Solid state drives

mattyj1085 · 11 Apr 2009 at 14:39

Are solid state drives just the same as flash disks? I dont see the point in them, cant you just stick a few 16gb or 32gb flash pen drives together.

Or am i wrong and they are 10x faster than USB2 or have something else special

monkehhh · 11 Apr 2009 at 14:45

There's a huge article on them..

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

.. the access time for a SSD completely destroys any offered by a mechanical drive, and a few of them in a RAID setup can deliver tremendous speeds. Check out the hard-drive specific forum here.

D D Danneh · 11 Apr 2009 at 14:46

They are essentially the same thing, in terms of the memory chips, but much faster. They're all on the same board and architectured for speed. I suppose, theoretically you could get similar speeds by sticking a load of pen drives together, but they'd still be limited by USB 2.0, and the technology doesn't exist to turn a bunch of small USB storage devices into one large storage device.

NickK · 11 Apr 2009 at 22:58

I'm running a OCZ Vertex 120GB in my MBP. Goes like the clappers even if the chipset is limited to 1.5Gbits/sec for power saving.

explicit4u · 11 Apr 2009 at 23:15

^^ so its worth the money, im thinking of getting the same one for my OS

FaceplantSi · 12 Apr 2009 at 07:15

They are absolutely fantastic drives. Of the current crop I would also recommend the PCZ Vertex series as the support they have in their forums is superb. There's plenty of info about them in a thread here and the OCZ support forums are here.

The Anandtech article linked to earlier described SSD's as the single best upgrade you can do to your rig right now. And having done it I completely agree.

Ducky Spud · 12 Apr 2009 at 23:00

Best upgrade... but crazy expensive upgrade too haha. got to say though, it is tempting to get 3 30GB's in Raid 0, would be the most expensive 90GB I'd ever bought, but by far the fastest too haha

Gizmowithatt · 13 Apr 2009 at 20:07

A must have upgrade

I Just bought 2 OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD's and put them in a RAID 0, OMG it's Sooooooo fast, I am using Vista Ultimate 64 from turning on the PC to starting using Vista is 35 seconds. I was a bit concerned buying the SSD's as it's such new thing, if you can go for it.
A must have upgrade :cool:

woody79 · 13 Apr 2009 at 21:00

i have only 1 samsung 64gig drive and its much faster for every day woking.

w3bbo · 13 Apr 2009 at 21:40

Soooo tempted to flog my F1's and go with an SSD raid setup.

SinaiSound · 13 Apr 2009 at 22:11

I tried out two of the Samsung 64GB drives, but wasn't that impressed tbh

The OCZ vertex drives look interesting though, it's just the cost that's rather off-putting.

Talrinys · 13 Apr 2009 at 22:57

w3bbo said:
Soooo tempted to flog my F1's and go with an SSD raid setup.

The real breakthroughs will come within the next year or so, with SATA 6Gbps coming to take care of the really fast drives, and the new better fabs getting to work, i'm still tempted to get a 60gb boot drive for now though.

Ninja Please! · 14 Apr 2009 at 01:32

Talrinys said:
The real breakthroughs will come within the next year or so, with SATA 6Gbps coming to take care of the really fast drives, and the new better fabs getting to work, i'm still tempted to get a 60gb boot drive for now though.

Yeah forget waiting for newer models. The way I see it when they come out it will just make it cheaper for me to buy a couple more 60gb/s for raid0.

FaceplantSi · 14 Apr 2009 at 01:59

Ninja Please! said:
Yeah forget waiting for newer models. The way I see it when they come out it will just make it cheaper for me to buy a couple more 60gb/s for raid0.

RAID'ing these little beauties is def worth it imo, SSD's scale so well it'd be a shame not to if you can afford another one - and I reckon that 120Gb is a much better size for an OS/Apps drive.