SSD vs. HDD

[Mr.D.]

SO what's the big deal with SSDs?

 

I have two HDD in my rig, and I chose the slowest for my boot drive. Why? Because it really doesn't matter how fast my OS boots. I restart my computer maybe once every 2 weeks or so. I have a 1 TB SATA300 HDD for my data drive because I do DAW work and I needed that much capacity for those files, and when doing tasks like normalizing a track or time shifting, having the speedier of the two drives was important - could shave 10-15 minutes off the total time on large files.

 

I didnt go the SSD route for my data drive for two reasons:

> They don't make 1 TB SSD, and two 500 GB SSD would be cost prohibitive.

> The DAW files are being written to a lot. And from most of what I have read about SSD, excessive read/writes are what kill them.

 

My question stands. Whats the big deal with SSD's? Especially with people using them as the boot drive. Does it really matter having your system up and running in 15 seconds rather than 45? Why are you rebooting your system so much? If you think you need the speed, why aren't you using the SSD as your data drive, not your boot drive?

 

If you are doing it simply because you can - I can accept that. Hell, that's why I built my hackintosh in the first place. But otherwise, I think I would have a hard time understanding anyone's so called 'need' for an SSD.

 

Flame on!

[eep357]

Well.....I know you meant 1TB data drive Having a fast "boot drive" has nothing to do with the boot time in how I use the term, it's that my boot drive does not just boot my operating system then eject and disappear, it's always the drive that houses and runs my operating system AFTER I boot as well. Maybe calling it my "Root Drive" would be more accurate. So with an ssd as my Root Drive, everything is faster. Launching applications, searching for files, even browsing the internet. All the same reasons someone may want to upgrade a Pentium 4 CPU to a newer multi core processor, or upgrade from 2gb of ram to 8gm of ram, all apply to the HD to SSD upgrade as well. Dollar for dollar, an upgrade to an SSD will actually provide you the single best overall performance increase possible. So, with some made up hypothetical numbers just as example of what I mean, if upgrading CPU at a cost of $400 will make you computer twice as fast, or upgrading to SSD for $100 will also make it twice as fast. Then because a computer is the sum of its parts, and is a system, it's only truly as fast as it's weakest link, the CPU upgrade and SSD upgrade combined then make it 10 times as fast. Just as brand new GTX 680 will not perform as well on a Core 2 Duo, P35 system as it will in a new socket 2011, a brand new $2000.00 computer could be bottle necked and only running at a fraction of it's possible speed because $100.00 SSD drive seemed too expensive. If you just want faster boot time, you can get a hybrid drive for not much more than a standard HD, which includes a small SSD inside the normal large rotational HD case just for that purpose and still gives the large 1TB+ storage capacities. So I would agree in the argument "who needs a hybrid drive vs a hdd just for faster boot times?" if there was a significant price difference. Even if my ssd took 5 times longer to boot than a regular hd, I would still choose it over a regular hd to run my OS without any hesitation and then would instead be asking "who need the fast boot of a regular HD when you can have blazing fast operating system and overall blazing fast computer with SSD instead?", but it just so happens to boot fast too

[Mr.D.]

Poppycock! That is what RAM is for! If you need to use your page file (i.e. running your operating system after you boot), then you need to get more RAM.

 

$100 for an SSD? maybe a 64gb version. Ok, I looked at Newegg - there are several 120GB versions for around $100. And so you have your applications on an SSD - but again, only matters the when you load it - once its in RAM, then you dont access those files again - unless you keep opening and closing the application. So what 's wrong with your apps that you have to keep reloading them?

 

I say spend your money on RAM - that'll boost your overall system performance in many areas. The most bang for your buck - dollar for dollar that is.

 

And the hybrid SSD/HDD is just foolishness as well - I agree.

[eep357]

Already maxed out RAM And I do close applications after using them, maybe an old bad habit, but even minimized in the dock or using spaces, too many open apps is clutter to me. If everything runs in ram, boot from USB HD, open all the apps you plan to use for the day, and unplug the USB drive, see how well that goes?

 

Or, since that won't go over too well, after booting and opening apps, open Activity monitor and keep it on the Disk Activity page, it will keep a tally of how much data has been read and written. Even if it weren't a lot, it's the little files spread all over the OS that make the biggest difference in OS speed, not the copying of large files. So benchmarks don't mean too much, fast random read/writes of small files is what makes biggest difference in how fast it "feels"

 

I have a backup on regular HD so easy to compare the two, the difference obvious and applies to almost everything. Sure maybe once a certain app is loaded and I'm working within that program, there may not be a difference, but that is not how I use my computer, I don't know now what app will be the next one I launch, or what the next file I will need is, or where I'll be looking the next time I open Finder, but when the time comes, whatever it may be or however many there will be, it will all happen incredibly fast, and I will smile

 

BTW, got my most recent 120gb sata3 SSD on a Amazon deal of the day thingy for $80 and free shipping.

[Mr.D.]

Already maxed on RAM?? Ohhhh.. so sad - stuck with an i7-920 and tri-channel ram.

 

And you have 24GB of Applications running? My god man... how many instances of Safari do you need to run at one time?

 

And a RAID SDD?? Whooo boy! Talk about not enough bang for your buck! Especially in RAID-0. Knock on wood you don't have any failure due to excessive read/writes or your data set is TOAST!

 

If only OSX or Windows was as portable as some Linux kernels then I could do the USB trick. I could create an Windows PE USB stick and that would work - anything comparable in OSX?

[eep357]

I got backups and read write failures do not concern me. You don't buy a Ferrari if you can't afford to get the oil changed.

[Mr.D.]

Yes, but your system is a 1980 Ferrari Mondial 8 with a quick-release trunk opener!

 

By no means do I have the 250 GTO (gran turismo olomogato--racing homologation special) but I think I have a pretty good car. I cant get into the trunk super quick, but once the luggage is stowed, I'm good for my trip.

 

I love car metaphors!

[eep357]

I'm sure your car works fine you, and using a old PATA drive for your "boot drive" would work fine too. Just a few more seconds on the boot time right? In fact I think I have 5 750GB ones laying around from a older RAID array, maybe I should just use one of those since my RAM can just do everything once I get past a few beach balls. Come to think of it, my CPU doesn't ever seem to run at 100% capacity either, if I added up all the processing it did in a typical day, I'm sure a Pentium 1 could manage to do the same amount over a 24 hour period. So all we need is a bunch of ram and some extra patience at certain times and other "upgrades" are pretty useless. But I'm not looking for a long haul truck, my horse power needs come and go in small bursts. More like a drag racer, but still able to cruise the Autobahn while listening to Mozart at 200mph when needed, while still moving over from time to time to let the occasional Bugatti or Koenigsegg pass by.

[dmazar]

In short: you can live without SSD just fine. But as soon as you try running your OS from it, you will never go back. NEVER.

[eep357]

dmazar sums it up pretty well there! A little less "debate" style, but I can't argue with the truth!

[3.14r2]

My 5ct.

 

The first ever SSD I got to use, was in MacBookAir. I was surprised how silent the notebook was. Not the speed, but the lack of any noise (contrary to my current loud&slow ancient notebook) surprised me most. It was decided then, that if I ever can afford a new notebook, it will definitely be SSD equipped notebook. IMO currently SSDs are mostly beneficial to notebooks, as SSD has no moving parts (no noise), it consumes less power (longer battery life) and usually these are much faster then most HDDs.

 

Would I opt for SSD-only desktop? Probably not, not at the moment at least. To store a large amounts of date, SSDs are still too small&expensive. ATM SSD are only good to be used as the drive to install OS to (for how fast they are and how small the capacity per $ is). Hence I think, in a desktop PC, conventional drives are still quite competitive (GB/$), although not that quite fast. For me in the case of a desktop PC, I guess it would be a combo of a larger (0.5-1GB probably in RAID mode) HDD for data and a smaller (60GB) SSD for OS.

 

Sooner or later (not so soon I guess) the SSDs will replace the HDDs in most applications. The other question is how good/bad SSDs are in date recovery (then it becomes faulty).

[TH3L4UGH1NGM4N]

Firstly, hello fellow debaters I’d like the time to formally introduce myself as Mr. Laughing Man. So topic on solid-state disks, at first when they first came out they were seen as high cost disk that weren’t so much worth their price to performance ratio. Now I’ll ask you, if you’re running a system with DDR3 RAM are you aware of the fact that when it first came out that a 12 tri channel kit ran you $800?

 

Had it been a few years ago when SSDs first hit the mainstream market and used to cost an arm and a leg, I would probably not be disagreeing with you Mr. D but here we are on October the 12^th of 2012 where a 120GB solid state disk can run you about $80-100 for a good branded SSD. Now I’m going to touch on each of your points as well as eep357’s points respectively.

 

You ask firstly what is the big deal about SSDs? Well for sometime now, if you weren’t running a pair of Velociraptors in RAID0 together then your IO speeds were quite limiting in a sense if you had a lot of read and writes to do as in server like environments or heavy IO like programs. SSDs finally came about as a breakthrough in IO that allowed for quicker read writes in the sequential as well as the random IO department as well.

 

Now I believe you incorrectly stated that why not use the data drive for speed instead of the boot drive and I believe it should be the vice versa since your boot drive normally holds your apps and other things you’d normally needed to be launched quickly. Data drives normally hold files that are transferred in a sequential manner (ie pictures, music, movies, etc). Random reads and writes will show how weak a drive is as it’s most challenging to venture to the ends of a disk to find a remote file while headed to the other end to grab another one. Thinking in a heavy IO like environment, if you had a traditional hard drive that would average about 80mb/s on sequential reads whilst having an SSD that would read at ~250mb/s on a SATA II interface then one could see the benefit of having an SSD sans the price, of course.

 

You spoke about they don’t make 1TB SSDs and two 500GB SSDs would be cost prohibitive? Now you’re incorrect on the first statement as of today’s date, there are 1.2 TB SSDs on the mainstream market (courtesy of Newegg) but they are indeed an arm and a whole body in terms of cost. Now you talk about two 500GB SSDs being cost prohibitive? Firstly, they come in 512GB flavors due to the base 2 power formatting and trust me, most will absolutely tell you that in 2012, the price of two 512GB SSDs possibly in a RAID0 configuration would yield some truly impressive results. Assuming that you’re running on a SATA III configuration, we’re talking about possibly 1gb/s speeds in both directions (read and write). Of course those speeds are sequential but you’re random IOs do gain a substantial increase as well. From a company’s point of view where the performance certainly outweighs the cost, you’d be pretty reluctant to slip in some enterprise solid-state disks to deal with stressful server IOs.

 

eep357 has already hit on some points that I’ve said previously but I’d like to ask this particular user how is he calling out the name of an unreleased GTX 780 but we’ll take that debate up in private. On the topic of RAM, you can’t store everything there because when working in RAM hungry application such as Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro just to name a few, if you’re dealing with HD up to 4K sized videos then your system can certainly put to use easily 12 gigs of RAM if you’re doing some heavy editing. Manufacturers are now making SSDs semi RAM disks with mSATA for these purposes. Your system has a limitation on the RAM it can handle of course where as your motherboard should have more than four SATA ports you could house a couple SSDs in. I certainly beg to differ on the RAM being the best bang for the buck, your system is only as strong as the weakest link so if you’re HDD is bottlenecking your RAM, what’s the point of having fast high end RAM if it can’t push and receive data from the HDD quick enough?

 

I also don’t see how you find it sad that he maxed out his RAM because of DDR3 pricing I’d no doubt do the same myself. eep357 and I both run SSDs in RAID 0 configurations as many other unnamed IM members as well. Unless you’re writing data 24/7, you’re not going to experience premature failure rates. Yes we will lack garbage collection and TRIM so eventually the RAID array will become “dirtied” but this is the reason why I break my RAID array every 30 days to re-condition the drives used in the array, re create the array, and then restore from a Time Machine backup. Liking the car analogies of you both by the way, quite witty and gets the point across.

 

@dmazar You made my 883 worded post look childish compared to your one liner that summed up everything

 

@pi remainder 2 I missed your 5 cents while I was typing, apologies.

[Mr.D.]

I'm sure your car works fine you, and using a old PATA drive for your "boot drive" would work fine too. Just a few more seconds on the boot time right? In fact I think I have 5 750GB ones laying around from a older RAID array, maybe I should just use one of those since my RAM can just do everything once I get past a few beach balls. Come to think of it, my CPU doesn't ever seem to run at 100% capacity either, if I added up all the processing it did in a typical day, I'm sure a Pentium 1 could manage to do the same amount over a 24 hour period. So all we need is a bunch of ram and some extra patience at certain times and other "upgrades" are pretty useless. But I'm not looking for a long haul truck, my horse power needs come and go in small bursts. More like a drag racer, but still able to cruise the Autobahn while listening to Mozart at 200mph when needed, while still moving over from time to time to let the occasional Bugatti or Koenigsegg pass by.

 

This is a '81 Honda... How dare you!

 

I think that took the point I was trying to make a little to the extreme... but lets indulge!

>Are those 750GB PATA drives?? Really? That were in a RAID set??? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure everyone was just lining up at Circuit City at their going out of business sale to buy FIVE 750GB PATA drives - because whooo boy those are gonna get you far! C'mone - even when PATA was the standard, people didn't use FIVE of those POS in a RAID set! People used SCSI, or SAS. Now maybe you bought them, but don't try to pawn your bad decisions off on me!!

 

And maybe a Pentium 1 would suffice for most of your needs - might I suggest checking out an iPad! ( ohhhh burn)

 

And I agree that horsepower needs come and go - which to continue the car metaphor - that would be your processor. Which in your case is so 3 years ago.

 

In short: you can live without SSD just fine. But as soon as you try running your OS from it, you will never go back. NEVER.

 

In short: I can live without an SSD just fine.

 

My 5ct.

 

The first ever SSD I got to use, was in MacBookAir. I was surprised how silent the notebook was. Not the speed, but the lack of any noise (contrary to my current loud&slow ancient notebook) surprised me most. It was decided then, that if I ever can afford a new notebook, it will definitely be SSD equipped notebook. IMO currently SSDs are mostly beneficial to notebooks, as SSD has no moving parts (no noise), it consumes less power (longer battery life) and usually these are much faster then most HDDs.

 

Would I opt for SSD-only desktop? Probably not, not at the moment at least. To store a large amounts of date, SSDs are still too small&expensive. ATM SSD are only good to be used as the drive to install OS to (for how fast they are and how small the capacity per $ is). Hence I think, in a desktop PC, conventional drives are still quite competitive (GB/$), although not that quite fast. For me in the case of a desktop PC, I guess it would be a combo of a larger (0.5-1GB probably in RAID mode) HDD for data and a smaller (60GB) SSD for OS.

 

Sooner or later (not so soon I guess) the SSDs will replace the HDDs in most applications. The other question is how good/bad SSDs are in date recovery (then it becomes faulty).

 

Now here is a REAL justifiable reason. Gotta notebook you want to keep quiet, or even a hacked HTPC? perfect! There is a situation I can buy into.

I agree that its sooner as well... my issues right now are cost/GB and long-term reliability. What about "Write Endurance"? I know SSDs have gotten better, but to have that issue in the first place! How about "Wear Leveling"? Sure - lets just make an SSD twice as big as it 'reports' that it is so that when that piece of silica fails, we'll just use this built in extra chunk here - because we cant just mark it bad and not write to it again like a HDD does. Ohhhh... and that is assuming 'even wear leveling', which since we are constantly opening and closing apps and rebooting our machines, wont be the case.

 

Yes, I am exaggerating...

 

Firstly, hello fellow debaters I’d like the time to formally introduce myself as Mr. Laughing Man. So topic on solid-state disks, at first when they first came out they were seen as high cost disk that weren’t so much worth their price to performance ratio. Now I’ll ask you, if you’re running a system with DDR3 RAM are you aware of the fact that when it first came out that a 12 tri channel kit ran you $800?

 

Yup - it USED to be the cat's ass but now it just gets passed by the Honda Piolt in the carpool lane.

 

Had it been a few years ago when SSDs first hit the mainstream market and used to cost an arm and a leg, I would probably not be disagreeing with you Mr. D but here we are on October the 12^th of 2012 where a 120GB solid state disk can run you about $80-100 for a good branded SSD. Now I’m going to touch on each of your points as well as eep357’s points respectively.

 

No touching.

 

You ask firstly what is the big deal about SSDs? Well for sometime now, if you weren’t running a pair of Velociraptors in RAID0 together then your IO speeds were quite limiting in a sense if you had a lot of read and writes to do as in server like environments or heavy IO like programs. SSDs finally came about as a breakthrough in IO that allowed for quicker read writes in the sequential as well as the random IO department as well.

 

Now I believe you incorrectly stated that why not use the data drive for speed instead of the boot drive and I believe it should be the vice versa since your boot drive normally holds your apps and other things you’d normally needed to be launched quickly. Data drives normally hold files that are transferred in a sequential manner (ie pictures, music, movies, etc). Random reads and writes will show how weak a drive is as it’s most challenging to venture to the ends of a disk to find a remote file while headed to the other end to grab another one. Thinking in a heavy IO like environment, if you had a traditional hard drive that would average about 80mb/s on sequential reads whilst having an SSD that would read at ~250mb/s on a SATA II interface then one could see the benefit of having an SSD sans the price, of course.

 

No, I meant data - not the OS. As I stated before, given enough RAM, and not having 35 instances of LOLcats in you browser, once the OS is loaded, and the app is loaded, what you are then accessing is the DATA that you are creating/modifying. When I am working with large audio files, the only thing I have running on my system is the OS and the app. The app is reading and writing data files like a sumabitch, but the respective parts of the app that are doing the modifications are loaded into RAM.

 

You spoke about they don’t make 1TB SSDs and two 500GB SSDs would be cost prohibitive? Now you’re incorrect on the first statement as of today’s date, there are 1.2 TB SSDs on the mainstream market (courtesy of Newegg) but they are indeed an arm and a whole body in terms of cost. Now you talk about two 500GB SSDs being cost prohibitive? Firstly, they come in 512GB flavors due to the base 2 power formatting and trust me, most will absolutely tell you that in 2012, the price of two 512GB SSDs possibly in a RAID0 configuration would yield some truly impressive results. Assuming that you’re running on a SATA III configuration, we’re talking about possibly 1gb/s speeds in both directions (read and write). Of course those speeds are sequential but you’re random IOs do gain a substantial increase as well. From a company’s point of view where the performance certainly outweighs the cost, you’d be pretty reluctant to slip in some enterprise solid-state disks to deal with stressful server IOs.

 

Yup - I stand corrected - I have seen the big-ass SSDs. I would need that big ass to carry the fat wallet to pay for them.

RAID 0 strips would reduce the number of writes to each drive by half. Thus you would potentially extend the life of the set by double. Of course the drawback is you have doubled you failure chance by having 2 drives. If you rely on backups in this situation - then what is the difference if it fails on a one drive setup or one drive fails in a set? Both outcomes rely on a 'restore from backup' approach. So we're down to speed again... and unless I am getting that big-ass drive to put all my data on, its not worth it to shave a few seconds off boot and application load.

 

FYI - I have nearly 600GB of unedited music files. I believe the technical term for that amount is this.

 

eep357 has already hit on some points that I’ve said previously but I’d like to ask this particular user how is he calling out the name of an unreleased GTX 780 but we’ll take that debate up in private. On the topic of RAM, you can’t store everything there because when working in RAM hungry application such as Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro just to name a few, if you’re dealing with HD up to 4K sized videos then your system can certainly put to use easily 12 gigs of RAM if you’re doing some heavy editing. Manufacturers are now making SSDs semi RAM disks with mSATA for these purposes. Your system has a limitation on the RAM it can handle of course where as your motherboard should have more than four SATA ports you could house a couple SSDs in. I certainly beg to differ on the RAM being the best bang for the buck, your system is only as strong as the weakest link so if you’re HDD is bottlenecking your RAM, what’s the point of having fast high end RAM if it can’t push and receive data from the HDD quick enough?

 

I point you to this, this and this for places that came up when I asked Google, "what is the best upgrade for my computer?" Does Google know everything? YES.

 

I also don’t see how you find it sad that he maxed out his RAM because of DDR3 pricing I’d no doubt do the same myself. eep357 and I both run SSDs in RAID 0 configurations as many other unnamed IM members as well. Unless you’re writing data 24/7, you’re not going to experience premature failure rates. Yes we will lack garbage collection and TRIM so eventually the RAID array will become “dirtied” but this is the reason why I break my RAID array every 30 days to re-condition the drives used in the array, re create the array, and then restore from a Time Machine backup. Liking the car analogies of you both by the way, quite witty and gets the point across.

 

To continue with the car analogies - breaking the RAID set every 30 days isn't like putting gas in your car or even changing the oil - its like replacing the timing belt every month. My real car doesn't need to have that done until 105,000 miles... and if I am doing a RAID set, I want to set it up and leave it be. Why keep checking under the hood all the time? If you're gonna put a performance chip in it, sure - sounds great - hook up that stupid iPad I mentioned before and tweak away! But to keep lifting up the hood, when you shouldn't have to - well - that seems like unnecessary work to me. and Dammit I'm lazy. What I found sad, by the way, was that he can only max out at 12. That's half of what I can max out at. How's that minivan lookin' now?!?

 

**EDIT** Oops - I need to learn how to read more gooder. epp has 24GB, not 12. Which if my math is gooder than my readin skills, is the same as my system. Mea Culpa.

 

And - I can be just a tad sarcastic... so... no offense anyone. I think I am the only person alive that can have relevant links to Jimmy Buffett and bad Dane Cook movies in one post.

[eep357]

Well, of the 3 google results you linked, the first which was Lifehacker said SSD was the best upgrade you could do. Second article was from 2008 so...it was from 2008. The 3rd one was kinda all over the place using some cost per performance point metric they invented, and that was based on 2011 ssd prices which were nearly double today's. Google may not always be right, but you still have to listen.

[Mr.D.]

The lifehacker article listed RAM before SSD/HDD. and the two setences right after the statement you are referring to are thus:

 

An SSD can speed up your boot time and the launching of applications, though it isn't going to encode video any faster or make your games run more smoothly (though they will load faster). An SSD won't make web sites load any faster, and it isn't really worth it if you only use a few applications.

 

Which kinda illustrates what I have been saying - that it'll get you into the OS and the app faster - but that's it. And you are correct - the other article was a little out of date. Kinda like your system... I thought you two could have a reunion!

[TH3L4UGH1NGM4N]

The SSDs purpose was not meant ot encode videos faster any person that encodes videos will know encoding is CPU bound. Loading websites faster, seriously? Hell, why doesn't my gpu load a web page quicker than you can technically say because they hold no relevance what so ever with one another. Its purpose is to grant you faster IO speeds that hard drives have long since bottlenecked us to.

 

 

Also, don't ever believe a search engine is right because it's job is to plaster together information from different sources together in a easy to find place. It's only the medium for finding your way to the answer, not the actual answer itself. You're going off about the flaw to RAID 0 when you talk about what's the point of backing it up.

 

I think you're missing the point a bit though Mr. D, it's not about just getting into the app and launching apps quicker, it's about information moving across the disk is faster on a whole not just apps solely.

 

If one drive fails in a set I believe it's a regular failure that would happen in any RAID 0 configuration as if you were using HDDs. SSDs don't change how RAID works so you're still prone to failures regardless of what type of drive you're using in the configuration.

 

You aren't obligated to break the RAID array as I do but I do so because I like to work under the hood I just don't set stuff up and leave them running I like to take care of them.

 

No offense taken with the sarcasm either.

[Mr.D.]

First of all - NEVER doubt the almighty power that is Google!!!

 

If you have 35 instances of LOLcats open like epp does, then yeah, on a traditional HDD where you are constantly writing into and reading from disk cache, then an SSD replacement would provide you with better performance. Hey - I'm not here to judge - if he wants to watch that {censored}, more power to him!

 

I know the point is to move data more quickly - its just that MY data is far too large, and written to far too often, for me to justify using the a fore mentioned big-ass SSD. And since I don't reboot but once every other week or so, and since I am not running Photoshop, Audacity, and 117 instances of THIS, then I'm good with having my plain ol' regular SATA HDD for my boot/root drive. I would love to have an SSD for my data files as reducing the time that my programs take to edit/create the content/data on that drive I would like - but I'm still not comfortable with the reliability issues, especially in write intensive applications.

 

Ohh, and TLM - Please respond to my post before anyone else's - I sooooo want to be your 1000th post. It'd make me fell all warm inside.

[eep357]

Easy now cowboy, there are a few lines not to be crossed, and talkin' down on a man's rig is one of them. You are only allowed to brag about how awesome you think your own is, and compare parts in that context. SSD is not perfect for everyone or for every situation. Also, up until 6 months ago when the prices finally started dropping enough, I too had no interest in getting one as it simply was not worth the expense, but the current prices, especially when on sale, along with the cost of traditional HD's now costing more per GB than they did 3 years ago has changed all that. I have a tough time paying the same price now for a 1TB drive that I paid for a 2TB drive just a couple years ago. I understand flooding in Thailand effected this initially, but now I think they are doing the same thing as the oil companies where every time a reason to raise prices comes along, once they're raised and we get used to it, the prices don't come back down again even though the cause has since been long gone. On my Macbook, where all I do is use internet, mail, iMessage and screen sharing, I have no need for SSD and will not be putting one in it. I would rather have the storage room. On desktop where there's almost no limit to the number of drives you could potentially hook up, having the combination of large traditional storage drives along with ssd gives me the benefits of each, with the only disadvantage being the cost of the ssd drive, which again have been going on sale a lot lately at some great prices. Just the other day amazon had 256gb Samsung 830 series on sale for $202 and 240gb Corsair Force 3 for $188. I can't speak for reliability because I've not had one fail, and no one will know the true answer to this for a few more years, just like plasma TV's which have proven to be reliable(but use a lot of electricity). I assume if an SSD were to start failing, it would be more gradual than the sudden "click, click, whirrrr" of a standard HD, giving more opportunity to arrange a replacement and copy the data over, but will just have to wait and see.

[Mr.D.]

So far, the main arguments have been price. Its getting cheaper and therfore must be gooder. Yes, speed has been brought up, but as I have already stated, unless you are in a single drive system (RAID-0 counting as 1 drive), or are RAM inhibited, or for some reason, want to have lots of apps open at once, and RAM intensive ones at that, then I still dont see the speed benifit OTHER than at boot and loading apps.

 

Please, prove me wrong. Lets see some figures showing that my system (or any general system, i.e. not a gaming rig, etc) would run faster AFTER boot and AFTER the one or two applications are loaded. I love stats! Let's see em! And I dont mean benchmark scores - those aren't real world applications. They will show fast read/write performance I am positive of that. My point is showing the NEED for that read/write performance.

 

Ironic that you chose reliability and Plasma TVs as your example, because they are notoriously unreliable at altitude - and I live 6000ft above sea level.

 

I've been joshin' you and you proclivity for LOLcats more than I have your system. But I'll refrain from further remarks about the rig in your signature.

 

... and my rig is quite awesome I'd like to add.

[eep357]

[3.14r2]

Here some IMO interesting info about HDD vs SSD vs RAID via Thunderbolt. Don't mean to say anything BOLD here, just an interesting comparison of how different configurations affect I/O speed... I think there is a good reason for most video editors using RAID arrays extensively.

 

As to how all-knowing Google is, it doesn't know EVERYTHING, but it certainly knows way too much (it would be dead long ago if it were a member of a criminal organisation). It's time for it to be taken to a forest...

[Hangten]

Interesting read through this thread. I can say for me in sharing movies and music by plugging in via ESATA my friends don't have to wait as long when I give them a Blu-ray or two and its coming off my SSD's. The computer doesn't stop responding also when your shooting off multiple files to your target drive. Nasty nasty bottleneck on those HDD. Test this play an HD movie on one monitor and work on transferring a massive amount of single files to another HDD using HDD as your primary and then try it with a large SSD (240gb). I bet the HD movie playing will stutter like crazy using a HDD to HDD. Considering one enjoy spending the time watching movies as your buddy waits for the transfer to finish.

[Mr.D.]

Time to shake the hornet's nest again...

 

I invite you to read this: http://www.theregist...imsy/page2.html

and this: http://www.extremete...researchers-say

 

Test this play an HD movie on one monitor and work on transferring a massive amount of single files to another HDD using HDD as your primary and then try it with a large SSD (240gb). I bet the HD movie playing will stutter like crazy using a HDD to HDD. Considering one enjoy spending the time watching movies as your buddy waits for the transfer to finish.

 

I play h.264 videos on my oldskool laptop hdd all the time w/o stutter. However, I have yet to find the opportunity to transfer big-ass files WHILE watching h.264 videos. Even on my all-purpose laptop, I still dont use it like that. If I'm watching an HD video, then I'm watching an HD video. There are times where I stream stuff while I'm working on something else, but that gest into bottlenecks of a whole other area. And with regards to my purpose built rig - well, that's just a scenario that I wouldn't encounter. Which brings me back to my whole point at the beginning - unless I am super impatient and want my system to boot faster, whats the big deal? I'll catch the next wagon - the magnetic RAM one.

 

The Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman -- discuss:

[Zanthros]

The magnetic RAM drive may be connected to this new type of optical drive: http://gizmodo.com/5874956/salmon-sperm-is-your-next-generation-optical-storage-device

It will provide for better propagation of your data..........

[TH3L4UGH1NGM4N]

@Mr. D He did use an example having another person copy the files off of his computer not just him alone doing a big file transfer but a possible instance where he could be watching a movie on an HTPC of some sort while having that buddy copy another movie.

 

Again the sole purpose is not to lower boot times but rather IO activities such as launching apps just to name one.