SSDs - There is no turning back!

RhoXS

Member
Aug 14, 2010
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I was using my SSD based computer last night for a number of routine tasks and was overtly enjoying how quickly it responded to everything I asked of it. For all practical purposes, the result of a mouse click is instantaneous. Needing to reboot is only a trivial and momentary inconvenience. There is just something very satisfying about any complex machine that runs this incredibly well.

Then, my wife asked me for some help with an App on her HDD (Ugh!) based machine (more or less similar in all other respects). The difference between the two machines was striking. Many times I have offered to install an SSD in her machine but she does not now want to deal with a clean install.

Anyway, I periodically see posts with users asking if they should upgrade to an SSD. Unequivocally yes! It is well worth the minimal effort and expense. IMO, no other upgrade or even combination of upgrades will give such a noticeably significant improvement in apparent speed.
 

razel

Platinum Member
May 14, 2002
2,337
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101
Couldn't agree more, especially in laptops where HDDs lack. Back in 2009 the difference was even more pronounced. I quickly upgraded all HDDs in my family and convinced friends by showing examples to upgrade.

It saved so much time. There is less time spent in front on the computer. I even changed their Win automatic update from 'notify' to 'download and install'. SSDs made that seamless that none complained. I doubt they even notice. It extended the life of several Pentium 4 based computers and even a Pentium M 1GIG laptop.

SSDs are so fast that I even sacrifice my SSD when a family member needs spyware cleanup. Instead of running the scan on the HDD. I backup my SSD, clone/shrink their HDD onto my SSD and do the scans. A 3 hour scan/clean gets reduced to less than one. And that includes restoring my system back onto my SSD.
 

RhoXS

Member
Aug 14, 2010
191
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even a Pentium M 1GIG laptop.

What SSD did you use?

I have an old Pentium M IBM R50 Thinkpad 1830. This is a great machine and I regularly use it. I have wanted to replace the HDD with a SSD. Unfortunately, the machine uses a PATA IDE interface (as I suspect your Pentium M has) and I cannot find a compatible SSD for it. I have a recently retired IBM 120 GB G2 but it is, of course, a SATA interface.
 

razel

Platinum Member
May 14, 2002
2,337
90
101
What SSD did you use?

I have an old Pentium M IBM R50 Thinkpad 1830. This is a great machine and I regularly use it. I have wanted to replace the HDD with a SSD. Unfortunately, the machine uses a PATA IDE interface (as I suspect your Pentium M has) and I cannot find a compatible SSD for it. I have a recently retired IBM 120 GB G2 but it is, of course, a SATA interface.

Dane-Elec Intel G1 80GB 1.8" inch running to a SATA-IDE adapter. It didn't have a drive bay and the HDD drive sat inside the laptop so there's plenty of room. The adapter is difficult to find. I think in one of my old posts I have a link to an image of it.

However that laptop only had USB 1.1. If your Thinkpad has USB 2 and it's always plugged in (because replacing the battery is expensive) I highly recommend cloning your IDE to an SSD. Put that SSD in a USB 2.0 2.5" enclosure (doesn't require a power supply) and boot off that. I do that to another Pentium M laptop. Performance is limited to ~35MB/s but the overall experience is still FAR better than laptop IDE HDDs.
 

chin311

Diamond Member
Feb 27, 2003
4,306
3
81
oh yes, i agree.

I work on computers all day, from old celerons with 512mb DDR to fresh out the box i7's, but you never see any with SSD's. So when I come home to my system it's refreshing to say the least lol.
 

kmmatney

Diamond Member
Jun 19, 2000
4,363
1
81
" Many times I have offered to install an SSD in her machine but she does not now want to deal with a clean install."

I upgraded my wife's laptop to SSD simply by cloning her old drive to the SSD. This gives you 95% of the performance of a clean install, and you also get a backup of the drive, just in case. You can then use GParted to align the partition(s), and if possible you can also switch to AHCI with a registry setting and a reboot. If you buy an Intel, Crucial or Samsung SSD, they have tools to perform a manual optimize of the drive as well. So don't be hung up thinking you need a clean install.
 

RhoXS

Member
Aug 14, 2010
191
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" Many times I have offered to install an SSD in her machine but she does not now want to deal with a clean install."

I upgraded my wife's laptop to SSD simply by cloning her old drive to the SSD. This gives you 95% of the performance of a clean install, and you also get a backup of the drive, just in case. You can then use GParted to align the partition(s), and if possible you can also switch to AHCI with a registry setting and a reboot. If you buy an Intel, Crucial or Samsung SSD, they have tools to perform a manual optimize of the drive as well. So don't be hung up thinking you need a clean install.

Thanks for the good advice. I have done exactly what you suggest in the past with excellent results.

Unfortunately, due to the amount of data on her existing HDD, the 120 GB Intel G2 I have available (or willing to afford if I buy a new one) does not begin to be large enough so I need to also use a HDD for a data drive. To keep things simple and reliable, with minimal pleas for help through the short hallway between her home office to my home office, I am only willing to do the upgrade with a clean install. Some of her Apps, especially the Real Estate and Geneaology Apps, I know from experience, will not behave well if they have to start looking for data in a location they are not used to finding it. Sure, I can make anything work, but I do not think the result will be what either she or I want without the clean install.

My wife also was forced into a clean install about six months ago when I upgraded her from Vista to W7. I cannot blame her for not wanting to go through the process so soon again.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
2,998
126
I have to say that an SSD hasn’t made a huge difference for me compared to my Caviar Black. I got a bigger one to fit my Steam games on it, but it definitely wasn’t worth it.

Booting is a few seconds faster but I usually only boot once per day. Programs like Office and iTunes load maybe one second faster, and only the first time I load them.

It also shaves a few seconds off a Steam game’s level load time, but only the first time as subsequent loads are cached, making disk I/O irrelevant. Also Steam has a start-up bottleneck that doesn’t appear to be disk bound.

In contrast, going from a GTX580 to a GTX680 gave me a benefit in almost every game for the entire time I play it, no matter if it’s the first run or the tenth.

Either people are coming from Bigfoots running under PIO mode, or this technology is vastly overhyped. I believe the latter IMO.
 
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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,283
1,702
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In contrast, going from a GTX580 to a GTX680 gave me a benefit in almost every game for the entire time I play it, no matter if it’s the first run or the tenth.

Well if high FPS is your goal and you are on a budget, no one will tell you to get a worse GPU to afford an ssd.

I know you know ssd are about FPS but the effect on responsiveness is just not deniable.
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
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Everything at my house has SSD in it. My desktop has 4 SF2281 toggle NAND SSDs in RAID0.

I'm currently at work copying data between dino drives at 1.8 MB/sec... 100s of thousands of < 4kb files. I'm going to shoot myself in the face when I get off work.
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
5,437
1,659
136
I have to say that an SSD hasn&#8217;t made a huge difference for me compared to my Caviar Black. I got a bigger one to fit my Steam games on it, but it definitely wasn&#8217;t worth it.

Booting is a few seconds faster but I usually only boot once per day. Programs like Office and iTunes load maybe one second faster, and only the first time I load them.

It also shaves a few seconds off a Steam game&#8217;s level load time, but only the first time as subsequent loads are cached, making disk I/O irrelevant. Also Steam has a start-up bottleneck that doesn&#8217;t appear to be disk bound.

In contrast, going from a GTX580 to a GTX680 gave me a benefit in almost every game for the entire time I play it, no matter if it&#8217;s the first run or the tenth.

Either people are coming from Bigfoots running under PIO mode, or this technology is vastly overhyped. I believe the latter IMO.

Becareful I got shunned in another storage thread for even suggesting that someone with a RAID 0 array might not get as much an upgrade moving to a smaller SSD on a 3Gb/s port.

The combination of super-fetch, better responsiveness of Win7, and a decent amount of memory, should minimize the SSD effect a bit. My Laptop with a M4 on 3Gb/s in the end is snappier, then it was on my 320GB 7200 drive. But its not a night and day difference. Computer also runs cooler and I don't hear the syncs. But depending on peoples general use of a computer it would be easy not to see much of a difference. It's there and its tangible, but I don't think its what it is implied to be on a lot of threads.
 

Sunburn74

Diamond Member
Oct 5, 2009
5,075
2,633
136
I have to say that an SSD hasn&#8217;t made a huge difference for me compared to my Caviar Black. I got a bigger one to fit my Steam games on it, but it definitely wasn&#8217;t worth it.

Booting is a few seconds faster but I usually only boot once per day. Programs like Office and iTunes load maybe one second faster, and only the first time I load them.

It also shaves a few seconds off a Steam game&#8217;s level load time, but only the first time as subsequent loads are cached, making disk I/O irrelevant. Also Steam has a start-up bottleneck that doesn&#8217;t appear to be disk bound.

In contrast, going from a GTX580 to a GTX680 gave me a benefit in almost every game for the entire time I play it, no matter if it&#8217;s the first run or the tenth.

Either people are coming from Bigfoots running under PIO mode, or this technology is vastly overhyped. I believe the latter IMO.

Man I have to disagree. Like the first user, I had a SSD in my laptop and a SSD raid setup in my desktop. Working on my girlfriends desktop and laptop were barbaric in comparision.

I realize with a well maintained PC and a modern HDD the gap in real world use between SSD and HDD has closed, but honestly the things I've grown to like are
1) reboots are a minor inconvenience during software troubleshooting sessions where multiple reboots can occur
2) I can have essentially as many background and startup applications as I want with no difference in performance
3) Tasks like antivirus checks take a fraction of the time
4) there are no annoying hangs when I accidently right click something

I do still feel an increased responsiveness, but its subjective I guess. And with a SSD raid-o setup, the game loading is ridiculous (my system pushes >1gb/s throughput reads. I remember watching skyrim videos of various mods on HDD systems on youtube. The load times shown going from a house to the street was simply shocking compared to my system, where there was barely anytime to show the load screen). Anyway just my thoughts. The skyrim thing is absolutely true though; I just wish I still had the game installed soyou can compare and contrast yourself. I may do it later as time free's up.
 
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