Solid state drives are still pricey

[SilverCode]

Which gives you little option if you're a laptop user, as many are, and have to choose between space and speed.

I put a 64GB SSD in my work laptop that I use for personal use as well. The main installation is Ubuntu 10.10, with 2 Virtual Machines (FC3 and Fedora 14) for development, and so far I haven't had a problem with space at all. As it stands now I still have 16GB free, and that is even with a couple albums worth of mp3's on the drive as well. Any other data that I need fits nicely on my 500GB 2.5" external drive that I carry around in my laptop bag.

I've been running with an SSD for almost a year now, and can't imagine a world without it. Every now and then I boot up the original HDD that came with the Laptop (500GB with Win7 connected via eSATA), and I am astonished at how slow regular drives are (suppose Windows could be to blame as well). From cold boot (ignoring long POST time), I can get the main OS up and running along with my Fedora 14 VM in under 30 seconds. Not to mention the longer battery life and less heat+noise. I say the speed benefit far outweighs the burden of having to carry around another 2.5" external drive.

 

[killadoob]

Everyone does a fresh windows install when they install a SSD. Most of the snappiness can be attributed to the fresh system. I'm not saying it's not faster. It is faster at loading stuff and doing things that are hard drive intensive. Though doing a fresh windows install on a normal HDD makes a PC feel a whole lot snappier, at least for a few months. I just reformatted my laptop hard drive on the weekend and reinstalled windows. It has never felt faster. Browsing the drive is basically instantaneuos. So I doubt SSD would really feel (much) faster to me.

You can tell you have never worked with a ssd before.

You doubt? Sadly so many people say o they cannot be that fast. Once you have felt the speed of a ssd you will look at this post and feel somewhat red faced .

You don't notice how slow a normal drive is until you load up a ssd. It is the greatest feeling clicking on something and knowing within that split second you won't here chugging and things will just work instantly. You load into windows bam everything is usable. You keep thinking your fresh install will be the same as a ssd that can access your files 100x times faster .

Kerbyross:

How does your raid get past the fact that a ssd will access your files 100 times faster than your raid config? Sure you may have good R/W but ssd's shine in the seek time, you click on something and instantly it recognizes and goes to work, you could have 500 hdd in raid 0 but you cannot drop the seek time of your average hdd. People always see Read and Write and think oooooooo my raid config is as fast but fail to understand it takes your hdd's longer to access the files.

 

[Dan C]

I think that most SSD owners will agree that it's well worth it.

 

[mister]

I can get the main OS up and running along with my Fedora 14 VM in under 30 seconds. Not to mention the longer battery life and less heat+noise. I say the speed benefit far outweighs the burden of having to carry around another 2.5" external drive.

hmmm, slow processor? I'm running an i5 and windows 7 boots in 7 seconds

 

[killadoob]

hmmm, slow processor? I'm running an i5 and windows 7 boots in 7 seconds

Youtube this or you are speaking nonsense bru, i have an i7 with a ssd drive and it cannot boot into windows in 7 seconds.

Please i would love to see the youtube link. When you say boot you are talking from the time you turn it on right? I have to see the youtube video to believe that

 

[Stickfigure]

Too bad SSD's deteriorate over time.

 

[mister]

Youtube this or you are speaking nonsense bru, i have an i7 with a ssd drive and it cannot boot into windows in 7 seconds.

Please i would love to see the youtube link. When you say boot you are talking from the time you turn it on right? I have to see the youtube video to believe that

No we were talking about the boot time after the bios has posted. sorry, no cam to youtube it for you.

 

[bwana]

I put a 64GB SSD in my work laptop that I use for personal use as well. The main installation is Ubuntu 10.10, with 2 Virtual Machines (FC3 and Fedora 14) for development, and so far I haven't had a problem with space at all. As it stands now I still have 16GB free, and that is even with a couple albums worth of mp3's on the drive as well. Any other data that I need fits nicely on my 500GB 2.5" external drive that I carry around in my laptop bag.

My active photo libraries are over 200 GB that I have to have on hand, not back at base. I can also easily generate in excess of 30 GB at events I'm covering. Externals aren't an option to me, even using my FW800 they're too slow for my needs and they're inconvenient.

I'm not arguing that SSDs aren't the future, of course they are, but right now the cost per GB is still too high for my needs. When the warranty on my laptop expires then I'll be looking at swapping out the optical drive for a SSD but unless prices have dropped significantly I'll only be able to justify a smaller one, still not an ideal situation

EDIT - I just timed a boot and it took 26 seconds from button press to usable desktop - considering I only need to reboot every two weeks or so I can live with that.

 

[BubiSparks]

Not So

Too bad SSD's deteriorate over time.

Sandforce has done some fantastic work with write amplification. Many drives using this controller offer a five year warranty. And they are the fastest MLC drives out there too (Read and Write).

SSD's require a paradigm shift as to how drives are implemented. A small SSD is used for the OS - 40 to 80GB. Data can be stored on a large spinning disk. Use Junctions and Symlinks to redirect high traffic write directories to the HDD.

A 60GB Sandforce drive can be had for under R 1500. I picked up a 1TB Samsung F3 for under R500 a week ago. Problem solved.

My machine reboots (Incl. POST) in 34 seconds!!! That's from desktop to black screen to desktop!

 

[jGLZa]

Cheapest place to but SSD's locally or is it best to import?

 

[mister]

Use Junctions and Symlinks to redirect high traffic write directories to the HDD.

Yep, I use junction links for my download directories

I use junction link magic if anybody is looking for a tool

 

[BubiSparks]

Thanks for the link mister. I like how it lists existing links. Been using Hard Link Shell Extension and Symlink Creator but this ones cool too.

 

[BubiSparks]

Cheapest place to but SSD's locally or is it best to import?

Don't want to do a cliche' thing on you jGLZA, but "Google is your friend". I wouldn't import due to warranty issues.

Lots of cheap local offers online if you're willing to wait a day or two. I've been getting my gear from Andy at Landmark PC in Pinelands lately. Mostly great pricing but SSD's seem a bit low on stock at the mo and he's closing today till 11 Jan. He's got a 90GB OCZ for 2 grand or a Mushkin 60GB for 1400.

 

[Browser]

Did anyone else see the 20+ glaring errors in that article? Not to mention the standard workaround of having two drives.

That's what hit me most about the article. Whether it's saying 1TB HDDs cost R1000, which is enough to get a 2TB drive. Or the ridiculous misconception that higher demand will lower prices, maybe this person was to busy thinking of a way to drop Job's name with praise to worry about any accuracy in what they were saying.


Right now SSDs aren't worth it for the average Joe. Sure things loading/reading from that SSD are faster but for the vast majority having select things load faster doesn't compare to having another 2TB of storage with change, depends alot on the users usage habits and pockets. Also SSDs will keep dropping in price, especially each time it moves to a new manufacturing process along with better capacity, speed and power usage leaving the prices for what's available now looking ridiculous even in retrospect. For probably 90%+ of people it isn't worth it and wont be until the supply/demand and price has stabilised.

 

[killadoob]

Don't want to do a cliche' thing on you jGLZA, but "Google is your friend". I wouldn't import due to warranty issues.

Lots of cheap local offers online if you're willing to wait a day or two. I've been getting my gear from Andy at Landmark PC in Pinelands lately. Mostly great pricing but SSD's seem a bit low on stock at the mo and he's closing today till 11 Jan. He's got a 90GB OCZ for 2 grand or a Mushkin 60GB for 1400.

In this case you are dead wrong bud, when i imported my 128gb falcon it cost me 3.8k including everything, you couldn't get a 128gb ssd for under 7k here. Google would not have helped me nor will it help with the question he asked.

Now it is cheaper to buy locally, wootware is the best i have seen for ssd's. 2.3k for a 128gb ssd. Awesome quality as well.

 

[BubiSparks]

In this case you are dead wrong bud, when i imported my 128gb falcon it cost me 3.8k including everything, you couldn't get a 128gb ssd for under 7k here. Google would not have helped me nor will it help with the question he asked.

Now it is cheaper to buy locally, wootware is the best i have seen for ssd's. 2.3k for a 128gb ssd. Awesome quality as well.

Well it depends what you buy and what it costs and when you buy it. With the Dollar weakness at the moment we are paying 60-80% more for our gear in SA now than in the USA.

So the guy wants to buy say a 120GB SSD. Costs US$ 230, slap on another say 80 Dollars for courier plus he's got to pay VAT this end. Now the drive costs him over R 2000. You can buy a 120GB SSD here for, as you say, around R 2300. Not worth it.

The other side of the coin is that when our monopoly currency is weak, local pricing tends to over-react and prices skyrocket. If you are buying an item that's 6-8K or more, well then importing becomes much more viable.

 

[Dan C]

Why on earth are you guys comparing 1tb and 2tb drives to an ssd.. of course they are 10x cheaper and meant for storage. Now think about this.. a PC needs information (data) where does it get it from ? Surely the fastest possible place it can manage the better. And yes, it can buffer it to RAM, but that too takes time and is limited. So at the end of the day, the faster you can read and write your data the better. As for movies, photos etc.. use a normal HDD.

Some would spend thousands more on a CPU only to find the real bottleneck in their RIG is the hard drive.

Now it's Christmas, so go out and get an SSD already...


Santa.

 

[saixbot]

I always wondered how you would recover data from a damaged SSD drive, anyone know how perhaps?

 

[killadoob]

I always wondered how you would recover data from a damaged SSD drive, anyone know how perhaps?

Nope i doubt you can but then again most people don't have 3k to pay a company to recover.

Bare in mind ssd's at the moment are there for speed not storage so if your ssd does go bang you should not have stored your stuff without a back up. Actually if you have such important data you honestly should have some sort of back up for it because recovering data from a broken 7200rpm is very costly.

 

[RaptorSA]

SSD's FTW!!!! They're sexy...oh so sexy. I regularly remove mine and give it a few licks, just to taste the awesomeness. My ex once said my SSD was an expensive little black box, and she just didn't get it, that is why she's my EX.

Yes they're expensive, yes they're small...bla bla bla... If you're the type of person that spends about 8 hours a day in front of a PC (and especially if you carry around a laptop that you use for work), stop trying to justify it, trust the people here who've taken the plunge, you'll never regret it. We all love that "fresh and snappy" feeling you get from clean Windows installation, well, my Windows (Win7 Professional, that I use for work, and trust me, I treat the poor thing like crap) is now 7 months old after I've reinstalled it for my Sandforce drive and it STILL feels like a brand new Windows installation, only an SSD can accomplish that.

I just think people should stop comparing SDD's to normal HDD's. It's simply not in the same realm. Rather think of an SDD as something extra you don't necessarily need but it completes your PC experience, it's on of those things that should have happened years ago.
For now you can accept the fact that they will "always" be smaller and more expensive than HDD's, but that's missing the point. Fact is many of us here on MyBB spend most of our days in front of a PC, if you're that type of person, an SSD is like adding leather bucket seats and a turbo to the car of someone who spends most of his days travelling. You don't pay for it becuase you HAVE to, you pay for it because it puts a smile on your face in an otherwise bland experience. Fact is that you get used to the experience very quickly, but take it away and you realise just how crappy things used to be... those always makes for the best investments.

EDIT: I'm running a Mushkin Callisto 120GB SSD in Dual Boot config with another Seagate 500GB on a G73 Notebook. It has more than enough space for my work OS and a nice small and snappy Win7 Home installation for gaming. An added bonus is the fact that my other 500GB Seagate makes for a nice external. So for R2.6K extra added to the cost of my PC I got all the speed I ever wanted (or at least, I know the expensive components in my Notebook aren't held back by the cheapest components in my notebook), and still have 1TB of extra storage for movies, music etc. Well worth it. Not to mention my notebook is now almost completely silent. In other words, if you have a smaller notebook with one HDD bay, yes, then the decision is a bit more complicated, if you have 2 internal HDD bays, it's a no-brainer...do it ... just .... do it.

Windows Experience Index Scores:
Processor: 7.0
Memory: 7.5
Graphics: 7.2
Hard Disk: 7.5 (Compared to 5.9 before the SSD upgrade)