SSD or Mechanical

[whitesammy]

i've been debating about getting a SSD for my computer. i do heavy downloading and file transferring so i don't want to try and kill my SSD so much.

i need some advice on purchasing one solely for the cause of not just load time and transfers but how many times i can file transfer without having it degrade so much.

i'm not sure about sandforce drives and what they are probably wiki it up in a bit. also the differentiation between MLC and SLC drives.

i have a lot of storage on my computer almost 4tb's worth filled with data so i'm wondering should i get a velociraptor or get an SSD. need some input

budget ~200

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

You should get an 80GB X25-M. They are quite durable and even using it as swap space, you should not have to worry about it wearing out before a mechanical drive would.* A Velociraptor's seek time is still orders of magnitude greater than an SSD and is only a small, incremental improvement over a 7200RPM drive.

* That said, I have my torrents download to my secondary, mechanical drive, just because torrents don't really benefit from an SSD's speed, and the space on my SSD is precious.

 

[whitesammy]

You should get an 80GB X25-M. They are quite durable and even using it as swap space, you should not have to worry about it wearing out before a mechanical drive would.* A Velociraptor's seek time is still orders of magnitude greater than an SSD and is only a small, incremental improvement over a 7200RPM drive.

* That said, I have my torrents download to my secondary, mechanical drive, just because torrents don't really benefit from an SSD's speed, and the space on my SSD is precious.

thanks i know what you mean. but the question is when your downloading the ssd reads the info and then stores it on the mechanical drive right?

the only thing i think of installing on the SSD is like MSoffice, maybe CS5 (what a gimmik) thats pretty much it.

Intel Series, OCZ series are one of the top brands so far. but has anyone tried any other brand of SSD's? still waiting if anyone can decypher between SLC and MLC

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

thanks i know what you mean. but the question is when your downloading the ssd reads the info and then stores it on the mechanical drive right?

the only thing i think of installing on the SSD is like MSoffice, maybe CS5 (what a gimmik) thats pretty much it.

Intel Series, OCZ series are one of the top brands so far. but has anyone tried any other brand of SSD's? still waiting if anyone can decypher between SLC and MLC

Well the SSD wouldn't really be involved in the download at all. The torrent program would be in memory and the torrent data would be written to the mechanical drive. The torrent file might be temporarily stored on the SSD when I download it via my browser, but that is quite a trivial operation.

I would install the OS and as many frequently used apps and data on the SSD as you can. Anything that often suffers slowdown due to scanning lots of small files will benefit tremendously from the SSD.

 

[whitesammy]

will i be degrading my SSD when it reads from the mechanical drive as when i watch/listen to music?

G.skill falcon 2 64gb for ~150 shipped
OCZ agility 60gb ~ 140 shipped
OCZ Vertex 60gb ~180 shipped

if i do find a 80gb x25-m for <200 shipped i might hop on it

 

[Emulex]

depends on where your tmp dir is and pagefile and software.

doesn't seem to bother ipod's

 

[flamenko]

Not a Pagefile fan but you will observe absolutely no problems whatsoever if you store piks/movies and music on the HDD and use the OS as the boot drive. Personally, I have them in both environments for testing situations in reviews.

Programs are another animal. They are best to keep on the boot drive because one of the main SSD characteristics is the speed in which they load and run.

The questions you answered directly are subjects of articles linked which may help you out

SandForce Drives

MLC vs SLC

SSD Mechanics

 

[whitesammy]

thank you Flamenko. hopefully this will get me toward finding my ssd.

one more quick question. is it a bad idea to have 2 raid 0 going on or should i try raid 1+0?

 

[flamenko]

Sorry not a RAID guy for a long time now. There are many who minimize the reasoning for RAID at all with the speeds of the new SSDs as well as Youtube videos which depict the speed of SSDs being superior than those of RAID.

 

[whitesammy]

i've seen raid speeds and their twice as fast but then its risky and also degrading at a fast pace i believe.

thanks for the input

 

[flamenko]

Yup and the RAID speeds you see for the most part are the higher sequential reads and writes being doubled. They are used very little in reality. Look for the lower randoms and if they double, that would be a sweet spot.

 

[whitesammy]

ahh very interesting. seems the proggy that test speeds aren't able to differentiate that its two hdd's working together but both are running at regular factory settings if i'm correct.

its time to research on raid mechanicals i hate my case and its not enough space :[

thanks again flamenko