SSD Question

[Kaldorine]

Just a quick question. I'm thinking of purchasing 2 M4s to run in Raid 0. But besides a short boot time what is the benefit of an SSD? My PC is rarely ever turned off almost never (unless some kind of update requires a restart) Since it is never turned off i never have to reopen programs. Since my games take up over 500gbs of space i will have those on my storage drive.

Before i pull the trigger on these things are they even worth the purchase for a user like me?

Thanks.

 

[thelastjuju]

As a general rule, any programs or games that have significant load times, will vanish almost entirely when launched off the SSD instead of the HDD. I have a heavily modded game I play often, and it used to take a good 8 minutes just to load on an HDD with all the mods having to load, and only about 30 seconds now that I load it off my SSD (an M4 too).

I can't stand when people rave about boot times of an SSD, because boot times are irrelevant to those who run 24/7 or simply hibernate or used advanced sleep modes and boot up ready to go in a few short seconds anyway.

You are probably best off saving the money and just going with a single M4.:thumbsup:

 

[JasonCoder]

I read you on the raving part (like bragging about your Prius' startup) but since my SSD purchase I no longer use my sleep mode. Sleep can sometimes (not often but occasionally) introduce funkiness. I do total shutdowns now that I know I don't have to worry about long boot times. I could probably disable the sleep function altogether and reclaim 8gig (my amount of RAM) from the SSD.

BTW, what game is this you speak of? Your own local MMO emulator?

As a general rule, any programs or games that have significant load times, will vanish almost entirely when launched off the SSD instead of the HDD. I have a heavily modded game I play often, and it used to take a good 8 minutes just to load on an HDD with all the mods having to load, and only about 30 seconds now that I load it off my SSD (an M4 too).

I can't stand when people rave about boot times of an SSD, because boot times are irrelevant to those who run 24/7 or simply hibernate or used advanced sleep modes and boot up ready to go in a few short seconds anyway.

You are probably best off saving the money and just going with a single M4.:thumbsup:

 

[Cerb]

I read you on the raving part (like bragging about your Prius' startup) but since my SSD purchase I no longer use my sleep mode. Sleep can sometimes (not often but occasionally) introduce funkiness. I do total shutdowns now that I know I don't have to worry about long boot times. I could probably disable the sleep function altogether and reclaim 8gig (my amount of RAM) from the SSD.

You can do that, now ("powercfg -h off" from an admin command prompt, since MS no longer trusts user poking around in the GUI ). That's eaten up for hibernation, which is a complete shutdown of the computer.

IMO, for not being able to use sleep, you aught to able to measure the difference in power consumption, and bill it to the SSD manufacturer.

 

[Kaldorine]

Okay now if i do grab one of these things do i have to do a fresh install or do they come with some kind of cloning software?

 

[thelastjuju]

BTW, what game is this you speak of? Your own local MMO emulator?

no, the game is Sim City 4.. having to load its 12gb mod folder and the region with ~8million population

I still work on my region for a few hours a week .. and now I don't have to come back to the computer while it loads. here's an example of how far the game has come and how active the community still is, if you're curious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfxOJJ7Omtc

http://community.simtropolis.com/forum/11-city-journals/

As far as sleep modes.. I've been hibernating all my rigs, and have only ONCE had a time where it failed to restore properly.

Okay now if i do grab one of these things do i have to do a fresh install or do they come with some kind of cloning software?

That's your call.. some insist a fresh install is the way to go, but cloning everything over would work fine too as long as the cloning software is up to date to handle aligning the SSD. The latest version of Acronis should do it, but it won't be included.

 

[hhhd1]

if you bought crucial with the data cable you get some sort of special cloning software, not sure how good it is.

samsung 830 desktop kit or laptop kit comes with norton ghost

there are many free reliable similar software.

 

[Vdubchaos]

If you care about start up times/Load times...go nuts.

Patience is the key to success. I can wait extra 5-10 seconds for BF3 map to load....no big deal.

And Windows start up times are no big deal either.

When SSDs price comes down to planet earth I MIGHT give it a thought.

 

[Zap]

Okay now if i do grab one of these things do i have to do a fresh install or do they come with some kind of cloning software?

If you want it to be "easy" then buy an SSD that comes with the stuff you need to clone. For instance I bought a Crucial M4 that came with an Apricorn USB adapter and EZGIG4 software on a bootable CD. Just look for:

"Crucial M4 ... with Data Transfer Kit"

This is the one I bought. Take a look at the last picture. The CD is bootable (I'd recommend that route instead of installing it in Windows) and the USB adapter will turn your SSD into a 512GB USB flash drive. Just boot off the CD with the new SSD hooked up to a USB port and go through the menu to clone it. Defaults work - just choose the proper source/destination drives. The software will align the partition too.

Other companies sell these too. I also have one of these Corsair drives and it came with the same Apricorn adapter/software.

 

[bryanW1995]

If you really wanted to get crazy, you can get the 512gb m4 for $385 these days. 2 of those would be expensive, but the convenience of giving up the HDD cannot be overestimated. I haven't bothered to plug in my old 2tb WD green since getting my 2x256gb m4's 3 mos ago, and I have been quite pleased with my results.

 

[JasonCoder]

You can do that, now ("powercfg -h off" from an admin command prompt, since MS no longer trusts user poking around in the GUI ). That's eaten up for hibernation, which is a complete shutdown of the computer.

IMO, for not being able to use sleep, you aught to able to measure the difference in power consumption, and bill it to the SSD manufacturer.

Sorry for not referring to it correctly as hibernation. Didn't know the pedants were out in force here ;P I am hardcore about freeing space on my boot drive. Protip: junction point your [users folder](http://lifehacker.com/5467758/move-the-users-directory-in-windows-7).

 

[Schmide]

Maybe get a cache drive?

$50 after rebate OCZ Synapse 64

 

[tweakboy]

Just a quick question. I'm thinking of purchasing 2 M4s to run in Raid 0. But besides a short boot time what is the benefit of an SSD? My PC is rarely ever turned off almost never (unless some kind of update requires a restart) Since it is never turned off i never have to reopen programs. Since my games take up over 500gbs of space i will have those on my storage drive.

Before i pull the trigger on these things are they even worth the purchase for a user like me?

Thanks.

Your boot time is the same wheter sata 2 or sata 3 Wheteher your 250mbps or 500 or 1000mbps the booting time and photoshop launch time is same. I say this as my backup is Toms hardware ,, thats where I got the stats.. thx gl

 

[tweakboy]

They did boot times with sata 2 and sata 3 ,,,,, its same.... launched of apps, photoshop takes 2 seconds to launch. I got this information @ Toms hardware, apparently 3Gbps or 6Gbps your boot time will be fast and same,,,, in windows large transfers will be very fast...........

 

[RU482]

They did boot times with sata 2 and sata 3 ,,,,, its same.... launched of apps, photoshop takes 2 seconds to launch. I got this information @ Toms hardware, apparently 3Gbps or 6Gbps your boot time will be fast and same,,,, in windows large transfers will be very fast...........

but large file transfers??????

 

[Zap]

I am hardcore about freeing space on my boot drive. Protip: junction point your [users folder](http://lifehacker.com/5467758/move-the-users-directory-in-windows-7).

I don't bother with junction points. I'm running about a terabyte of SSD (spread over 3 drives) and zero physically spinning platters.