Solid State. Anyone made the jump?

[AOI_Tifa_Lockhart]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone has bothered making the upgrade for their PC HDD’s? I did recently, it cost just under £300 for an 80GB Intel SSD. I used it when I bought Win7 64 bit OS. I can’t really compare it to running Win7 on a regular HDD as I never did try. But the PC boots up in 15 seconds and shuts down in about 4. Loading times are noticeably quicker on some games, on others the difference is minimal. Installation of games however is a lovely sight to behold, as is transferring files from my regular HDD to SSD or vice versa.

But anyone who is into PC gaming knows full well its a huge money pit. impossible to stay ahead of the game unless your on some ridiculous salary etc. But even though I spend too much money on PC's and the hardware is obsolete for the latest games within a few years I find it a very enjoyable hobby.

But to most it’s not worth the money in all honesty. But I’m tempted to buy another as several games on my Steam account have unacceptable loading times i.e. Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War, and I’m sure when Samurai 2 Total War comes out it’ll be the same. But most games on PC anyway have much much quicker loading times than consoles. I know that SSD's have a limited read/write lifetime. The amount I fiddle with this HDD, mainly due to size i'm sure I'd be able to guage just how long it will last.

Can’t really justify spending another £300 for several games, then again most of my friends didn’t think spending £300 originally for just 80GB of HDD capacity was justifiable :P

How about everyone else’s thoughts on solid state drives?

Tifa

[Ezodagrom]

I'm good with normal hard drives. Not only they have alot more space, they're much cheaper and have a longer lifespan.

[AOI_Tifa_Lockhart]

Hiya,

This is very true. i was tempted to get the Velociraptor. They're bringing out a 2nd generation of them which bigger cache I think I might get one of those when they are released. But they're all valid points, i'm just a very impulsive buyer :P

Tifa

[amtalx]

If you have the disposable income, there's no real reason not to. Premium performance usually comes at a cost. It just depends on whether the cost is worth the performance gain. Personally I would stick with one drive, but limit what I use it for. Only the OS and games with high load times go on the primary drive. Everything else goes on a SATA drive.

[HUnewearl_Meira]

You can RAID 4, 1TB HDDs together to get a comparable speed enhancement, for cheaper than you can buy a single 500GB SSD. I think that SSD is eventually where the technology is going to go, but the manufacturing cost has to drop dramatically before it'll become practical.

I've looked into this, myself.

[AzureBlaze]

Why does it not last as long?
Who is going to buy something where it breaks right away? Who found out they have a limited lifespan like that? (they found out the hard way, perhaps--they've not been around 'that long' in consumer opinion) Even if they drive the cost down and get the space up, I'd NEVER buy some suspicious thing that's going to...what? Eat all your data and never boot up one day? I hope the technology never goes there without fixing the whole 'its gonna break' thing.

I've had a hard drive in this pc since like 1996 and there's nothing wrong with it. (its one of those ones where its frankenstined together so it has more than 1 hd inside) But, I am also the sort that uses everything down to the last fiber or until it falls apart (I liked that shirt!) or catches fire (alas, poor toaster and power-widget to 1990s toshiba lappy) So maybe it is I that is incompatable with it.

Though all the fast times and things had made me really curious. I DO hope they perfect this. It seems wierd, because didn't games do something similar? First they were cartridges, then everyone said cartridges are dumb, use CDs and your HD, now...they want cartridges again?

[AOI_Tifa_Lockhart]

Hiya,

Yeah I've always thought a RAID array would be a worthwhile investment. The SSD's have a lmited read/write. I thnk it's like SD cards for cameras and phones etc after a certain amount of read and writes they'll corrupt. It's not a small number of read/writes but it is supposed to happen. I'm sure they last several years, but like you said Azure regular HDD's are neigh on bullet proof.

Prices for SSD will come down eventually, the prices vary vastly but also so do the read and write speeds the SSD's are capable of performing. I didnt even go for the best intel SSD as there's 2 generations and scarily the quicker one is nearly £500 for 80GB lol.

If you want a practical SSD memory size of say 256 or 512 you'll be looking at spending in excess of £1000...talk about a stinger. Then again anyone seen the new Lt/d Edition ATI 5 series 4GB graphics cards? at ~£1000 each pahahaha, no doubt someone's already crossfired them oO

Tifa

[Cookie Monster]

I've used an SSD(very similar to yours actually :P) as well as 2x300gb Velociraptors in a suicide raid as my primary boot drive. The preformance gain vs price per gb is absurd to say the least(imo), now if you have a grand burning a hole in your pocket then I'd say go for it!
akimbo SSDs ftw, miright? :D otherwise you can get away with more space as well as very solid performance from a few HDDs in a raid configuration.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136555

New tech is always rolling out but I'd take two of those^ in a raid 0 over an SSD anyday, then again I eat up space like I do to cookies. lol

TL;DR If you have money, pull the trigger on an SSD(or two;-)), otherwise I'd suggest what I posted along with a mobo that can support that will actually give you the full bang for your buck. (ie: 6gb/s SATA ports) ^^;

P.S. the 5970 with 4gb ram is frigin reedonculous!!! >:|

/end ramble

[Kion]

SSD have a shorter life span than HDD's, but they should still last several years. I'd really like to get my hands on one, except it only saves a couple of seconds here and there for load times. My plan is to be patient with the market and my computer. By next year netbooks and smartbooks will most likely ship with SSD's, so my hope is the price should start dropping then.

[Blitzkommando]

In concept I love the idea of removing mechanical parts from computers. I've had too many drives over the years die from physical hardware failures. Encountered a bad batch of drives and the two drives failed within 8 months of purchase. Turned out the drive heads had collapsed onto the discs. Ideally, I want at least a 512GB drive. I'm just waiting for the costs to facilitate that. I've considered that 600GB Raptor as well but I then consider I could simply pick up another WD 1TB Black drive for less and get almost identical bandwidth out of it. The only advantage it would carry would be the access times but even then it's close to a wash due to how good those Black series drives are.

[Akaimizu]

I love the idea, but I am waiting for the inevitable price drop, myself. For what I do, eventually SSD will be the way to go. Right now, they're too expensive and too small for the cost. But when the day comes and I can score a SSD that holds something in the vein of close to 500GB, or even something around or above 320GB, I'll be there if it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

The best thing about it is that I would remove both the current need to go 7200RPM and increase my battery life at the same time. And if anyone guesses why I go for the speed and lack of latency, just try pushing an entire orchestra of individual recordings and sounds, in a musical piece. See how often your computer buffer underruns. Or try using movie creators where you start using a range of simultaneous video sources. The 7200RPM hardly has buffer issues so the SSD will likely not have any. However, these projects take space. I'd rather have several of them at a time, or more, and have this one drive to back-up instead of having to offload individual projects all the time.

[Kion]

I'm still wondering what takes up so much space for people. Most of everything I do, does't take up very much space. At most I use about 80GB on my hard drive with music, programs, a couple of games and my OS. Videos and stuff can be streamed off the internet, so what takes up so much space?

[joefro]

I'm still wondering what takes up so much space for people. Most of everything I do, does't take up very much space. At most I use about 80GB on my hard drive with music, programs, a couple of games and my OS. Videos and stuff can be streamed off the internet, so what takes up so much space?

Porn and Anime.

Just sayin'

I agree with you though. I have a 320GB HDD and I always have around 80GB free. I have both my OS X partition and my Win 7 partition and I do fine with just 320GB.

I mostly stream music and videos, too. I just last.fm for about four hours a day and I use Netflix streaming and Amazon VOD for my video.

[amtalx]

I don't know how you live with so little space. Streamed music and movies aren't always guaranteed to be there. I'd rather have a local copy. I have around 2TB of space and I only have 38GB free right now. That's not including 1000 or so of backup DVDs and CDs.

[Blitzkommando]

Since it was asked, I have roughly 350GB of music, with about 200GB of that being lossless hence the massive size. I also keep archives of my downloaded installers so I have things dating back to the 90s in the event I should need them again. Steam is another massive drain on storage for me as I prefer that service for my games as a whole and that's also around 350GB. Add to that documents, a number of DVDs/BDs I've ripped, the entire Dr. Who series along with a few others... It just adds up really quickly, especially HD content. Finally, I back up data on other drives so much of it is duplicate data. As I rip more movies my 5TB is going to very, very quickly disappear.

[Kion]

I don't know how you live with so little space.

I used to use a lot more when I was using a desktop and downloaded stuff like crazy. That picked up a lot of viruses and I kept having to reinstall windows to clear everything out. I learned to use a usb back up drive to store everything, and I got used to backing up on the external and copy as little as possible on to the main drive.

Music, I only have 20GB and only about 8GB of stuff I actually listen to. Would like to get more, but I just browse around youtube and stuff. For tv and movies, I've found places on the net I can go, but I have a video store right next to my house where I can grab a flick if i need one. Mostly I just watch the daily show, or nostalgia critic, or crap online when I have a little extra time.

As for the hard drive it's 500GB and I stopped at 220GB. Emulators, pr0n, music, I even went on a linux dristibution collecting spree and then gave up trying to fill it any more. For me, I could live with a 60GB for a C drive, and then a portable external backup would be great.

[Akaimizu]

When you just HAVE music to listen to and stuff, that doesn't take up much space. When you MAKE music, on the other hand, you DO take up a lot of space.

For one. All the individual recordings for an orchestra and more are not compressed MP3s.
Two unlike a song which is just one audio file with all the parts already mixed in, think of housing an uncompressed song length for every major instrument in the song, then parts of uncompressed music, for all of the others.

Here's a good example, let me just take the Forces of Nature song, I wrote and posted in Fan Works. That one song makes a 6MB MP3. But the original full arrangement, recordings, instruments, etc. That takes up a Gigabyte of Space all by itself before it is exported into an MP3.

Creating movies are also very large, particularly when mixing multiple video sources. To house your source material and work with it, you can use up multiple gigs of space (particularly if you are doing resolutions of 720p and up. Or if you do have to work with a lot of sources.). Of course, when you finish the final product, it gets exported into one little movie that takes up maybe 100-200 megs.

Then you have the programs just to create the things. Something like Logic, Pro Tools, or Final Cut (by themselves) are distributed on 9 DVDs each. Yep. Each program with 3+ Hour installs for which you can guess how much space you take up. So right away, most of that nice 80GB HD space is already taken up before you even compose your first note, or import your first video to start your work.

[sCI]

Solid states don't last as long as typical HD's? Why?

[Yuicihi]

For the average user, you probably don't need an excessive amount of space. As stated above, if you're actually creating stuff though, then you might need that space. Of course, an external HDD or two should serve your needs well.

I don't see a need to go out and buy a SSD drive at the moment. In the future, sure, but not yet.

[Ezodagrom]

Solid states don't last as long as typical HD's? Why?

Flash-memory drives have limited lifetimes and will often wear out after 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 P/E cycles (1,000 to 10,000 per cell) for MLC, and up to 5,000,000 P/E cycles (100,000 per cell) for SLC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Disadvantages