and either save or watch for a price drop of special deal. Are you prepared to hold off for a while for the sake of the price differential?
More reliable certainly, but you might not be able to use them for as long, if that makes sense.
The chance of failure is much lower, but there is a (high) limited number of write operations that can be carried out - desktop users won't touch it. However when this is up you can still read from the drive fine.
A mechanical drive might be better suited to a server with a lot of write operations, but failures result in a loss of user-recoverable data.
Yeah, that's kinda what I was hinting at. I guess "durability" might be a better term than reliability, but if the product is viewed over it's expected life cycle, it's close to the same thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
Been thinking of getting an SSD for awhile now with my new build. Im struggling to see a massive bennefit to running just one big drive :S.
Ive had Hard drives last 4 - 5 years and take every abit of abuse i give them. I wonder if a SSD can last that long at peak performance?
Hmm, interesting. I think I'll be waiting a bit longer for prices to drop before getting one then. Do you think this will always be the case or do you think they will become more and more durable through the generations?Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
As kalniel said above - you won't ever see that limit in normal desktop use. Might be worth waiting for the new SF-2000 controllers though.
Wait til feb for the Inetl G3's
Any idea what the impact of them will be .... either on price or on performance? This'll need to be pretty much at "idiot's guide" level for me, as I don't really follow SSD developments because, so far, the cost/GB is too high for me to think they're worth bothering with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phage
Synthetic performance is roughly 100% faster than current gen Sandforce drive in the headline but not as relevant sequential read/write speeds. I'm not sure what the far more real-world relevant (depending on usage) random 4k read/write speeds are like yet, and I doubt random access time would be improved noticeably as current gen SSDs are pretty much too fast to measure already.Quote:
Originally Posted by Saracen
Idiot's guide - at the very least these will make your system just as snappy as the best current generation drives, and if you can afford to use them to store larger chunks of data that you would typically sequentially read or write then the performance is at least double the current gen, which themselves are roughly double the fastest mechanical disks. Examples of sequential data reading including loading up files for games or applications. Sequential writing is important for saving large files. And both reading and writing are important for media conversion type activities.
I got an SSD to help with system responsiveness and photo processing for example.
Price is a great unknown currently.
How did you set it up for photo use? System drive, or a dedicated Photoshop scratch drive? If the latter, how much difference did it make?Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
Last time I tried an SSD (as a system drive), it sure made a difference, and it improved boot times, but my system isn't sluggish as it is, and while there was improvement, there wasn't enough to, for me, the cost to be justified. Others, of course, may have a different value judgement, and a perfectly valid one.
But I didn't try it as a PS scratch disk. I use a dedicated WD 640GB Blue for that.
I'd get a C300, vertex2E, F60... they're all pretty much identical for loading up apps. You could even save a tenner and get a Kingston 64GB drive. You'll notice literally no difference for boot time etc.
Idiots guide - day to day use you'll not notice the difference however they may well engineer them to last longer. Though I doubt it. If you shift large files from one SSD to memory/another SSD regularily however you'll likely see a near doubling of performance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Saracen
Eraly SSD's had big problems with small random writes that simply made them junk and worse than HDD's
Since then, there's been a focus on 4k write IOPS as well as sequential peak performance. Anything more than 10,000 4k write IOPS for a desktop is irrelevant. There is no usage pattern that can sustain that. It's like the difference between getting 120fps and 240 fps no a game.