Still not convinced by these SSD's

[Buchanan0204]

I bought two vertex 2E's last year. Set them up in Raid 0 (I'm fully aware it doesn't support TRIM in Raid)

I have AHCI enabled and the Intel rapid storage drivers installed. The benchmarks including as-ssd report the correct figures.

However. I just really don't see the benefit in using them, nothing seems to load any quicker on these compared to a Samsung F3 drive.

Windows 7 does boot quicker, you can tell because the animation on boot doesn't finish, it flicks off into windows before the flag comes together... but come on, is an extra 5 seconds off boot time really worth £360... what I paid last year.

My applications, photoshop, lightroom, word, outlook etc... all load up equally fast on my other system which runs an F3.

So am I totally missing something here. Everyone claims they are the best thing since sliced bread. I just can't see it.

The one thing that dissapoints me the most is the install time of applications. I was hoping to save a lot of time with this when I switched to SSD. Photoshop still takes around 4-5 mins to install off the top of my head on this system as it does on my other. What's up with that?

So does anyone else share the same problem?

I'd love to see some people upload a video of installing a large program onto an ssd and loading it. Photoshop for example.

 

[johnerz]

My single ssd died a few weeks ago and I now boot with raid 0 on 2 WD Black 500mb hdd's man are they slow in comparision - but yes the cost is very high for a few seconds and as I normaly run 24/7 folding fir me it was a waste

 

[pespro]

My windows 7 computer takes over 2 minutes to get into Windows its horrible!
Hope if i ever got an SSD it would be 30 seconds max.

 

[TigerUK]

10 years from now and we'll look at 2011 ssd technology and mock it like the way we mock floppies now.

 

[RedvGreen]

Lack of noise and vibrations must account for something too?

 

[Buchanan0204]

Lack of noise and vibrations must account for something too?

Ahh. I did actually mean to put that in my post. It's good you don't hear the crunching and whirring until you open the storage drive to search for something.

 

[Marvin]

How can there be no difference? Every program on it loads faster, and noticeably so. It's great after logging on to be able to open any program I want and it'll be loading in less than a second, startup and open Windows Live Mail, IE9, plus all my startup programs (Afterburner, Logitech OSD manager, G-series software, Core Temp) and for there to be pretty much no delay whatsoever. Even a new install of W7 on my brother's PC (i5 750 @4GHz, GTX480, Samsung 1.5TB F3) feels sluggish in comparison, and if you have games on your SSD, level load times are faster (not a big deal, but nice all the same), and games where the data is streamed from disk don't suffer slowdown due to waiting for the HDD to load data.

Of all the hardware in my PC, the SSD is the only thing I wouldn't (and haven't) changed, and it's not even that good by today's standards.

 

[Buchanan0204]

How can there be no difference? Every program on it loads faster, and noticeably so. It's great after logging on to be able to open any program I want and it'll be loading in less than a second, startup and open Windows Live Mail, IE9, plus all my startup programs (Afterburner, Logitech OSD manager, G-series software, Core Temp) and for there to be pretty much no delay whatsoever. Even a new install of W7 on my brother's PC (i5 750 @4GHz, GTX480, Samsung 1.5TB F3) feels sluggish in comparison, and if you have games on your SSD, level load times are faster (not a big deal, but nice all the same), and games where the data is streamed from disk don't suffer slowdown due to waiting for the HDD to load data.

Of all the hardware in my PC, the SSD is the only thing I wouldn't (and haven't) changed, and it's not even that good by today's standards.

Isn't that noticeable for me I'm afraid. My desktop, and windows live mail loads pretty instantly on my samsung F3 just the same.

What's your install times like? There is absolutely no difference in terms of time to install a program for me.

 

[413x]

Op

I imagine I'd feel the same, I already find apps load very quickly so the only place I'd see benefit is os load ..not worth it considering the time I'd waste deciding what goes on ssd and what on hdd

 

[Buchanan0204]

Op

I imagine I'd feel the same, I already find apps load very quickly so the only place I'd see benefit is os load ..not worth it considering the time I'd waste deciding what goes on ssd and what on hdd

That's not the issue. It's the fact I spent £360 on these to shave 5 seconds off boot time. I bet Charlie sheen couldn't waste as much cash as that for such little gain.

I think I might stick them on the MM and get myself a second monitor.

 

[Marvin]

Isn't that noticeable for me I'm afraid. My desktop, and windows live mail loads pretty instantly on my samsung F3 just the same.

What's your install times like? There is absolutely no difference in terms of time to install a program for me.

I think an SSD is definitely a great investment for a laptop, but considering the number of threads like this, you certainly aren't a minority. I wouldn't bother with RAID though personally. I guess for the outlay you'd maybe expect more. I think an SSD is the only device out right now where there's not a massively noticeable difference between a £30-40 HDD and a £200 SSD, unless you're very 'in-tune' with the system (or something). It's not like a GPU where for the extra cash, you see tangible improvements, and I guess the hype is to blame to an extent. Can't wait for SSDs to hit 1GB/s though (and affordably) - that would be niiiiice...

It depends what it is, though most of the time my install speed is limited by either: DVD drive, or the fact that my downloads folder is on my Caviar Black, rather than the SSD. Not only that, but installs generally are done in the background so it never really bothered me.

 

[Hotwired]

Not that fussed by SSD's tbh.

I have one in my lightweight computer (E8400 based) and tbh, compared to my main computer (i5 750 based) which runs on a F3 1TB or a WDCB 1TB, one of them anyway. Well it's nothing to rave about.

Thinking of kicking it out and replacing it with a high capacity 2.5" drive, only have space for two drives in the small rig anyway.

Maybe if you do certain types of activity it becomes worthwhile to have a SSD but whatever they might be (massive amounts of large file shuffling?) it's not what I do.

Suppose my scenario could be compared to having a 6990 to replace my 4890 to play source games. Is it worth a thing to me. No. I'd be kidding myself to justify it.

 

[Buchanan0204]

I think an SSD is definitely a great investment for a laptop, but considering the number of threads like this, you certainly aren't a minority. I wouldn't bother with RAID though personally. I guess for the outlay you'd maybe expect more. I think an SSD is the only device out right now where there's not a massively noticeable difference between a £30-40 HDD and a £200 SSD, unless you're very 'in-tune' with the system (or something). It's not like a GPU where for the extra cash, you see tangible improvements, and I guess the hype is to blame to an extent. Can't wait for SSDs to hit 1GB/s though (and affordably) - that would be niiiiice...

It depends what it is, though most of the time my install speed is limited by either: DVD drive, or the fact that my downloads folder is on my Caviar Black, rather than the SSD. Not only that, but installs generally are done in the background so it never really bothered me.

Humour me then. Download a program onto your HDD and install it. See how it goes? Surely with the increased read and write speeds, these things should be installing programs a lot quicker than a mechanical hdd?

 

[postmanfw]

Just got my 1st ssd and the difference is incredible to say the least. The responsiveness of the os is fantastic and installing programs that i have installed hundreds of times on customers computers takes a fraction of the time.

Get some ssd benchmarking software and see what speeds they are running at.

Quick question....when you install photoshop where the install files located?

 

[Buchanan0204]

Just got my 1st ssd and the difference is incredible to say the least. The responsiveness of the os is fantastic and installing programs that i have installed hundreds of times on customers computers takes a fraction of the time.

Get some ssd benchmarking software and see what speeds they are running at.

Quick question....when you install photoshop where the install files located?

I am not restricted by a storage drive or the speed of my dvd writer. The files are directly off the ssd itself. I presume that's what you were getting at?

As mentioned in the first post. All benchmark tests come back accurately for what it should be.

I think the reason being, I just kept my system in good condition. I never had a million things added to startup and never had unnecessary services running on startup either. I came from a 74GB Raptor, and the only difference is the noise levels.

 

[melmac]

Like the OP I am not convinced at all by SSD's. Too much money for too little gain.

Sure you get a speed up when booting windows or loading applications, but we are only talking a few seconds. As for making your system more responsive, maybe, but, for example, I can open outlook in less than a second, same with Internet explorer, firefox etc. Games? no difference, maybe the loading speeds, but not a lot in it. Borderlands, for instance, only takes a few seconds to load.

If you are on XP or Vista a better way to spend your money would be to upgrade to windows 7. Upgrading your CPU and memory would provide more benefit if you feel your system is sluggish.

If your windows 7 systems is taking two minutes to load up, then you have other problems. The only time it takes longer than 30 seconds for me is if I install updates.

Noise and vibrations, might be an issue for some people, but I would imagine most people use mechanical hard drives for storing data, and the noise of system fans etc make more noise than the drives.

If you are concerned with benchmarks and WEI, then SSD's are amazing. But like the OP says, I am finding it hard to see what the big fuss is about.

 

[ewarwoowar]

User error

 

[Philtor]

Since installing a SSD my rig now boots to the desktop in 30 seconds which it has never done with any HDD in the past. It also makes a big difference to FSX which uses a lot of large scenery files and textures etc. For me it has been the best upgrade I have ever done but not everyone's experience will be the same I guess. If the only benefit you see is faster boot times then it's probably not worth it.

 

[Buchanan0204]

Like the OP I am not convinced at all by SSD's. Too much money for too little gain.

Sure you get a speed up when booting windows or loading applications, but we are only talking a few seconds. As for making your system more responsive, maybe, but, for example, I can open outlook in less than a second, same with Internet explorer, firefox etc. Games? no difference, maybe the loading speeds, but not a lot in it. Borderlands, for instance, only takes a few seconds to load.

If you are on XP or Vista a better way to spend your money would be to upgrade to windows 7. Upgrading your CPU and memory would provide more benefit if you feel your system is sluggish.

If your windows 7 systems is taking two minutes to load up, then you have other problems. The only time it takes longer than 30 seconds for me is if I install updates.

Noise and vibrations, might be an issue for some people, but I would imagine most people use mechanical hard drives for storing data, and the noise of system fans etc make more noise than the drives.

If you are concerned with benchmarks and WEI, then SSD's are amazing. But like the OP says, I am finding it hard to see what the big fuss is about.

I couldn't agree more. People are saying all over the place, "windows now boots to desktop in 30 seconds." If it's taking 2 minutes with a mechanical HDD, then something else is wrong. On a Samsung F3 it boots in around the 30 seconds mark and on an old raptor 74GB it was slightly quicker. I blew £360 on these and it's definitely my worst computer purchase. I was so disappointed when I installed them. I thought they were faulty.

 

[|Thomas|]

I couldn't agree more. People are saying all over the place, "windows now boots to desktop in 30 seconds." If it's taking 2 minutes with a mechanical HDD, then something else is wrong. On a Samsung F3 it boots in around the 30 seconds mark and on an old raptor 74GB it was slightly quicker. I blew £360 on these and it's definitely my worst computer purchase. I was so disappointed when I installed them. I thought they were faulty.

My samsung F3 could never boot my computer in 30 seconds, at best on a fresh install it could just break the 1 minute barrier (this is windows 7 for the record, measuring from grub menu to desktop). I haven't timed the boot time for my vertex 2 precisely, but even after installing a fair bit of rubbish it'll boot in around 20 seconds.

The thing is, my computer isn't absolutely top spec (Athlon 2 x4 620 at basically stock), which I suspect is the deciding factor. For me an SSD has basically transformed my computer. Possibly with a better spec machine the gains are much smaller.