Steve Posted July 9, 2011 Share Posted July 9, 2011 If so, how is it? Worth the money? I've read that it's possibly the best upgrade you can do, but I'm waiting for the price to come down before I get one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kage Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 (edited) In the process of building a new pc with an ssd as the boot drive, the prices on them right now are not bad at all considering where they were when the technology was first introduced. As far as being worth the upgrade it definitely is, just look up the read/write speeds (mainly read) compared to standard hdds and the numbers speak for themselves, plus the fact that ssds have no moving parts means they have greater potential when longevity is considered. edit: Also if you haven't already, check out revodrives, incredibly expensive, but the performance gains are outrageous. They're basically a series of ssds arranged on a pci card for direct interface with the motherboard, and the resulting boosts in read/write speeds are mind boggling. Edited July 11, 2011 by kage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2ndhand Posted August 5, 2011 Share Posted August 5, 2011 I got a new laptop for my boss, and fitted a SSD and resintalled it with Windows 7 Pro. It was awesome. It would startup from hitting the power switch to desktop in about 15 seconds. Shutdown was about 5 seconds. It is certainly a big step from a SATA. A bit like going from IDE to SATA, but maybe more so. The drives are expensive still though. Also when it was running, starting up things like Powerpoint 2007 were virtually instant.I didn't give it much hammer, as I was under pressure to get it set up and delivered back to him so I didn't really get any day to day testing, but if you can afford it, then it's a shoe-in for extra speed. However . . . . . With a mechanical drive, if you have a catastrophic failure, you can get software that reads the sectors. Or maybe even swap the controller PCB if that dies. Or at a push, take out the disks and rebuild into another drive.With solid state, when it's fucked, it is fucked. Not sure on the lifespan of a SSD. I know anything after 3 years on a mechanical drive is a bonus. However maybe SSD's just don't fail, or degrade. Although that said, I do have some old memory sticks (from Sony cameras) that just will not work anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted August 5, 2011 Share Posted August 5, 2011 AFAIK SSDs get slower and slower from the moment they're first used, because of something to do with the efficiency of the way the thingamajigs that get charged to hold the data is decreased every time their state is changed. I know there's technology designed to mitigate this that manufacturers have started to integrate into their drives and Windows 7 automatically takes care of and OSX has its own little macgubbin that helps too, and if I cared about you all enough I'd go on a google and back all this up, but I don't so there. It's true though. I still want one for system drive. I will get the biggest speed boost by having a spare drive for video editing I think. Do 10k rpm drives exist at 1tb or larger? Hm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted August 5, 2011 Author Share Posted August 5, 2011 SSDs definitely fail cos there's only a limited number of read/write cycles you can do with flash memory. The same with USB sticks, memory cards and what not, but I guess they feel like they last forever cos they're not constantly in use. Chris, have a look at the Samsung Spinpoint F3 or Western Digital Caviar Black drives. They're faster than the 10K Raptors in everything but seek times, but considerably cheaper and noticeably quieter. I bought one for my machine for under 40 quid (1TB) and it made a noticeable difference in performance when performing certain tasks, but obviously it's not up there with an SSD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted August 5, 2011 Share Posted August 5, 2011 Cheers Steve I'll take a look. I need to check out the best way to connect one. I'm guessing a caddy with an ESATA to FW800 bridge will be my best bet for connecting to my iMac. I won't bother with an SSD system drive until I trade this up for the next model (I bought this one a month before the new models with Thunderbolt were released which was a bleeding nuisance, but until Thunderbolt peripherals are released I don't really need to upgrade yet) because you have to get Apple to open an iMac up for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted August 22, 2011 Author Share Posted August 22, 2011 This is a good price for an SSD: - http://www.ebuyer.com/246998-kingston-96gb-v-100-2-5-sata-ii-ssd-read-230mb-s-write-180mb-s-svp100s2-96g I'm still going to wait though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted May 27, 2012 Author Share Posted May 27, 2012 After owning an SSD for a few weeks now, I can say that it's absolutely worth getting one! Windows starts up before the animated logo can even finish and it shuts down in 1-2 seconds. Another advantage is noise, i.e. there isn't any. My storage hard drive (a regular HDD) spins down after 20 minutes of inactivity and when that happens I honestly can't hear if my PC is on or off and I'm sitting 2 feet from it. I can't wait until SSDs are cheap enough so that I can do away with mechanical drives altogether. The prices are dropping fast too. I paid £150 for a 128GB Samsung 830 a couple of months ago and now you can get a 256GB for that price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted May 27, 2012 Share Posted May 27, 2012 When the the price goes down I'll be on it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doppelkorn Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 I wish my laptop could have one slotted in for a reasonable price Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottie(the)goonie Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 After owning an SSD for a few weeks now, I can say that it's absolutely worth getting one! Windows starts up before the animated logo can even finish and it shuts down in 1-2 seconds. After 2 years of owning an Intel X-25 ssd 40 gig as a boot drive, the boot time is still very quick but I've seen my shutdown time get slower and slower. My ssd is almost full so maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe they do get slower. Maybe that's the reason I see brand new second hand SSD's for sale all the time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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