SSD for OS/boot?

Squidward_not_squidward · 20 Oct 2008 at 12:37

In the process of speccing out a new system but before I leap in and buy stuff Im just taking the time to sound out some questions.

So, im using 2 x 1tb HDDs, 1 for data storage, 1 for backup.

I usually use a seperate HDD for my OS and boot and I noticed these solid state drives have arrived on the market so the question is the thread title:

Monetary considerations aside is it worth grabbing a SSD to do my boot/OS work?

fergie128 · 20 Oct 2008 at 12:53

I was going to use an SSD for my boot drive as well at one point. In the end I just went for a single 300gb Raptor, as I heard that Intel have very good SSDs in the pipeline which put the current OCZ ones to shame.

John24 · 20 Oct 2008 at 17:53

If you can afford a big enough Mtron and don`t mind the high price per gig compared to mechanical drives, it`s absolutly worth it.

An intel drive would probably be a good choice too but their not out yet whereas the mtrons are.

cavemanoc · 21 Oct 2008 at 21:13

If you do want to go this route, and aren't prepared to wait for the intel, then be very very careful. The current crop of MLC based cards have real problems with random access (stemming from the controller that they all share :rolleyes:

) - If you can, get an SLC based drive. If that's too expensive then have a good read around - OCZ have a very good forum and an excellent section on 'preparing your system for SSD' with lots of tweaks for XP and Vista that will save a lot of pain (pauses of up to 15 seconds are not uncommon :mad:

)

I'm waiting for the intel offering - not only will it solve the current problems - but it will also force the other to up their game!

hohum · 21 Oct 2008 at 22:02

I must admit, looking at some of the information on that forum is a tad confusing. Take for example the fact that they recommend you turn off AHCI for the SATA controller, as it supposedly 'conflicts'. Fair enough, but as soon as you do that then the SATA ports will operate in legacy IDE mode, thus limiting the max read speed to UDMA133 (133MB/s)... which for newer SSDs means that the performance will be deliberately crippled. Unless I'm missing something here, that's just daft.

John24 · 22 Oct 2008 at 00:24

Basicly it`s just work arounds for the cheap poor quality OCZ drives. You won`t have any problems with better quality drives such as MemoRight, Intel and Mtron.

cavemanoc · 22 Oct 2008 at 08:48

ALL of the current crop of MLC SSDs use the same controller, and suffer from the same problem - they will all have stuttering and lag under a heavy IO workload, especially if the access patern is random - a good example is downloading via a torrent straight to the SSD while browsing the net or IM'ing - and the more you do the worse it gets - given the amount of indexing Vista does in the early weeks as well - it'll be pretty painful! In all honesty I'd wait for the Intels, or pay extra for an SLC drive.

If you're interested, the problem is explored by Anandtech in this article.

linktoinsanity · 22 Oct 2008 at 09:29

Very interesting article. I was going to wait for SSD drives to become mainstream (or at least cheaper) anyway, but I'll definately wait until this is sorted now.

Squidward_not_squidward · 22 Oct 2008 at 10:13

ye looks like more trouble than its worth for me at this point, thanks for the linkage.

DireEmblem · 22 Oct 2008 at 20:56

IF you get an SSD, I would only install programs/OS on them as they have a < lifespan to normal hdd's.

Ensure any virtual memory/temporary windows folders are on your older drives to increase lifespan...

Having programs on SSD should help increase load times/take the IO strain off the older hdd's, and they should take the more random/temporary files...

Mr Flibble · 23 Oct 2008 at 03:00

With most drives featuring wear-levelling, the "decreased life span" is more than long enough for you to have very likely upgraded before you run into difficulty... There are some ridiculous statistics for how many hours of continuous writing it would take to knacker a SSD... Various data sheets suggest things like 28yrs lifetime if writing 50GB per day. I'm not sure a mechanical hard drive would survive that long.

I'm pretty sure also that when an SSD has been written to sufficiently to stop it working, you can still get the data off the drive, just not write to it.

psd99 · 23 Oct 2008 at 08:25

I've been looking at SSD for a while now but they are too damn expensive. Once the prices drop I will look into getting one.

John24 · 24 Oct 2008 at 05:19

Of course the MLC IOP issue isn`t the cause of all of the OCZ drives issues, just one of many.

Quality SLC drives are a safe bet ATM.