Solid State Drives - **** me!

Eddie

Eddie

Eddie

Soldato
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Just got one today and good lord' was I wrong to wait this long!

If you're contemplating getting a SSD and are mainly having doubts due to the cost of them, then I can assure you that any feelings of guilt soon vanish when you switch the ****** on. :D
 
I dont think I saw the wow I was expecting with mine. Switched from a Velociraptor to a Vertex2 60GB. Yes programs load a bit faster and windows loads a little bit quicker - but it still takes 50 seconds to boot.

My bios is kinda crap at posting, takes way too long.
 
i find its not so much the overall bootup speed being quicker on my ssd but also the way it doesn't fragment - i install windows to my regular hdd for 6 months and it is slowww as hell booting in the end. ive had my ssd for over 6 months, no reinstalls etc and its still as fast as when i first got it.
 
Meaningful number of games is quite a relative term. For some people one really good game is meaningful. For me... Well my 80GB Intel wasn't quite enough once I'd put all my work stuff on too. But I'm hoping the extra 60GB from the Vertex 2E should tide me over nicely. Transferred the Steam folder onto it (extremely easy BTW - just transfer, delete the registery .blob file, run steam and done) and now both drives have loads of free space and lots of rooms for 'testing utilities' (read: games) in the future.
 
Don't waste an SSD on games where there will be little real benefit. SSD's are best used for OS and applications that employ lots of small filesize random reads. Real world OS and application performance (ie. click the icon and instant open) is far superior on a modern SSD than any hdd can offer.

I used to hate having to wait 10-20 seconds AFTER my OS had booted to open a plain browser window, or 30-40 seconds to fully open Photoshop. With an SSD Windows is fully ready as soon as it has finished booting and Photoshop opens within a few seconds. Almost every other app opens instantly.

I keep my OS and key applications (Office, Photoshop etc) on the SSD and my games, pictures, music etc on hdd. This is by far the best combo for performance, capacity and price.

Once you have owned an SSD, you will not go back to hdd.

edit: I use about 35GB of my SSD capacity and have over 2TB of used hdd capacity. The SSD contains the programs I use >90% of the time.
 
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SSD are best for OS only right now. Few games see much benefit from them as they are designed around large file sizes & the loading is timed/tuned @ development around the SATA HD.

One thing many people do not consider is that its also best to buy a decent SATA2 cable as many of the ones supplied with motherboards do not always work at optimum speed as not all SATA2 cables are created equally!

No doubt SSD are the future (REVO drive especially if they can get the costs down it will make everything else obsolete as the speed is mind blowing :eek:)but its still several years before the physical HD's are phased out .....
 
555BUK said:
Once you have owned an SSD, you will not go back to hdd.
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same, I seriously doubt I'd go back to my old hard drives now, SSDs seem just worlds apart.

The thing I couldn't get over (well, initially) when my new hard drive was posted through the letterbox :eek:, was just how small and light they are. I don't know what I was expecting exactly but I didn't think that what landed on my doormat was a hard drive that's for sure, I thought they got the order wrong. Obviously being in old hard drive mode, I sort of panicked a little when it landed on the floor, thinking well that's that buggered then. :D

It's the one upgrade where I have noticed the single biggest improvement to every day OS usage - gfx cards, RAM, etc, upgrades have all been good but this is such a vast improvement over the old drives.

Get one! You know you want to :D
 
Also consider that as SSD capacities increase so will the relative sizes of games. It will be quite some time before you can load a dozen games onto an SSD without worrying about cost per MB, or filling the thing up.
 
I've got 2 of the new 128GB Crucial SSD drives in my system.
Along with a 1TB Western Digital Mechanical.

My OS and main apps sit on the first SSD.
Games sit on the second.
The mechanical is for "secondary apps" and storage.

Combination works well enough for me.
 
dod said:
these? I was dithering over the OCZ earlier as well.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-008-PA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=

Edit: never mind, just ordered one, it'll be a nice addition to the build I'm just about to do.
Click to expand...

Nice price, but don't directly compare them the the OCZ vertex2s, the Inferno has an SF1222 which appears to have significantly lower 4K IOP performance (I'm not sure if you would notice on a single user desktop PC though). Still nice product at an interesting price.
 
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