Anyone use solid-state drive instead of hard disk drive? - RC-Monster Forums

simplechamp

I just put a 160GB Intel X-25 solid-state drive into my netbook and it is excellent. The SSD is significantly faster as far as boot times, read/write, etc. and I now have the piece of mind that there are no moving parts inside the drive that will fail. The number one downside is price, to replace the 160GB HDD the equivalent SSD cost more than my netbook altogether. But I think it is worth it, can't really put a price on all that data, and avoiding the headaches of dealing with a drive crash (if you've ever had it happen you'll know what I mean).

BrianG · 05.27.2010, 01:09 PM

The other downside is that like all similar media (SD, CF, USB sticks, etc), they have a limited number of write cycles before they start developing errors (~100k IIRC). There is usually some type of firmware on the device which attempts to evenly use all the data bits - as a result defragmenting is completely useless.

Nard Cox · 05.27.2010, 01:14 PM

Correct Brian, they have a limited number of write cycles. That's why I never recommend using a USB stick as additional working memory.

I was a real PC nerd a few (2 a 3) years back (before the RC virus struck) and SSD was WAY to expensive back then. I still think it is now so I have no experience with SSD in my PC or notebook. Oh well, early adapters always pay the jackpot.

But glad you like it. I've seen some comparison video's on YT concerning performance gain in booting, decoding etc pretty impressive :)

reno911 · 01:17 PM

I thought about looking into an external SSD for back up purposes, but I went with the larger less expensive HDD.

I back up everything on a separate drive using Apples time machine. I think it is the coolest new feature to their os. I can go back and see what I have done if I made a mistake and or deleted something I didn't want to.

The drive I have is wireless so my wife's macbook can access it too, mostly used for storage of our media and documents, it has a secondary purpose of a shared hardrive. As well as being a TB in size, we'll never see the day it gets full.

Nard Cox · 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reno911

As well as being a TB in size, we'll never see the day it gets full.

15 years (rough guess) ago we thought we would never need a 12MB drive

As for back-up I would prefer a HDD. The space/$ is sooo much better than SSD that I don't see how to ''defend'' buying a SSD unless you have a pool build of diamants and filled with liquid gold.

zeropointbug · 05.27.2010, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nard Cox

15 years (rough guess) ago we thought we would never need a 12MB drive

As for back-up I would prefer a HDD. The space/$ is sooo much better than SSD that I don't see how to ''defend'' buying a SSD unless you have a pool build of diamants and filled with liquid gold.

Don't you mean 25 years ago? 15 years ago I had a 4GB HDD in with a Pentium 166mhz 32mb ram PC, beat that.

whitrzac · 05.27.2010, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zeropointbug

Don't you mean 25 years ago? 15 years ago I had a 4GB HDD in with a Pentium 166mhz 32mb ram PC, beat that.

IBM commodore FTW

I miss my turbo button

bdebde · 05.27.2010, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zeropointbug

Don't you mean 25 years ago? 15 years ago I had a 4GB HDD in with a Pentium 166mhz 32mb ram PC, beat that.

Somewhere I have a 52 mb HD with a $499 price tag on it (ouch).

Nard Cox · 05.28.2010, 04:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zeropointbug

Don't you mean 25 years ago? 15 years ago I had a 4GB HDD in with a Pentium 166mhz 32mb ram PC, beat that.

Also possible, I'm just 24y old so can't remember 25y back

. But it's ways funny when people say they will never need the space.

@ BrianG, thanks 4 the update. I should keep track of the news more ...

kraegar · 05.28.2010, 07:29 AM

I've not bothered to drop the cash on them for personal use. I'm OK with the speeds I'm getting out of sata drives in a RAID array for now.

However, at work we've begun experimenting with them in our SAN, using IBM's server class SSD's (rebranded), and putting the "hot" data on them. Our storage controllers are smart enough to start noticing block write issues, and the SSD's we're getting have built-in redundancy, and early warnings for impending failures. That being said, they drastically improve performance for the entire SC when we move the hottest data to them. It's pretty cool stuff.

Tony

zeropointbug · 05.27.2010, 01:39 PM

Yeah, the latest SSD's are extremely fast, they really do live up to their reputation and ratings. My friend has one, a cheaper one, Kingston SSD NOW 60GB IIRC, one of the slowest, but damn, leaves a HDD in the dust.

I can't remember for the life of me, the firmware type, some acronym... anyways, it reads and writes in an intelligent way that drastically increases useful cycles available from the device.

Personally I would wait another year or two before jumping in, they are getting better at such a fast pace right now, by the time it arrived at your door beign shipped, a new one will be available that is faster, last longer, and less expensive.

BrianG · 05.27.2010, 01:45 PM

I just did a little more research and apparently, the life cycle is up to around 1,000,000 write cycles now. Oh, and ZPB, the term you are looking for is "wear leveling".

zeropointbug · 05.27.2010, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrianG

I just did a little more research and apparently, the life cycle is up to around 1,000,000 write cycles now. Oh, and ZPB, the term you are looking for is "wear leveling".

Not quite the same thing as I was originally thinking, but TRIM is what it's called, actually for cleaning up blocks and doing smart erasing, keeps the drive performing faster over time than one without it.

BrianG · 05.27.2010, 10:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zeropointbug

Not quite the same thing as I was originally thinking, but TRIM is what it's called, actually for cleaning up blocks and doing smart erasing, keeps the drive performing faster over time than one without it.

Yeah, TRIM is something different. And if I'm not mistaken, the OS has to support it too. Also, TRIM is required if you want to encrypt the data, or securely wipe the data.

brijar · 05.28.2010, 12:03 AM

I just recently got a Kingston SSDNow V series 64GB drive for my graduation present. It was $112 after the rebate (they have another deal going at Newegg right now for the same drive for $115 after rebate). Gosh this thing is amazing! Windows 7 boots in 30 seconds consistently and programs open instantly. Haven't really had any crashes yet, though haven't had the drive very long. I didn't notice much of a difference for games like Just Cause 2 and DiRT 2, but something does feel a bit faster about them. I've got my 1TB drive to hold all my extra non-program data. Just gave my extra 750GB drive to my brother because his old 120GB IDE drive was very full and slow lol.

I'm really hoping that SSDs come down in price and up in capacity, as I'd really like to have a 128GB drive for my main system drive and a 256GB drive for my laptop. The speed and access times of these things are just insane.

Brijar!!!