Who stayed with mechanical HDs

[PhillyDee]

I have just RMA'd another SSD to Corsair. The Reactor 120Gb. When it works, nice and fast!
However, it got to a point after 4-6 months of constant BSODs, constant bootcorruption, and constant corruption. This is the 2nd to be sent back. I have no doubt that they will send me yet another, which will be going on MM or eBay. I do not want another corsair SSD, and will probably never ever buy another one from Corsair.

Tempted to go for an Intel one, but thats about all I would buy now.

 

[Rooster212]

I'm wondering whether to dump mine. Having issues with it. Random BSOD's then reboot and it isn't in the BIOS. Doesn't happen often but often enough to worry me! Would that point to a faulty SSD?

 

[suitheist]

I like the combination. SSD boot drive is brilliant (for those having problems try closing all hardware monitoring/ overclocking programs- in my case shutting down msi afterburner removed the bsod I'd been getting since installing my SSD. No idea why though).

Odd thing about upgrading to an SSD is that you quickly forget there was ever a problem, until you have to use a slower device. My iPad now feels irritatingly sluggish (not hdd, but certainly slower than my SSD pc), where before it seemed normal.

But I'm still intending on building up a lot of magnetic, because ive decided to rip all my blurays to disk. This will end up clearing my current 1tb pretty quickly.

 

[shaffaaf27]

I can't go back, now I have mine. Corsair sandforce 1st gen. Great drive

 

[mikeo]

Only my personal opinion... but great as a boot drive, but all my important stuff (documents, music, downloads, games, user data etc.) are targeted to one of several mechanical HDs (very easy to set the save location in later versions of Windows). Cant say that I would trust anything important to be saved on an SSD (of any make). Even though I've had no problems up to now, the failure rate and other "issues" just can't be ignored. Basically SSD's have not been around long enough for the technology to really mature. Great things but if they go "pop", very annoying considering their price!

 

[RimBlock]

I have 2x Vertex 2s 60GB, one for a boot drive in two PCs. I also have a 60GB Vertex 3 in my ESXi server which has most of my Linux VMs on but which was bought mainly for my MineCraft VM so I didn't have to run it on a ramdisk.

All the SSDs are fine and have not shown any issues at all yet. I also have my movies etc on mechanical drives which are backed up to a second set (sync'd) as mechanical drives also fail sometimes.

I would like to get bigger SSDs for the PCs as someone installed X3 on one and I started getting low disk space warnings . Not really on the cards at the moment due to cost.

Interestingly my new HTPC only takes around 15 seconds from power on to login screen and that is using an older WD Blue 320GB 7.2k drive and Win7. I was pretty surprised at that.

RB

 

[Arcane]

SSDs are excellent to have in your system but I have to agree that Reliability is lacking. I only use my Windows box for gaming so I'm not heartbroken if it dies.

 

[Tute]

If you want reliability then steer clear of Sandforce, it's that simple. Both the Intel and Crucial M4 drives use a different chipset I believe, so try those instead.

I wouldn't ever go back to a mechanical drive.

 

[JasonM]

I use HDD for boot/apps/data. However use SSD's for indexing, page files, temp files & Readyboost. It's a bit of an odd setup, put computer is very responsive once everything has loaded up. Computer is left on for hours, and only time it's not hibernated is for windows updates.

I still don't feel SSD's are mature enough yet, plus the cost per GB has some way to go.

 

[Speedy Pete]

no ssd for me because its too small and too expensive

 

[opethdisciple]

I literally just installed in my machine an SSD.

Small difference noticable in windows, but a massive difference noticable in games.

I was geting lag in games such as the Witcher 2 which are reading from the hdd all the time, now its just butter smooth and maybe even too fast.

For pure gaming, its a must, now that I'v used one.

I went with the Crucial M4 due to it not using a Sandforce controller, being highly rated on the forum, one of the cheaper 120Gb SSD's and the nice boost recently recived form the latest firmware.

Plus im only using a sata 2 port!

It scored a 7.4 in Windows.

 

[neoglow]

Sticking with mech HDD's until the SSD's price to capacity ratio improves in the months/years to come. For now, a couple WD Raptors do me just fine!

 

[Solus]

Being a self employed repair tech I can say I won't be using these for myself anytime soon.

They have the same type problems as GPU's, the BGA's solder joints become fatigued and eventually it will need a reflow or reball of one or more of the BGA's.

If they soldered the chips on with leaded solder, sure, i'd go for it.

 

[rikky]

For my needs I personally couldn't justify the high cost or the high maintenance that they seem to need at present - once they mature a bit more and I can put ALL my programme files and Operating System on them I might become tempted ...

 

[Kmodo]

I am too busy to be faffing about, I will wait untill maybe Windows 8, the tech is more mature and I am doing a reinstall anyway

 

[Hotwired]

I just bought 6 TB for £200 and I could have made it more like £150 if I went for the cheapest options.

If you can justify solid state storage on large scales you must have enterprise level needs and budget to match.

Or you're doing it for the lulz, hey if I'd won the euromillions I would have, why save when you've got money to burn eh.

Being a self employed repair tech I can say I won't be using these for myself anytime soon.

They have the same type problems as GPU's, the BGA's solder joints become fatigued and eventually it will need a reflow or reball of one or more of the BGA's.

If they soldered the chips on with leaded solder, sure, i'd go for it.

Isn't the fatiguing caused by heating and cooling?

If that's the case then it doesn't seem to make that much sense for a SSD which generates almost no heat to fail anywhere near as fast as a GPU which is burning say 100-200-300 watts of energy and existing under a much wider range of temps which can change dramatically in use and then when turned off.

 

[thingemajib]

got a brand new wd caviar black 2tb off the bay for $80 inc. If its as good as reviewers say it it in terms of mechanical speed then i dont think ill be going SSD any time soon.

However, if i have any money left by the end of my stay in the states, i am keeping an eye on the crucial M4s to compliment it, and a 750gb scorpio black for my laptop

 

[StevenG]

i tried ssd's twice, wont go back for some time yet,

had 2 drives fail in a matter of hours of use so.. back to mechanical as i like to have a pc that works..

the tech is just not there in terms of reliability yet so i'll stay away till that is addressed.

ste0803

 

[Hagar]

I have my first SSD, a 60Gb Vertex 2e installed and so far it is working fine. Only put the bare windows system + pagefile on it, everything else, docs, apps, games and downloads on a mechanical.

I have left my original system drive (1Tb HDD) on a shelf to plug in in case of failure.

I have also cloned the SSD onto a USB3 external 2.5" drive.

 

[DrBombcrater]

Being a self employed repair tech I can say I won't be using these for myself anytime soon.

They have the same type problems as GPU's, the BGA's solder joints become fatigued and eventually it will need a reflow or reball of one or more of the BGA's.

The problems with GPUs are caused by the chips heating up to 70-80 degerees while loaded then cooling down again. SSD controllers don't get hot at all, so this is no more an issue for them than it is for hard drive conrtoller chips - ie, it isn't.

Excluding the buggy SandForce drives, SSD failure rates (going by the publicly available figures) are getting on for half those of hard drives: the only thing wrong with SSD reliability is the increasingly hilarious and implausible scare stories.