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Considering going SSD, but fill me in I'm clueless

B

basslover1

Golden Member
Ok this is a cross post from the AV forum, since it's pretty slow moving and I derailed my own topic so I figured I'd post this here.

I'm ditching my cablebox and going with a Ceton card and Windows Media Center. Now, my current storage is listed in my sig.

The 160gb drive is for the OS and programs, and I'm currently using 47 gigs.
The 500gb drive is storage: music, movies, pictures, etc. Currently using 220 gigs.

My thought process is as follows:

I could go with a 1TB drive for storage, essentially replacing my 500GB drive and leave everything else alone.

I could go with a SSD drive to replace the OS and Programs drive (in the 120gb range). I would then relegate the 160+500 as storage. Now, my movies would occupy the 500GB drive, since that's 160 gigs alone, leaving me 300+- for TV recordings. Which I feel should be enough since I usually delete shows after I watch them anyway. My only concern is that when I do add more movies to my collection, thus my available space left for TV recordings would get smaller and smaller.

Basically, what I'm asking is: Is there large enough benefit of going SSD for me? I'm a normal user, internet browsing, email etc etc. Do I go SSD now, and hope a few months down the road HDD prices come back down to earth? Or do I just bite the bullet and buy a 1TB now?

But not only that, I don't really know anything about SSDs, other than the early ones didn't last long. Can they be expected to last 3+ years? And what do I look for?

Thanks.
 
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The SSD and large hard drive server two different purposes. You will want and eventually need both. Whichever one is the biggest need, replaced now. The SSD will just make things quicker, install times will be minimal and so on. I would venture to say that the 220GB will dwindle fairly quickly as I have used up 500GB of my 1TB for D*TV and I only record a few shows a night.
 
If space is the priority then deal with that first. I would use the 500 and 1tb drive.

As far as SSD in the desktop...well that depends on how fast your current OS drive is and whether SSD is going to make an improvement that is worthwhile for your dollar.

I haven't really been bothered with good desktop drives...laptops however have terribly slow drives.
 
Ok, I think I'm just going to get both.

But for SSDs I've narrowed it down to these four:

Crucial M4 128GB - 149 fs
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB - 159 ar fs
Samsung 830 128GB - 179 ar fs
Intel 520 120 GB - 209 fs.

I'm really more interested in longevity than performance, though of course I wouldn't be looking into SSD if performance wasn't a factor.

Which is considered the most reliable out of the SSDs these days?
 
For longevity then go with spindle drives. Get like 5 1TB drives and do a raid 5 array. You'll get decent speed too. Get a SSD for the OS drive, use the spindle drives for data.
 
I'm really more interested in longevity than performance, though of course I wouldn't be looking into SSD if performance wasn't a factor.
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Well, longevity of data stored is largely unknown. What happens, FI, if a given block has enough wear that is is susceptible to bit-rot, and drive isn't getting much use for awhile? While I'm sure the engineers making the NAND or controllers have some idea, we users are entirely in the dark, and by the time any actual users could try testing such things, we'd be on the next manufacturing generation of NAND. Such complicated issues are magically ignored as the flash itself gets smaller and less reliable on its own. At the end of the day, backup on a long-term storage medium (quality optical or tape), with regular verifications and new copies, should still be the most trustworthy for longevity of resting data. Even temporary safety of resting data aught to be handled by having copies, though. Never trust any single piece of electronics to not fail on you at the worst time.

Now, interpreting longevity to mean a drive that consistently works for a long time, you're pretty much good to go with any last-gen Intel or Crucial, or just about any current drive that is halfway popular (the major SF issues are mostly gone, yay).

Given prices, and no IO heavy workloads to worry about (complex AutoCAD projects with databases, pro A/V editing, etc.), I'd go with Crucial. The Vertex 3 (and other fast SF-2200 drives), Intel 520, and Samsung 830 will need random write heavy workloads to really be worth the extra cost, based on performance. Crucial's drives have a solid history of actual in-use longevity, right along side Intel's, in addition to that. Samsung's reliability has been good, too, but their current drives are priced based on their performance tier. I'm not getting the impression that you would stress your drive enough to ever see a difference, and M4's prices lately have been excellent.
 
out of those 4 i would eliminate ocz. the other 3 are a tossup. i dont think you can go wrong with either of those. 520 and 830 are newer models, but the previous generations were pretty solid.
 
I just installed a Crucial M4 128 in my machine.

The original setup was 2x WD Raptor 150GB drives in RAID 1 (mirrored) for my OS and programs (3 partitions). And 4x Hitachi 1TB drives in RAID 10 (striped and mirrored) for my data.

I replaced one Raptor with the SSD for the OS, and kept the other Raptor for the programs and games. Most of the programs on that drive are not ones where speed is a big deal. And I put SETI@home there to avoid the data writes on the SSD.

I notice a faster boot (after POST) and MUCH faster installs. Programs open a bit faster also.

But throughout the years, I have found that it is hard to notice that a machine is faster. But what you do notice, is if you go back to the old machine or configuration, it seems REALLY slow. 🙂
 
I just recently bought an M4 and Intel 320. I've only had them for a week so I can't really comment, both seem solid.

One major difference though was that the Crucial basically came with just a drive. The Intel came with some extra goodies like SATA to USB adapter, some mounting adapter brackets...and maybe some other stuff so basically the Intel was a nicer retail package that came with more.
 
Thanks for the input, exactly the type of responses I was hoping for. Going to place an order later today, newegg has a 1tb Seagate for 99 that goes back up to 125 tomorrow.
 
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