Still not convinced by these SSD's

[Caracus2k]

Personally I have to agree with the sentiment that at this time an SSD is the one thing that will make the most difference to an otherwise respectable computer. I have one in my laptop (60gb) HTPC (60gb + 2tb mechanical drive) and main computer (256gb + 3tb worth of mechanical disks). I would not want to go back to booting on a mechanical drive on any of them...

Yes SSD's cost a lot per mb compared to mechanical drives but the speed is worth it

 

[Zarf]

Once you've gone SSD you can't go back

Boot times are just the most obvious and immediate impact, when you have a well-used install that you would normally be thinking about formatting because it has a million startup services and takes 5 minutes to be usable, then clone it to an SSD and suddenly it boots in 15 seconds and feels like a fresh machine it leaves a noticeable impression.

It's the general usage improvements that really sell it to me though, all those little delays in things like the start menu programs folder, or an 'open file' dialogue disappear. It's painful for me to use mechanical drives now because I know how fast things could be working. I've bought 7 of them now for various PC's in my house because it makes them so much more enjoyable to use.

All you really need is a 64GB OS drive for 95% of the benefits, and you can get very nice ones for under £100 nowadays. You could even pick up a last gen model for around £1/GB that would feel almost as quick. I think they represent very good value nowadays and should probably be seen as a priority purchase in every build. Certainly better value than a multi-gpu setup (for people on single monitor 2D setups at least) or ridiculous RAM with fractionally better timings.

 

[Nightglow]

+1

Best £100 I've spent on a upgrade, just about to get a second ssd.

 

[|Thomas|]

Is that it? I realise what you are saying. That's all very well. However I was directing the question at people who purchase one purely for boot times. There are a lot of them. If you have an SSD because you need to load 30,000 images in Lightroom on a daily basis, then I totally get it. However when spending that amount of cash to increase boot.... hmmm, somethings not wired correctly (not in the pc).

Who has bought an ssd just for boot times? Personally I boot my pc roughly 2 or 3 times a day, because I do other things with my life and I think it's a little pointless leaving it on if I'm not using my computer for a few hours. So for me the boot times are nice, but not necessary.

I bought an ssd because for what I do, which for the record might not be what you do, it makes my computing experience so much better. No matter how much multitasking I throw at it it runs so smoothly, my F3 would just become so slow and laggy.

The thing is, it's all a question of "is it worth the money"? Personally I don't think an i7 or a 580 are worth the money, but people buy them. For my needs an i7 and a 580 would be totally overkill, but I can absolutely appreciate why people buy them or indeed need them for whatever they use their computers for. The difference is I don't go on about how pointless they are in their respective forums .

 

[topdog@OC]

Mine boots about once per week, when it has an absolute need due to some kind of patch or what have you, it certainly wasn't an influencing factor on my purchasing the SSD, it's just a nice fringe benefit to get in addition.

Boot time of applications, now that I'm appreciating, click an app and it's there ready to use. I also appreciate the silence over inferior performing raid0 mechanical drive setups, and that SSDs can eliminate micro-stutter effects from applications that glitch briefly when loading something from disk at runtime.

All in all, not the most expensive disk I've bought for the capacity I'm getting (if we compare it to some of the ones I've bought in the past), so it's justifiable for me and the benefit it is bringing. Like everything though, it won't be justifiable for everyone. Not everyone needs the latest greatest GPU, not everyone needs (say) a £200 quid steering wheel when a £50 one 'will do' for them, but for me (like some of these other things) it does bring something extra to the table that I couldn't get from any other change/upgrade, and that's good enough for me.

 

[Andrew_McP]

Once you've gone SSD you can't go back

I have always been a patient person, so SSDs have not impressed me so far. Not at these prices anyway. However last week I managed to persuade myself into an SSD to make this laptop (1810TZ with probably SATA not-a-lot) perk up, now that I'm using it more often than I used to.

And my boot time (to usable, fully loaded windows) has dropped from just over two minutes to 40s, which is pretty impressive in this period while that boost still new and novel. However it is not life changing because I rarely sit and wait for a PC to boot. Overall desktop speed is boosted nicely, but not hugely, and I think my next indulgence will be to get a 7200rpm laptop drive, because I suspect the thing dragging this very capable "pocket" PC down was the 5400rpm drive it came with.

That will also allow me to try this SSD in my Sandybridge machine and see if 3/6Gb SATA delivers the life changing experience others report. Somehow I suspect not though, because that machine's fast enough in all respects that I'm not aware of any lag or annoying pauses even when I'm throwing huge amounts of data around movie editing. Boot time will surely improve, but as I said, I'm normally making coffee or taking a leak during boots.

As you say though, I suspect that once you get used to the extra snappiness of an SSD, normal HD performance never quite feels "right" again.

So I've a horrible feeling I may end up a reluctant rather than willing convert. In the mean time I can console myself with the thought that I might be able to use this drive on a Z68 chipset board to "buffer" a huge HD. But I stupidly talked myself into a 128Gb drive to avoid storage claustrophia, and only just discovered that the Z68 thing only uses up to 64Gb, and I'm definitely not going to be wasting £85's worth of flash memory!

Anyway, it's been interesting seeing what the fuss is all about, and this laptop is definitely improved even with its "old" SATA limitations. But improved enough for the average person with the average budget constraints? Not in a million years.

I bought a 2Tb drive at the same time, and plugged into a USB3 dock that is a real pleasure to use on my main PCs for fast, general purpose storage... at least in part because of the tremendous bang for buck standard storage offers these days.

It'll be a long time before SSDs can offer anything like that kind of bang per buck. So I am more convinced than ever now that SSDs are, indeed, excellent. But they are also still really poor value for money unless you have money burning a hole in your pocket. And there's never been a shortage of those people around here. Indeed I'm in danger of becoming one myself, though in my defence my PC habit is my only vice.... sadly.

Oh, and I'm a bit puzzled by the people who mention the silence as a feature. I can't remember the last time I was aware of a standard HD making any noise worth mentioning. The last noisy drive I had was a 30Gb drive, long since retired to the spares cupboard.

 

[jonneymendoza]

boot up time for me slower then normal lol. the more hdd's i attach on my pc the slower teh boot time lmao

 

[ubersonic]

Once you've gone SSD you can't go back

Strange, I did just this and haven't noticed any difference (except boot times but they are irrelevant in my case).

 

[Izi]

Strange, I did just this and haven't noticed any difference (except boot times but they are irrelevant in my case).

what do you use your PC for?

 

[robgmun]

Once you've gone SSD you can't go back

I did, no real problems either, and before you ask, i use my PC for pretty much everything apart from programming/compiling

Yes boot times are about 10 seconds slower. Is that really worth paying more then double for a hard drive? The seagate momentums are better VFM i feel

 

[DeathStorm]

I did, no real problems either, and before you ask, i use my PC for pretty much everything apart from programming/compiling

Yes boot times are about 10 seconds slower. Is that really worth paying more then double for a hard drive? The seagate momentums are better VFM i feel

If you don't do anything that would benefit from a faster drive, save your money by getting a slower one.

If you do a lot with your computer you shouldn't have a hard time noticing the difference, try something tough like launching programs while burning a disc, while extracting something from a compressed file and browsing the web and tell me you can't tell the difference.

My only real regret is the economy makes it a hard sale at work, I'd save a huge amount of time and frustration with virtualisation if I could use an SSD or two there.

 

[Kurisu Makise]

my dad has 4 ocz ssd in raid and gets stupid speeds (something like 1000mbps read) but tbh its quicker than my hdd raid but not £400 quicker, id rather save all the money or even the money from just one ssd and wait the extra few seconds load times.

 

[James J]

Absolutely love my crucial M4 64gb SSD and its easily one of the best upgrades I've ever made. Takes 7 seconds from when the windows logo first starts to appear for my PC to be fully usable (apart from the wireless which is a separate issue -.-).

I don't need to constantly put my computer into sleep due to how quickly the PC actually boots now lol. Wouldn't go back to a mechanical boot hdd now.

 

[robgmun]

If you do a lot with your computer you shouldn't have a hard time noticing the difference, try something tough like launching programs while burning a disc, while extracting something from a compressed file and browsing the web and tell me you can't tell the difference.

I have done that in the past with a SSD and now, in fact i do that quite regularly, again, no problems. Seriously, some people here must have poorly configured OS's on here.

 

[Rikken]

Good point. It makes me wonder. What if SSD was out first, and that was the norm for years, quick drives, but small capacity. No one could store bluray rips, lots of photos, movies, games etc... then all of a sudden, bam! The new type of hard drive is invented, the mechanical disc which can hold vast amounts of data, was also pretty quick and adequate to run your OS off of. I wonder how many people would be pay £300 for a 2TB drive then.

It would probably be the same thing in reverse. People would switch over complaining how no one cares about speed. Storage is where it's at. It's just because it's a new technology and everyones jumping on the band wagon getting caught up in the fad of counting how many seconds they can shave off boot up times. I turn the pc on and then head for the kettle anyway. Who really cares how many seconds it took. Do we time our tv's, our car engines, how quick the windows roll up and down.... no one cares.

Patience is a virtue after all

Hahahaha.... one of the funniest forum posts I've read in a while, and probably true. People get a good feeling from hype, not sure why but it just is that way. You're a pragmatist, but there are also many idealist out there. It just really depends on what floats your boat, and I think SSds is something I must have!

 

[ubersonic]

what do you use your PC for?

Playing games, Watching videos, internet, chat, work, pretty much everything. The boot time is irrelevant to me because I only turn it on once a day, an extra few seconds to start up while im usually doing something else anyway isn't that important to me. Like I said mainstream SSD's may be faster in synthetic benchmarks but I don't work in microseconds and I cannot see a difference when using the system...

 

[Mr Krugga]

SSDs are great time savers in a long run.

 

[trentlad]

Good point. It makes me wonder. What if SSD was out first, and that was the norm for years, quick drives, but small capacity. No one could store bluray rips, lots of photos, movies, games etc... then all of a sudden, bam! The new type of hard drive is invented, the mechanical disc which can hold vast amounts of data, was also pretty quick and adequate to run your OS off of. I wonder how many people would be pay £300 for a 2TB drive then.

It would probably be the same thing in reverse. People would switch over complaining how no one cares about speed. Storage is where it's at. It's just because it's a new technology and everyones jumping on the band wagon getting caught up in the fad of counting how many seconds they can shave off boot up times. I turn the pc on and then head for the kettle anyway. Who really cares how many seconds it took. Do we time our tv's, our car engines, how quick the windows roll up and down.... no one cares.

Patience is a virtue after all

Thank you kind sir, your statement was so poignant that it made my decision to remain SSD free and hold patience.

 

[JimAroo]

Only thing that's holding me back from buying one is the sizes, 128GB affordable but too small, 250GB too big. I'm awaiting some affordable 160GB drives to hit the market.

 

[rene.agac]

Only thing that's holding me back from buying one is the sizes, 128GB affordable but too small, 250GB too big. I'm awaiting some affordable 160GB drives to hit the market.

I was in a similar situation. Didn't want 60gb, 120gb too expensive and my ideal spot was 90gb which tends to have bad £/GB ratio.
Wasnt sure if I would benefit from it much either, i mostly play games and surf net.

BUT! In the end I got new 2nd gen 120gb drive from well known auction site, made clean win7 install and found myself first 5 minutes just enjoying opening and closing wmp/IE and other apps its that good!

I used to turn the pc on, put kettle on and by the time water was boiling Vista was almost usable. Now i make a coffee and THEN i power on my PC. By the time i steer it Windows7 is ready! It just transformed my PC.
Imagine your car wouldn't have 2.0D engine but some V8 petrol. Yeah, it's expensive and you would only save a sec or two when overtaking but it is about that feeling which puts a smile on your face. Wouldn't look back.