So i got a SSD But

[Melanie]

Title says it all just about i got the SSD drive today loaded it installed it and i just dont see no BIG improvement i just dont see it unless im missing something

 

[htwingnut]

I feel ya. I ran an SSD in my desktop for a while, bit it just doesn't justify the cost IMHO. If you want your PC to boot fast (which I could care less about), or launch a handful of apps more quickly, then it's good. But otherwise, not worth the investment. It's a good option for laptops since laptop drives are quite a bit slower than the desktop hard drives, plus they add a little more ruggedness and usually a significant improvement to battery life, both of which are desirable in a notebook pc.

Access times make the biggest difference, which traditional HDD's can't compare with an SSD, but again, while it's nice, it isn't worth the cost IMHO.

 

[Melanie]

i wish i would have waited i lookedand they seem faster on paper but its wasite from what i see now

 

[tweakboy]

You hear that fellas,, price per GB 200GB 600 dollars , mechnical drive 2TB 80 dollars.

and yes there is no difference except in boot up times and maybe your photoshop launches in 3 second instead of 5 maybe...... other then that everything is already in RAM SSD doesnt come into play now.... only for rich people, regular people its not worth it IMO , get a top notch third gen mechanical drive youll be happy. 🙂

Cost is more then a graphics card or CPU,, for what...... as melanie says not a difference RAM is a better investment , going from 4GB to 8GB over waisting money on a SSD that takes the place of something that was already there.

 

[techs]

I replaced my 500 gb. Western Digital drive with an 80 gb. Intel drive.

I disagree with the assertion its not noticeably faster.

Yes, if you have a properly installed OS, and optimize your system with a mechanical drive it won't blow you away switching to a SSD. But when you can get a 64 gb. SSD for 125.00 and use it for a boot and program drive, its the best 125 you could spend.

 

[htwingnut]

SSD is something that I think people actually have to try in order to assess for themselves unfortunately. Each situation is different. You certainly can't go wrong using an SSD, but it's an expensive upgrade for money that might be better spent elsewhere or not at all. I found it very useful in my laptop. But in my gaming desktop, not so much.

 

[erdemali]

One major pro of SSD's is you don't have to worry about defragmentation.
At least an hour a month is saved.

and there is more...

 

[F1shF4t]

Went originaly from a vraptor to an 80 GB intel G1 ssd and the difference was great.
For laptops the difference was night and day.

You only really start to appreciate the speed of the ssd when you have to go back to using a mechanical hdd again.

 

[htwingnut]

One major pro of SSD's is you don't have to worry about defragmentation.
At least an hour a month is saved.

and there is more...

Show me proof of that hour? Mine defrags when its idle at night.

But SSD's you do have to worry about performance degradation and an instant death. I have had five brand spankin' new SSD's of varying capacity and manufacture. Two died. One almost immediately, and the other within a couple months. I don't care what people say, SSD's can and do greatly degrade performance over time, even if benchmarks don't show it. Only a complete secure erase will help matters there.

My Intel 80GB is a great case in point. It's speedy for sure, but I've had to secure erase it once to gain performance back, and apps periodically hang when loading. I'm about to move it to my netbook and see if perhaps it is my desktop causing the issue, but so far it's been frustration. I also went from an 150GB four year old Raptor to this Intel, and didn't see any real significant performance improvements except for boot up time.

I own two desktops and two laptops, and have gone from SSD to an HDD system on a regular basis. I realize I may have to wait a bit longer for something to load or to reboot, but it's not horrible. Everything else is pretty snappy.

 

[F1shF4t]

I've never secure errased my G1 intel ssd and it still runs well in my desktop. Full diagnostic scan in ssd toolbox seems to improve performance tho. (I guess filling it up with large files then deleting them should reduce internal fragmentation)

I do use laptops most of the time so that could skew my view of ssds. But you have to admit for a laptop a SSD is by far the best upgrade. I've even went as far as putting a SSD in my work laptop, and cause its full of crap work apps the performance improovemnt is very significant.

 

[llee]

I like using my OCZ Vertex 120GB because runs cool, improves application startup performance, and is noticeably lighter than a hard drive. These things are great for someone who uses SFF PCs and wants a semblance of mobility.

 

[htwingnut]

I agree 110% that SSD's are a great fit for a laptop, mainly for its durability and battery life. But even there the issue is capacity at a cost. 120GB costs ~ $230 for a decent (sandforce) drive. That is probably fine if the laptop isn't used for your main PC, but even then, I game on my laptop and use it probably 80% of the time for productivity stuff, including personal photos and movies. 120GB is hardly sufficient. Especially considering you shouldn't fill your SSD past ~70% capacity where you'll most likely see diminishing performance. You should realistically plan double the SSD size for the amount of storage you really need.

240-256GB drives will cost you minimum $450, most likely over $500 and typically in laptops you have a single drive bay for the most common sized laptops 15" and under. Granted my next laptop will be a 17" with dual drive bays so I can use probably either a 60GB or 120GB SSD as my boot and apps drive with a spacious 500GB for my storage and larger apps/games.

I am finding that SSD's are a perfect fit for a subcompact notebook or netbook where it manages your stuff on the go, but is rarely your mainstay at home or work, plus you get insanely long battery life.

 

[Zap]

But SSD's you do have to worry about performance degradation and an instant death. I have had five brand spankin' new SSD's of varying capacity and manufacture. Two died. One almost immediately, and the other within a couple months.

Failures can happen anywhere. I have a 25% failure rate for VelociRaptors (1 of the 4 I own just died) but I'm not going to presume that the failure happened because it is faster than normal hard drives, or because it is more expensive than normal hard drives. It happened in spite of being faster and more expensive.

Of course I also had a Seagate drive die on me this week as well. 😵 What does everyone think about that?

Oh yeah, it was an old 80GB model that was probably 6 years old. Now, what does everyone think about that?

Did it matter that the failure was a Seagate? That the other failure (also this week) was a VelociRaptor? How about if it was an SSD?

The common link is... electronic parts can fail. That's a fact of modern life.

I own two desktops and two laptops, and have gone from SSD to an HDD system on a regular basis. I realize I may have to wait a bit longer for something to load or to reboot, but it's not horrible.

For me it is about speed. If I'm willing to pay for a quad core CPU for supposed performance gains, why not pay for an SSD for supposed performance gains?

 

[erdemali]

Show me proof of that hour? Mine defrags when its idle at night.

But SSD's you do have to worry about performance degradation and an instant death. I have had five brand spankin' new SSD's of varying capacity and manufacture. Two died. One almost immediately, and the other within a couple months. I don't care what people say, SSD's can and do greatly degrade performance over time, even if benchmarks don't show it. Only a complete secure erase will help matters there.

My Intel 80GB is a great case in point. It's speedy for sure, but I've had to secure erase it once to gain performance back, and apps periodically hang when loading. I'm about to move it to my netbook and see if perhaps it is my desktop causing the issue, but so far it's been frustration. I also went from an 150GB four year old Raptor to this Intel, and didn't see any real significant performance improvements except for boot up time.

I own two desktops and two laptops, and have gone from SSD to an HDD system on a regular basis. I realize I may have to wait a bit longer for something to load or to reboot, but it's not horrible. Everything else is pretty snappy.

I suggest you keep using HDD. Some come up with bs reasons just to be right since they are not capable of adjusting to new tech.
I always forget some will always resist for new ideas.
happy defrags on idle. jesus...

 

[Claudius-07]

Much based on the type of SSD, though most newer ones are all decent. I am hoping you are using it for your OS right? Windows 7 and a good SSD are a perfect match.

 

[htwingnut]

The common link is... electronic parts can fail. That's a fact of modern life.

The problem is SSD's are supposed have significantly higher reliability than HDD's, which in reality is a great selling point, and almost worth a higher price point. They are surely more durable, but am not convinced on their reliability considering the rocky start I got.

For me it is about speed. If I'm willing to pay for a quad core CPU for supposed performance gains, why not pay for an SSD for supposed performance gains?

I agree. I'm not knocking SSD's, I own several. I'm just voicing my opinion and observations. People seem to think I should praise them for some reason when I haven't quite seen the performance advantage for cost. Also, a fast CPU will benefit pretty much any PC task. An SSD helps only certain portion of tasks, and if only as a boot drive, then only those apps that are loaded on the SSD. If it benefits your workload or tasks, then great, there's a definite benefit, I'm just referring to a general use computer.

If people just blindly go and buy an SSD without looking at their needs or performance characteristics of the drives they are going to be sorely disappointed. I think too many people do this. Unfortunately with HDD's we've become used to the fact that for the most part, spindle speed and cache were a tell-tale sign of performance of an HDD. For SSD's it's more complicated.

I suggest you keep using HDD. Some come up with bs reasons just to be right since they are not capable of adjusting to new tech.
I always forget some will always resist for new ideas.
happy defrags on idle. jesus...

I am not saying I'm right or wrong. SSD's have their place for certain and have advantages. I also have been in the tech field for 30 years both as a hobby and professionally, so I have no issue adjusting to new tech. I'm an early adopter of most technologies. Not so much these days because things are financially tight lately, but still managed to get ahold of a handful of SSD's, so I'm not just shooting from the hip.

My point is that SSD's aren't that much worth their cost, yet. Granted now that they're getting cheaper, $100 for a 60GB drive seems silly compared with the price of HDD's, but for an OS drive it does have benefits. But using defrag as a reason to get an SSD seems a little weak especially with Windows 7. In a desktop environment, the returns are a lot less than that in a laptop but then you're stuck in a dilemma between speed and capacity and cost.

 

[Zap]

The problem is SSD's are supposed have significantly higher reliability than HDD's

My point still stands. "Supposed to" or not, there will be a failure rate. For instance, there are people with failed Corsair PSUs going "WTF I thought I bought the best and now it died?!?!"

 

[Makaveli]

I agree there will always be areas where a electronic device can fail.

However the SSD has alot less of these area's than a HD.

For anyone looking at reliability as their number one purchase for an SSD they should only be looking at intel drives as they hold this crown currently.

 

[htwingnut]

I hear Samsungs are supposed to be pretty reliable as well and despite their meager benchmark results actually perform rather well in real world use.

 

[Juddog]

The other problem with SSD's is that their performance can vary wildly from one model to the next. You can buy a crap SSD off of newegg for cheap that performs badly, or you can pay a ton of cash and get something better such as one of the Intel X25-M G2's. I have two SSD's right now and while they perform similarly on the ATTO HD benchmark, the "user experience" between the two is vastly different.

 

[pjkenned]

regular people its not worth it IMO , get a top notch third gen mechanical drive youll be happy.

Pretty sure a "third gen" mechanical drive would be something sub 100MB in total capacity and 1MB/s performance from thirty years ago.

The other problem with SSD's is that their performance can vary wildly from one model to the next. You can buy a crap SSD off of newegg for cheap that performs badly, or you can pay a ton of cash and get something better such as one of the Intel X25-M G2's. I have two SSD's right now and while they perform similarly on the ATTO HD benchmark, the "user experience" between the two is vastly different.

They can also perform WILDLY differently depending on system, setup, and drivers. If you have a 60GB+ Sandforce drive they will run ATTO at 285/275MB/s read/write speeds very consistently (+/- 3MB/s) because ATTO is really compressible data.

That being said, I installed a new 64GB Sandforce drive in an Intel 3400 series platform and then installed Windows 7 x64 out of the box. 220MB/s read 185MB/s write.
I then hooked the same drive into a laptop with a C2D T9300 and saw <150MB/s read/ write.
Finally, I hooked the drive into my main system where I knew the ICH10R was set to RAID mode and recent Intel RST drivers were installed. Performance was back to 285/275 in ATTO.

Point is, you do need to set them up properly.

And to anyone that thinks that a properly setup Indilinx, Sandforce, Micron C300, or Intel X25-V/ G1/ G2 is not faster than a traditional disk is absolutely crazy. You get more speed, albeit 1-2s at a time in non-boot scenarios. Going back to hard disks is rough. My firm issued laptop uses a mechanical hard drive and is painfully slow. Every other system I own uses SSD's at this point. And just for comparison, I made the switch to SSDs while I was running a boot volume based on 8x 15k RPM Seagate Savvio drives in RAID 5 with an Adaptec 5805 w/ BBU. The performance of that setup was light years beyond consumer raptors and 7,200rpm disks and still I use SSDs now.

P.S. Just to be clear, do not defrag SSDs.

 

[taltamir]

Title says it all just about i got the SSD drive today loaded it installed it and i just dont see no BIG improvement i just dont see it unless im missing something

1. what make and model of SSD? (not all SSDs are equal)
2. what is your motherboard? (some have problematic SATA controllers)
3. what have you tried doing with it? SSDs slightly improve boot time, but that is not nearly all they do.
They are completely silent.
Installing programs and updates is much faster.
Loading programs is much faster.
Loading times in games are much shorter, usually, depending on the game. Some games see no improvement.
Video editing / large file manipulation / software compiling / etc also benefit in speed.

These all of course require that you are installing and running those from the SSD. which, due to limited space, means picking and choosing what goes where.
I only install a few games at a time to the SSD, but I try to keep my saved games on it for all games.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

You are not the only one who grapples with the cost/performance issues with SSD's. Even the engineers in my SSD R&D department who design/make these things don't like the large cash outlays for the limited space in their regular home PC's.

Where they make the most sense is in laptop/notebooks. Why?
a. laptops are more likely to break mechanical drives because of vibration/movement.
b. Laptops get turned on/off or put into sleep/hibernate modes much more often than desktops. Since the biggest performance difference is usually OS boot/load times, this turn-on time difference adds up greatly since it is more often taking advantage of the SSD's enherent strength.
c. Laptop hard drives are generally really slow compared to the desktop couterparts. They are typically specc'd/designed for power savings, not performance. SSD performance difference deltas are much greater when compared to typical slow laptop HD's than much faster desktop hard drives, while being still keeping the power consumption decent.
d. Sound levels/heat. Sitting in a quiet library/meeting room, etc, even a few decibels of sound from a spinning/chattering HD versus an SSD can be quite pronounced. plus runs cooler so system fans don't have to run as hard.
e. Laptop HD's aren't generally that big, compared to dekstop HD's in storage capability, so the storage space difference between an SSD is not as pronounced.

While SSD's are still great to have in a home desktop-type PC, it doesn't mean the performance delta is as "valuable" or cost-worthy when compared to a big decent HD.


Gamewise:
For most single-player games, level load times are not a big deal. the game designers tend to know that at certain points, a person's PC will probably be taking a longer time to load so they won't put a bunch of monsters/NPC's at these starting point areas just waiting to kill you. Thusly, you can go grab a bite to eat or something while it's loading. In these cases an SSD will reduce the load times, but it's hardly an inconvenience.

For real-time MMORG's (forgot acronym 🙂 or whatever, SSD's will show nice improvements in zone load times, which "does" make a difference when other humans players "are" waiting to kill you on the other side. A good example is RAID instances in WoW. For example you need to zone out to reset the raid instance and there's an opposing faction RAID waiting to go in. even 2 to 5 seconds of load time difference is the chance of fighting back compared to just having your character be dead and some blood elf teabagging your character's corpse.

 

[kmmatney]

The biggest improvement I have noticed with SSDs is multitasking. Doing 2 or 3 operations that all access the hard drive is no sweat. I can work while a virus scan is going now.

Mechanical hard drives have gotten a lot faster, and they are good enough for most purposes. I have 2 WD green drives in my desktop, and they are "fast enough". I only use my desktop for entertainment, though. I do my real work on a laptop, and in that case my Intel 80GB G1 has been well worth it.

 

[deimos3428]

I went from a 500GB Seagate 7200.12 to a 64GB Corsair Nova for my system drive. I was disappointed by the lack of noticeable speed difference outside of benchmarks. That said, I just like having an SSD because it's quiet.