Are SSD's Worth it?

dmxdex2020

dmxdex2020

dmxdex2020

Soldato
Joined
16 Nov 2008
Posts
2,925
Location
West Midlands
I am looking to upgrade my system alittle bit and one area is to speed up load times and such.

My current HDD is in my sig.

I was thinking about having 2 SSD's one for my O/S and virus programs and a second for games.

Are they worth the money?
 
No hard drive is worth buying to install virus's on?

Other than that its entirely subjective, do you have the money to splash on a luxury?
 
IMO they are definitely worth the money - best upgrade you can do for overall system performance boost.

If you are looking at getting 2 SSD's then why not put them in RAID 0 and get even faster speeds? For an array to use for OS/Apps/Games I would suggest 2 x 60Gb Vertex's or 2 of the new Samsungs as they are quite a bit cheaper and seem to be good performers according to the early reports.
 
I am new to RAID i do not under its concept.

I would like to store my os and apps on one hard drive and games on a seprate hard drive.

Can i do all this in RAID 0?
 
With RAID there are several different ways to configure it but all involve putting at least 2 drives into what is called an array - some give better speed but at the cost of data security, others give better security but at a reduced capacity - have a read of this for full explanations.

Most people here would be looking to use either RAID 0 or RAID 1 as the other types of array are really better suited to server environments.

Most modern mobo's can handle RAID via their onboard controllers but there are also add-on cards which can give better performance for the really serious user.
 
^^Yeah, same SSD here. Expensive but makes the system very nippy especially under Windows 7 and it's totally silent.
 
Which SSD to get? i read samung is good but has out dated ssds already the same with OCZ.

RAID looks complex lol.

But sounds good.
 
Last edited:
tbh SSD's are developing so fast that anything currently on sale is likely to already have been overtaken by something in the pipeline. The best bet is to get what you can reasonably afford, and to avoid any drives based on the JMicron controller as they had stuttering issues - if you go for OCZ Vertex's or for the new Samsung PB22-J series drives you'll be absolutely fine.
 
^^ +1,

Intel, Samsung and OCZ are the real competitors in the market however Intel is a little too overpriced. Samsung have the best price/performance ratio and are faster then the OCZ Vertex (sometimes). I would Recommend a Samsung drive over a Vertex based purely on reviews. At the moment i dont agree that SSD's are worth it, when SLC comes down in price i will purchase one!!!
 
Well considering you can flash the firmware on the Vertex, I'd say it's the better choice. All ssd's will degrade in performance due to the way files are erased. With the firmware update on the Vertex, I am able to used the trim tool that restores the speeds to new. I don't know if there are other utilities for this, afaik, there are only utilites that will wipe drives completely to acheive tha same performance boost, meaning a reformat of your OS and everything.
 
what is this trim tool you're talking about? I've read that it's not included in W7, or are you talking about a third party add on?

(i know what the trim command is and does, my question is about your implementation)

(sorry to highjack this thread.)
 
I'm thinking of getting a SSD drive as my OS drive. I've had a 75GB 10,000RPM Raptor for years but it seems an SSD is going to be a lot faster (especially random access). I think I'd only need 60GB as I don't even use half of the Raptor most of the time (I store nearly every none installed file on a standard 7200RPM 500GB Samsung drive).

I've been looking at either the Samsung PB22-J 60GB or the OCZ Vertex Series 60GB. I'm definitely leaning towards the Samsung as I can see it for as little as £140, while the OCZ is more like £200.

Apparently the OCZ has a tool available for it which can keep its performance high without needing to wipe the whole drive while the Samsung drive doesn't. But is that worth the extra £60? How quickly does the performance degrade on a SSD drive?
 
Last edited:
Acuum said:
what is this trim tool you're talking about? I've read that it's not included in W7, or are you talking about a third party add on?

(i know what the trim command is and does, my question is about your implementation)

(sorry to highjack this thread.)
Click to expand...

OCZ have released a tool for doing this on their drives which can be downloaded from their forums but you need to have a Vertex running the 1.10 firmware to use it. Ninja Please! might have some more info on it as he's used it.
 
Teasy said:
How quickly does the performance degrade on a SSD drive?
Click to expand...

I've had mine for about 6 weeks or so now with daily use and haven't noticed any degradation yet, not sure about the Samsungs, maybe others who have them will offer an opinion but tbh the new Sammy's haven't really been out long enough to tell.
 
After reading a bit about what TRIM does and why, I'm not so worried about wether a drive supports it or not. Degradation tops out on an SSD at between 10-30% below maximum depending on the drive (not getting any worse after every part of the drive has been written too once). Also it seems like TRIM's only advantage is to keep the speed of writing a file to an empty area which has been used in the past at maximum. TRIM can't speed up overwriting/rewriting files or read speeds so it will only recover a fraction of that 10-30% speed loss. Its worth having but far from essential if system speed is your main concern.
 
Last edited:
SSD is great. Perfect for OS/Game drive. Keep all your music and other stuff on a separate disk or NAS :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom