Considering buying SSD! convince me....

rayb74

rayb74

rayb74

Associate
Joined
21 May 2004
Posts
859
Location
Cheltenham
Been doing a bit of research and reading a few reviews (anandtech) and others.

Thing is it seems like a complete waste of money and the tech is WAY overpriced. Why are people buying these? Existing users please convince me.

My rig uses a raptor 34 gig just for OS (64 bit xp).
8400 @ 4 gig
4 gig 1066 ram DDR 2

I have looked at the price of these things looking at:
OCZ vertex 120gig @ £333
Now this is more than twice the price of a 150 gig raptor @ £155

So therefore can I expect twice the Real world performance from the SSD in its "used" state over the raptor? Half the power usage? Twice as quick to boot up? I know the answer is NO but :
What is the real world noticable gain you are getting from the SSD? 10%
Becuase if it is closer to this figure why pay twice the price? I can not justify this so will hang back and wait till the price drops to a respectable level as I dont think I am going to notice a worth while gain.
 
i went from 2 x 150GB Velociraptors in raid0 to a 120GB Vertex and am more than happy, good thing is also i will get another 120GB Vertex in the future and raid0 them both and they will fly even faster :)
 
I sold my 300GB VelociRaptor for £150 and with that bought a 64GB Samsung SSD and a 320GB Samsung HDD.

With Windows loaded onto the SSD, the system is a little bit quicker, but the main advantage is that the SSD is totally silent. I never realised how much hard disk noise used to irritate me.
 
reflux said:
I sold my 300GB VelociRaptor for £150 and with that bought a 64GB Samsung SSD and a 320GB Samsung HDD.

With Windows loaded onto the SSD, the system is a little bit quicker, but the main advantage is that the SSD is totally silent. I never realised how much hard disk noise used to irritate me.
Click to expand...

I think that would have to be the biggest benefit for raptor owners. I still can't believe how loud my 74GB raptor is, even when placed within a hardrive silencer. As soon as i can afford it, i'll be getting 3 X 30GB Vertex's.

To the OP, it would be better to get 3 X 30GB vertex's which can be had for around £340 if you look hard enough. Because of the way that SSD's scale, you would get up to 3 X the performance of the raptor and a noticeable snappy feel :)
 
Last edited:
beh* said:
I think that would have to be the biggest benefit for raptor owners. I still can't believe how loud my 74GB raptor is, even when placed within a hardrive silencer. As soon as i can afford it, i'll be getting 3 X 30GB Vertex's.

To the OP, it would be better to get 3 X 30GB vertex's which can be had for around £340 if you look hard enough. Because of the way that SSD's scale, you would get up to 3 X the performance of the raptor and a noticeable snappy feel :)
Click to expand...

Yep, I totally agree with the 3 x 30Gb analysis, it seems to be the sweet spot atm as far as bang for your buck goes, and the snappy feel is.. well, very snappy to say the least! Best upgrade for the money atm. :)
 
benchmarks go out the window, SSD's lay the smackdown to mechanical drives for OS drives but you have to experience it yourself.

.1ms access time says it all - anyone clinging to their raptors is in denial.
 
I bought a 120gig Vertex for £285 and yes it was expensive but totally worth it.

Why?

Because from turning the system on and it being 'ready' for use i.e. clicking start, firefox and then going to a website, is so much faster than my old seagate.

Entering the password and the system is more or less ready for use after a few seconds. My previous system it was more like minutes.

That is priceless to me in the morning before setting off to work!

So was it worth it? Definitely a Yes!
 
rayb74 said:
Been doing a bit of research and reading a few reviews (anandtech) and others.

Thing is it seems like a complete waste of money and the tech is WAY overpriced. Why are people buying these? Existing users please convince me.

My rig uses a raptor 34 gig just for OS (64 bit xp).
8400 @ 4 gig
4 gig 1066 ram DDR 2

I have looked at the price of these things looking at:
OCZ vertex 120gig @ £333
Now this is more than twice the price of a 150 gig raptor @ £155

So therefore can I expect twice the Real world performance from the SSD in its "used" state over the raptor? Half the power usage? Twice as quick to boot up? I know the answer is NO but :
What is the real world noticable gain you are getting from the SSD? 10%
Becuase if it is closer to this figure why pay twice the price? I can not justify this so will hang back and wait till the price drops to a respectable level as I dont think I am going to notice a worth while gain.
Click to expand...

With a decent SSD sustained speeds are in the 200MB/s range even when used, which is around three times faster than your raptor, and access times are near instant (>50 times faster than the raptor), so the system feels much "snappier", especially when multitasking (which is most obvious during startup where it loads all your autostart programs and services)

It's awesome tech, but still out of my price range (waiting for prices to near £1/GB, which is roughly what i paid for my raptors)
If i had 300 quid burning a hole in my pocket for an upgrade though, I'd definitely look at SSD's before i7 or an e-peen graphics card. At the moment though i'm content to wait - 8gb ram with vista superfetch, only rebooting once in a blue moon, and using a small range of programs means I'm already pretty happy.

The other thing to look at is laptops - an SSD is a massive upgrade over your bog-standard laptop drive.
 
Last edited:
Thx for replys guys.
I will have to try before I buy somehow.
When they come down in price to a respectable level then I will make the switch.
 
So what boot times are you guys getting out of your SSD`s ? (single drive and striped)
I got a 150g velociraptor at xmas and have been dissapointed in the boot time i am getting,can`t say i notice it as being any faster than my old`standard` hdd :)
 
I am *really* tempted to get one of these instead of another chip/mobo next month.... It does my head in waiting for windows to be 100% usable after logging in :(
 
ANDARIAL said:
So what boot times are you guys getting out of your SSD`s ? (single drive and striped)
I got a 150g velociraptor at xmas and have been dissapointed in the boot time i am getting,can`t say i notice it as being any faster than my old`standard` hdd :)
Click to expand...

From post screen to fully booted in 26 seconds. I only have a single 60Gb Vertex, but will be adding a second one for raid0.
 
Solari said:
I am *really* tempted to get one of these instead of another chip/mobo next month.... It does my head in waiting for windows to be 100% usable after logging in :(
Click to expand...

Unless you're running pretty old hardware or maxing out your CPU/RAM for much of the time, the best upgrade you can give your PC will be the SSD - hard drives were the bottleneck til SSD came along.
 
From the SSD's I have seen (not many to be honest) - my trusty SATA is faster into Vista 64 Ultimate.

Maybe it's a driver Issue with the SSD's though.

Are they really supposed to boot faster though ?
 
divosuk said:
From the SSD's I have seen (not many to be honest) - my trusty SATA is faster into Vista 64 Ultimate.

Maybe it's a driver Issue with the SSD's though.

Are they really supposed to boot faster though ?
Click to expand...

SSD's are SATA. And also there is no hard drive that is faster than SSD, it's just not possible. And yes they boot much faster than standard HD's (see my post above^^)
 
Ninja Please! said:
SSD's are SATA. And also there is no hard drive that is faster than SSD, it's just not possible. And yes they boot much faster than standard HD's (see my post above^^)
Click to expand...

*modern* SSDs are much faster than HDDs. Older SSDs, and perhaps those used in netbooks, are not - think USB flash drive speeds.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom