SSD Buying Advice

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qu1k_sh0t

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Well I have a request for you hardware pro's out there :D

I am interested in getting myself an SSD. For no real purpose other than to have one and see what they can and cannot do, I currently have a WD Raptor 150 gig, and I will be selling it to replace it with an SSD.

What I want to know is can anyone here recommend the best places to pick one up? And if there are any I should avoid. I have been doing a bit of digging myself, but do you guys have some first hand advice? I have about R2000 to play with and I am looking for 64 / 128 gig drives if possible.

Shot for any help.
 
If your looking at a drive for a notebook, then SSD all the way due to its high resistance to shock (you'll bust your lappie before you bust the drive).

On a desktop / server - debatable as you get what you pay for. While SSD is the future, most (not all) suffer from poor performance. Since this technology changes super fast its hard to judge brands. All I do know is that the INTEL SSD is highly recommended.

I'm interested in the opinions of people who actually do own a SSD thats not in a netbook (like me).
 
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Well, as my sig says, I have one. These days I see spinners as external storage space and nothing more.

Actually looking into getting myself 2 of the new Corsairs that use Indilinx barefoot for a RAID 0 setup.
 
I have a desktop PC, and I want it for the performance. I have heard that the MLC drives give issues, while the SLC drives are fine. Anyone know about that? Regardless I have a Raptor at the moment and want to see how much faster if at all the SSD's are :P

Shot for the link. I will keep my eyes open. I might add that I don't need the space, so that is not a factor at all, and all I really do is play games online, so 64 gigs is more than enough. I just wanted the 128 for future proofing :P
 
cbrunsdonza said:
If your looking at a drive for a notebook, then SSD all the way due to its high resistance to shock (you'll bust your lappie before you bust the drive).

On a desktop / server - debatable as you get what you pay for. While SSD is the future, most (not all) suffer from poor performance. Since this technology changes super fast its hard to judge brands. All I do know is that the IBM SSD is highly recommended.

I'm interested in the opinions of people who actually do own a SSD thats not in a netbook (like me).
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IBM? not even heard of an ssd from them, most suffer from poor performance? Nope i have 2 a samsung 128gb and a g.skil 128 gb and they are just insane in terms of speed.

I would rather have a ssd with a q9550 than an i7 with a normal drive. I think ssd's are the biggest speed jump i have ever seen in the pc industry. I mean i thought raptors where fast until i got my first ssd. Puts a raptor to shame :D

64gb is fine quik but some games are heavy hey like 11gb so as long as you do not have many games at once installed you'll be fine.
 
qu1k_sh0t said:
Well I have a request for you hardware pro's out there :D

I am interested in getting myself an SSD. For no real purpose other than to have one and see what they can and cannot do, I currently have a WD Raptor 150 gig, and I will be selling it to replace it with an SSD.

What I want to know is can anyone here recommend the best places to pick one up? And if there are any I should avoid. I have been doing a bit of digging myself, but do you guys have some first hand advice? I have about R2000 to play with and I am looking for 64 / 128 gig drives if possible.

Shot for any help.
Click to expand...

Intel X25M or Toshiba. I have both. They're OK. The Intel is the best you can get at the moment, Toshiba has leadership in flash manufacturing so they're pretty good too.

They're very expensive though and depending on what you do, won't give you much of performance increase.

They're good for laptops because of the lack of moving parts and lower power consumption.
They're good as startup drives but their small size limits what you can do with storage/swap. Then again -- it depends what you do.
 
killadoob said:
IBM? not even heard of an ssd from them, most suffer from poor performance? Nope i have 2 a samsung 128gb and a g.skil 128 gb and they are just insane in terms of speed.

I would rather have a ssd with a q9550 than an i7 with a normal drive. I think ssd's are the biggest speed jump i have ever seen in the pc industry. I mean i thought raptors where fast until i got my first ssd. Puts a raptor to shame :D

64gb is fine quik but some games are heavy hey like 11gb so as long as you do not have many games at once installed you'll be fine.
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OOOOPPPSS - meant to say intel

On the poor performance of most SSDs, there are many variants on the market but most of them are under performers. The technology is changing faster than the reviews can be posted. Alot of drives on the market are no longer in production.

There are also different ways to fake performance, one being SSD drives that have a huge cache, sometimes equivalent to the actually size of the SSD drive but they report the combined sizes instead and/or they report the performances at cache level.

At work we regularly look at SSD progress to see if we can start implementing them in our servers. Since there is too much speculation we have not yet made the move.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
OOOOPPPSS - meant to say intel

On the poor performance of most SSDs, there are many variants on the market but most of them are under performers. The technology is changing faster than the reviews can be posted. Alot of drives on the market are no longer in production.

There are also different ways to fake performance, one being SSD drives that have a huge cache, sometimes equivalent to the actually size of the SSD drive but they report the combined sizes instead and/or they report the performances at cache level.

At work we regularly look at SSD progress to see if we can start implementing them in our servers. Since there is too much speculation we have not yet made the move.
Click to expand...

I have the Intel X25M 160GB Gen2. It's my Mac OSX boot and application drive. The Mac Pro starts up in under 10 sec - it's very fast. Most time I believe is spent in the other drives unparking since I have 3 other internal drives in the system - they're magnetic HDDs.

I also have a Toshiba 64GB in a NEC netbook. This was a Japanese domestic release product and Toshiba SSDs are not very common - especially not in SA. The netbook boots Win XP also in about 10-14sec. What's beneficial is not just the speed - it is fast, but that fact that altogether this netbook weighs 750g and is totally shock resistant - well for ordinary office use/drop from desk height. The SSD contributes to that, but remember an SSD can also snap its connectors if the chassis sucks so overall I'd say they're only good for great G-shock protection - you can jog with your netbook for example or go on the trampoline while copying files. Battery saving is good too.
 
As long as you avoid drives with the jmicron controllers you'll be fine.
 
Intel X25M or anything that has Indilinx barefoot controllers. Brands would be

Corsair Exrtreme
OCZ Vertex
Supertalent Ultradrive
 
Shot for the advice :P yeah Killa I know about the games, and I very seldom have more than 2 or 3 games installed, biggest space hog will be steam TF2 CS HL HL2 Portal :/ will have to double check how big that folder is haha.

I have been looking around lot and stumbling across so many different drives and the like. I found some Kingston drives, the read write is the same as a normal disc drive :/ lol.

Anyway shot for the names :D If anyone wants to sell theirs second hand let me know :P
 
No dude just remember with ssd's do not buy ones that have slow read and write, even though the access time is like 0.1 which is fast that r/w must be high.

Do yourself a favour though before you purchase one just post here and get some opinions, you do not want to impulse buy an ssd.

Do not buy second hand ssd's either. I must be honest though, your raptor is perfect for gaming man, i do not think you need a ssd for gaming.
 
Haha yeah I am actually really happy with the rig :P I just want an SSD. No real reason other than the urge to try it out :P

I know about the read write, I also know about the different types of drives. The main differences regard how the drives write to the clusters. I also know which ones to look out for.

I am getting close to a format to Win7 at last lol, and I was hoping to have it on an SSD instead of the Raptor (also the raptor is quite on old version :P)

It is just the itch :P that is all it is... the itch to have one
 
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I say go for it. Unlike the performance increase between generational hardware like GFX of CPU's, the jump from Spinners to Solids will surprise you. There is a day and night difference.
 
CorneN said:
I say go for it. Unlike the performance increase between generational hardware like GFX of CPU's, the jump from Spinners to Solids will surprise you. There is a day and night difference.
Click to expand...

Yup.

ssd's make a celeron look good :D.
 
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