What surprised you about using an SSD?

[mikeymikec]

I've only built one system with an SSD in (Win7 64 with a Samsung 830). An obvious thing about SSDs are the fast OS boot times (Win7 64 typically booted from the point of showing 'Starting Windows' to all the icons showing everywhere in about 10 seconds). Another thing you might expect are fast game level loading times for example.

One thing that was a pleasant surprise was hooking the system up on-site - the bit where one connects up new peripherals (keyboard, mouse etc) and it detects them for the first time; there was also an ancient HP LaserJet for it to handle as well, and it simply booted up and said that it had installed all the new peripherals without any extra waiting/booting time, rather than the standard "new mouse, let me have a think about this... new keyboard... bit longer..." etc.

One thing that was a surprise but not a pleasant one was that Windows Installer jobs didn't seem to be processed any quicker, things like installing Adobe Reader X seemed to take just as long as they usually do on a HDD system. Windows updates seemed variable, some were processed far quicker than expected, others seemed to take just as long.

 

[Hellhammer]

Remember that SSD can't speed up tasks where something else is the bottleneck. For example installing Windows isn't any faster because your optical drive is the bottleneck (or USB stick if you're using that for installation). The only way to speed that up is to use another SSD as the Windows installation disc, though that's kind of pointless (I did that with one of my excess SSDs but I guess I'm a special case anyway).

As for Adobe Reader X and Windows updates, they are mostly dependent on your Internet speed. Downloading an update can easily take several minutes but installing it will usually only take a few seconds, so saving a second or two there isn't going to affect the total time that much.

 

[mikeymikec]

Remember that SSD can't speed up tasks where something else is the bottleneck.

Of course. But if you are used to something taking a certain length of time, you might assume that because there's a lot of disk I/O that having a much faster storage device would speed the whole process up, until of course it hits some other unexpected bottleneck.

One very odd thing I noticed with installing Windows updates was the memory usage. Normally when installing the first slew of post-SP1 updates I expect memory usage to get to about 1.6GB. On this SSD setup (4GB total, just like most of the ones I'm setting up - RAM prices are different in the UK and most of my customers don't need more memory... yet), memory usage was hitting 2.3GB.

As for Adobe Reader X

I install it with a standalone installer, not via download, from the SSD. I think Windows Installer just has some odd bottlenecks (as well as the Adobe Reader installer, I'd like to know what's with the first phase of installation when it is "optimising").

and Windows updates, they are mostly dependent on your Internet speed. Downloading an update can easily take several minutes but installing it will usually only take a few seconds, so saving a second or two there isn't going to affect the total time that much.

Except that I waited until after the download phase for all the updates were complete before paying attention to how long it took.

 

[blastingcap]

Q: What surprised you about using an SSD?
A: What surprised me was how all 2010-or-later SSDs felt about the same speed to me. Fast random 4K speeds is what really matters since large sequential transfers are so rare anyway, but once you're past, say, 30 MB/s it kind of doesn't matter anymore. 30 MB/s is still TWO orders of magnitude faster than HDDs. And even a relatively old Intel X25-M G2 gets over 30 MB/s. Sequential speeds do not matter to me since I don't use SSDs for mass storage.

 

[corkyg]

In my Lenovo T510 laptop, nothing really surprised me. The Samsung 830 256GB performs as expected. Boot and Windopws load time is a few seconds faster than the Momentux XT hybrid it replaced. The XT was prestty fast for a spindle drive.

Aside from snappier program response, the laptop benefits lower power consumption, and a more rugged drive.

 

[zCypher]

What surprised me is how the entire user experience seemed dramatically improved, everything is snappy. Everything opens almost instantly in comparison to the spindle drive. Impressive boot times, but fairly irrelevant since I rarely reboot. One of the most significant things I noticed was the much better multitasking performance. Try and multitask with a spindle drive and watch the whole system get bogged down, just does not happen with an SSD. I'm talking about the dreaded HDD crunching away and you twiddling your thumbs as you wait for it to unstick itself.

So refreshing.

 

[Eug]

What surprised me is just how power hungry some of the SSDs are. You have to be careful when buying an SSD, because you can really decrease laptop battery life if you buy the wrong model SSD.

eg. Kingston V200 idle power is 2.0 Watts!!!

http://www.kingston.com/datasheets/sv200s3_us.pdf
http://www.hardcoreware.net/kingston-v200-review-128gb/7/



OTOH, if you buy a very low power SSD, you can increase laptop battery life.

 

[Smoblikat]

How slow it was compared to my old RAID0 array.

 

[dagamer34]

What really surprised me is how people manage to still use mechanical hard drives. Once you go SSD, you NEVER want to go back.

 

[Eug]

I still use hard drives in my desktops. The performance difference is noticeable but it's still OK with modern 3.5" 7200 rpm hard drives. The biggest benefit for SSD is for laptops.

 

[bradley]

Moderate to extreme multitasking is ultimately what sold me, it's absolutely seamless.

 

[Dadofamunky]

I still use hard drives in my desktops. The performance difference is noticeable but it's still OK with modern 3.5" 7200 rpm hard drives. The biggest benefit for SSD is for laptops.

%$*Ack*&$ (*choke*) Um, sure... OK.

 

[Veliko]

I was surprised to find that the benefits of an SSD are exaggerated.

"The PC boots instantly!" Erm, no it doesn't.
"World of Warcraft loads instantly!" Erm, no it doesn't.
"Everything is instantaneous!" Erm, no it isn't.

 

[Puffnstuff]

If your system isn't loading fast or booting fast then you need to update your system to match the speed offered by the ssd.

 

[RobertT]

And I though, adding RAM or upgrading CPU were the only ways to speed up my PC. I never knew adding an SSD would boost the performance so much. Thankfully, I bought the Samsung 830!

 

[AdamK47]

What suprises me is the amount of hype SSD garner. It has gotten to annoyingly ridiculous levels. It's eye roll worthy everytime I overhear people at work talk about how great it makes anything and everything perform.

 

[techpun]

after reading these comments, I want to pick up one on sale..however reviews on newegg for cheap ssd's are not the best namely the OCZ and Kingston drives going on sale as of late. Which brands tend to be most reliable?

 

[Blintok]

I was surprised to find that the benefits of an SSD are exaggerated.

"The PC boots instantly!" Erm, no it doesn't.
"World of Warcraft loads instantly!" Erm, no it doesn't.
"Everything is instantaneous!" Erm, no it isn't.

everything is faster tho. World of Warcraft is much faster. <click on desktop icon> 2 sec later log on screen. <type in password> 2 sec later on character select. pick character <enter world> and 2 sec later ready to play. Game transitions are insanely faster now. Call to home and literally you blink and are ready to play


(game machine is an i7-2600k - 16g ram - Nvidia 560ti - 120g intel 320 win7(64) drive
and 240g OCZ vertex for game data)

 

[blastingcap]

after reading these comments, I want to pick up one on sale..however reviews on newegg for cheap ssd's are not the best namely the OCZ and Kingston drives going on sale as of late. Which brands tend to be most reliable?

Here, get this for $40 after rebate and use it as an OS drive. Stick your big files (games, movies, music, photos, etc.) onto a larger hard drive. It's 34nm (more durable NAND) and TRIM-enabled.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...?EdpNo=4969041

Rebate is good for today only (10/23)

Forget the sequential speed pissing match; you won't be using the SSD for sloshing around huge amounts of data anyway. All you need are good Random 4K read/write speeds, and this drive is good enough... literally 100 times faster than the typical 7200rpm hard drive. To this day, I have a hard time telling whether I'm on an Intel X25-M G2, Samsung 830, or Crucial M4 except when transferring multiple gigabytes of data at a time. And that rarely happens. Is it worth paying much more $ for higher seq transfer speeds if you almost never do large sequential transfers, and if the speed boost only saves you a few seconds of time for that huge transfer. I say hell no.

 

[Veliko]

everything is faster tho. World of Warcraft is much faster. <click on desktop icon> 2 sec later log on screen. <type in password> 2 sec later on character select. pick character <enter world> and 2 sec later ready to play. Game transitions are insanely faster now. Call to home and literally you blink and are ready to play.

You make it sound as if it only takes six seconds to get into WoW when using an SSD.

It's faster, but nowhere near that fast.

 

[dqniel]

You make it sound as if it only takes six seconds to get into WoW when using an SSD.

It's faster, but nowhere near that fast.

It is that fast for me. The load times for Windows itself, games, and other applications dropped like a rock. The biggest difference is booting Windows and promptly opening Adobe Photoshop, for me. It's a matter of less than 15 seconds in comparison to over a minute when I was using a Samsung 320GB 7200rpm drive.

 

[Eureka]

What surprised me was the Windows boot time: from button to desktop in under 15 seconds. What also surprised me was the SSD failure time: from purchase to RMA in under 7 months!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What surprised me was the Windows boot time: from button to desktop in under 15 seconds. What also surprised me was the SSD failure time: from purchase to RMA in under 7 months!

Touché.

 

[FreeAtLast2012]

The experience has improved. And I'm not talking about the BS Apple Headache experience. I'm talking about speed. I can do everything faster. Have you ever tried editing photos on a SSD? Boot time is great, but everything is a mouse click release to instant open.

 

[techpun]

dave, what brand?