SSD for Education?

The Slayer_UK · 23 May 2012 at 14:27

Hi all

I work in education as an IT technician and i have suggested to my manager to try SSDs in computers so hes asked me to order 2 or 3 so we can try them to see how well they will work on our network wheather the speed for a standalone pc still works on a network. We want to determine wheather the performance of an SSD outways the cost

I know the Crucial 128GB m4 SATA 6Gb is still a good choice but was wondering if there was anyothers to consider it needs to be reliable and fast and the size should be 128GB no bigger as it will be wasted space as our typical installation of windows and all packages that we have on our system currently is around 70-80GB ish.

Thanks

Sam

Azen · 23 May 2012 at 14:33

M4 good value for the speed and a good warranty from memory experts, I chose the 256 for my personal use.

There was a great ssd thread in the hard drive section perhaps have a look through there?

Ryan233 · 23 May 2012 at 15:36

Im using SSD in education. I manage 8 Schools and in two of them i'm using SSD's. There work great but i have came against some issues with the network but nothing major

dave_beast · 23 May 2012 at 15:38

I think user Peerzy on here is in education IT and has installed SSD's.

kerrgreg · 23 May 2012 at 15:42

Would recommend Intel in industry just because they seem more reliable and have a very good warranty system

Pottsey · 23 May 2012 at 15:54

Education computers are more likely to suffer sudden power loss than most other places. Some forms of SSD drives are very likely to stop working under those conditions so double check how well the SSD drive performs with sudden power loss.

dave_beast · 23 May 2012 at 15:55

Pottsey said:
Education computers are more likely to suffer sudden power loss than most other places. Some forms of SSD drives are very likely to stop working under those conditions so double check how well the SSD drive performs with sudden power loss.

I would assume they would have some form of UPS power backup?

The Slayer_UK · 23 May 2012 at 15:59

Pottsey said:
Education computers are more likely to suffer sudden power loss than most other places. Some forms of SSD drives are very likely to stop working under those conditions so double check how well the SSD drive performs with sudden power loss.

ive worked the the college for about 1 n half years and so far we havent had a power cut and they said they hardly get any at all and the servers has UPS but it would just be in the computers for staff

The Slayer_UK · 23 May 2012 at 16:00

Ryan233 said:
Im using SSD in education. I manage 8 Schools and in two of them i'm using SSD's. There work great but i have came against some issues with the network but nothing major

just out of curiosity what issues did you have?

philds · 23 May 2012 at 20:08

IT at a business school here, we're using SSDs where ever we can and no issues yet. Each Dell PC we buy comes with a 128GB SSD and they work great, when we upgrade older PCs to SSDs we buy Crucial M4s.

The Slayer_UK · 23 May 2012 at 20:44

philds said:
IT at a business school here, we're using SSDs where ever we can and no issues yet. Each Dell PC we buy comes with a 128GB SSD and they work great, when we upgrade older PCs to SSDs we buy Crucial M4s.

brilliant thanks for that not sure i can say this so if its not allowed then mods please remove it cant see it as a problem tho as OCUK cant do businees for education but we buy our pcs from stone they come with a 5 year warrnty and they have started doing SSDs so in the future we depending on how the tests we do go we will be buying them with SSDs in and one of the ideas was to upgrade our existing pcs with SSDs.

one of the biggest gripes from teachers and staff is that the pcs are slow what we cant get across to many of them is as its on a network its not like a standalone pc so it will take longer but hopfully with SSDs the boot times will be much quicker and programs on the computer should run a lot quicker were also going to trial them in our wireless laptops

RedvGreen · 23 May 2012 at 21:07

I worked as an IT Senior Tech for a University (responsible for 18 labs of PCs and Macs). SSDs are great for Laptops but are not advisable for workstations on all the time.

Issues:
- Always On.
- PXE control issues.
- DeepFreeze eats away at lifespan of SSD.
- Failed disk is a BIG problem in a classroom where it is booked out solid 8am - 8pm.
- Power-off/standby issues.

SSDs for Laptops; HDDs for workstations.

The Slayer_UK · 23 May 2012 at 21:22

f00f1ght0r said:
Issues:
- Always On.
- PXE control issues.
- DeepFreeze eats away at lifespan of SSD.
- Failed disk is a BIG problem in a classroom where it is booked out solid 8am - 8pm.
- Power-off/standby issues.

SSDs for Laptops; HDDs for workstations.

ok not sure what deepfreeze is as we dont use it at our college we have a RM CC4 (community Connect 4) system if that means anything to you so we use PXE boot to build our pcs and thats why we want to buy a few SSDs and see if they work i know stone will garuntee if we buy from them that it works on a RM CC4 system for PXE boot they will let us have a test system to use and the computers are on most of the time from 8-5 would you mind explaing in abit more detail your issues? would be very greatfull as any info we can get now will be very usefull

Justintime · 24 May 2012 at 00:07

We have about 60 Vertex 2E 90Gb (arrgh run for the hills etc..not a single problem

) for about 2yrs now and about 50 M4 128gb. I can tell you without a doubt that a RM network is incredibly sped up vs a spinning disk.

Sin_Chase · 24 May 2012 at 00:39

f00f1ght0r said:
I worked as an IT Senior Tech for a University (responsible for 18 labs of PCs and Macs). SSDs are great for Laptops but are not advisable for workstations on all the time.

Issues:
- Always On.
- PXE control issues.
- DeepFreeze eats away at lifespan of SSD.
- Failed disk is a BIG problem in a classroom where it is booked out solid 8am - 8pm.
- Power-off/standby issues.

SSDs for Laptops; HDDs for workstations.

Why is always on an issue? This is preferable for garbage collection.

What PXE control issues? PXE is entirely disk independent until you actually want to do something with the disk, at which point PXE is long gone and whatever environment you are using is in control (Be it Windows PE or otherwise) I have PXE booted many SSD systems, including but not limited to Windows deployment through SCCM with zero issues.

DeepFreeze would eat away at SSD life but this is not an SSD fault, it's the fact you use image based products regularly on an SSD.

A failed disk is a failed disk, be it HDD or SSD. I would fully expect a HDD to be more likely to bite the bullet before a SDD would assuming no inherent model issues.

What kind of power-off/standby issues? Never come across any personally that were intrinsically linked to SSD usage.

The Slayer_UK · 24 May 2012 at 08:11

Justintime said:
We have about 60 Vertex 2E 90Gb (arrgh run for the hills etc..not a single problem ) for about 2yrs now and about 50 M4 128gb. I can tell you without a doubt that a RM network is incredibly sped up vs a spinning disk.

Thanks Think im going to order a few of the Crucial M4 128Gb to test but this sounds very promising

Pottsey · 24 May 2012 at 08:44

dave_beast said:
I would assume they would have some form of UPS power backup?

Only for servers never met anyone who has UPS for classroom computers.

The Slayer_UK said:
ive worked the the college for about 1 n half years and so far we havent had a power cut and they said they hardly get any at all and the servers has UPS but it would just be in the computers for staff

I was thinking more primary and secondary schools where between teachers flicking switches, cleaners pulling out sockets for hovers and pupils holding power buttons you get a lot of sudden power cuts. But a college does seem better.

Pottsey · 24 May 2012 at 08:50

f00f1ght0r said:
Issues:
- Always On.
SSDs for Laptops; HDDs for workstations.

I have had my SSD drive turned on in education 24/7 for over 2 years on a mini server/workstation. The PC monitors the network and records keywords, internet logs, print logs and more. Used with Pagefile on drive, video editing and the drive is often being written to. Why is always on a problem?

I see no problem with SSD's for most workstations. The limited writes to SSD's is not really that much worse then the limited writes to HDD's. Looking at our SSD's. SSD drive work time is 18,528 hours (2years 1 month) powered on 41 times and has an estimated 9 years life left.

The Slayer_UK · 24 May 2012 at 08:51

Pottsey said:
Only for servers never met anyone who has UPS for classroom computers.

I was thinking more primary and secondary schools where between teachers flicking switches, cleaners pulling out sockets for hovers and pupils holding power buttons you get a lot of sudden power cuts. But a college does seem better.

aha i see usually we have a command that turns on most of the pcs in the morning and shuts them down at night between then teachers just leave them on and students dont really shut them down either as in the study centre they prefer to beable to walk up to a computer thats on so they can log in straight away so they shouldnt get any sudden power cuts.