SSD's the way forward

[paparazi]

It seems to me that I have been chasing the holy grail of performance for many years. Upgrading/rebuilding on average every 18 months or so always in the pursuit of power and speed.
Then along comes a technology that makes such a profound difference I simply had to post about it.
Obviously many of you are not new to SSD drives but for those that are all I can say is don't delay.
I was one of those on the side lines, waiting for 2nd generation/trouble free and cost effective solutions to appear.
Well I've just fitted an OCZ Vertex 2 as my main boot drive (this has this Sandforce 1200 controller that makes all the difference), removed my 500GB WD Black Edition (which was no sloach) and I can honestly say I have never spent £90 ($135) on an upgrade that has made such an incredible diference to the feel of a PC.
Yes I've set a 1 TB Samsung F3 as my storage and we will see about SSD longevity but for now my statement remains with little reservation.

Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[xit]

When the time comes, I will put one in my Dell XPS laptop.
I have been watching these & have heard much good about them. They are the future in hard drives.

xit

 

[cdogg]

Just read the review on Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3667/oczs-agility-2-reviewed-the-first-sf1200-with-mp-firmware/1

Seems like a pretty good drive for the price (Newegg has the 60GB version on sale for $120). Originally I had my eye on the 80GB Intel X-25m, but after reading the review I may have to start considering OCZ as a decent alternative to Intel!

~cdogg
"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[cdogg]

Actually at the end of that Anandtech article, it shows that the 128GB version of the Vertex 2 only has 93GB of user capacity. What the heck does that mean? Martin, did you go with the 60GB version and if so, are you seeing the full capacity of the drive?

~cdogg
"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[paparazi]

Yes I went with the 60GB version and see a formatted 55.7GB,
23.8 free after Windows 7 64bit fully updated/office 2007/Photoshop CS3/antivirus and several other general programs.
Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[vacunita]

23.8 free, kind of tight if you ask me. Though I do believe they'll replace regular mechanical SATA drives in the very near future, they are still too small and too expensive right now.

When I get around to building my HTPC, I'll probably want to go with a SSD for the system if the price is right while having a larger regular drive for video and audio storage.



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[cdogg]

My bad. I was mixing up the "advertised" capacity with actual flash capacity being used on the drive. So, the 100GB model actually uses 128GB flash even though the actual capacity is only 93GB (almost a 30% overhead).

There's still one thing that irks me about Sandforce's approach. Their storage strategy relies on tricky compression techniques in order to reduce write amplification. Intel, for example, has a 1.1x write amplification ratio. In Layman's terms to me that means a 1MB file will roughly consume 1.1MB of actual space on the drive. A little wasteful, but not too bad.

Sandforce on the other hand attempts to cut this in half with a 0.5x ratio, and some benchmarks appear to back that up. However, I'm concerned about the integrity of the data and how that stacks up in real-world situations involving highly detailed images or video that are uncompressed. Is there any chance at losing some of the file's integrity once it's written to the drive? That could be a major concern for multimedia editing workstations.

~cdogg
"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[paparazi]

Interesting....but the way I intend to use the drive means that any storage will be passed over to the 1TB Samsung backup drive.
This is how I percieve getting around the drives storage limitations and how I would imagine most will use this type of small fast drive.

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[vacunita]

Interesting....but the way I intend to use the drive means that any storage will be passed over to the 1TB Samsung backup drive.
This is how I percieve getting around the drives storage limitations and how I would imagine most will use this type of small fast drive.
[/quot]

True, but considering Windows is known for its space hoarding updates, you may find that 23GB may be quickly eaten up, unless you make a point of deleting update installation files and folders regularly.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[kjv1611]

I'm still waiting.. I WANT to jump on SSDs, but waiting. Frankly, I've gotten used to waiting on most everything for a couple years now. Mainly, for budget reasons. However, SSDs have definitely dropped in price A LOT and I could see getting a 120GB or so SSD as being a good option, long-term, for a system drive... no need of concern about being filled with temp files, etc.... at least not in most cases.

The OCZ Vertex 2 is definitely one of the best. There are several fast contenders right now, actually. I doubt you could go wrong with many of them.

 

[paparazi]

Well I can't remember the last time I kept any hard drive for more than 2 years and with a 3 year warranty this one will be covered well past the day I sell it on. By which time I expect a more reasonable sized SSD (250GB maybe) will be available at a similar price.
But in the meantime I am experiencing something of an epiphany, more so than any past upgrade...Core2 Duo/i7/Quad Core included and all costing much much more.

Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[kjv1611]

Yeah, thanks for throwing gas on the fire. I badly want to upgrade my machines at home to SSDs, but I really can't afford to spend anything on tech equipment for a while... well, maybe at tax time, but I really shouldn't.

Besides that, if I go all SSD at home, I'll be crying at work for the next 5 years, b/c I KNOW they won't be upgrading us anytime soon.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

I upgraded my sisters laptop with an SSD and from powered off to playing music in less than 30 seconds is awesome!

I loved it so much I had to upgrade my home PC for christmas. I kept my raid for storage and installed Windows 7 on the SSD.

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[gbaughma]

I must say that I have a 2008 SBS server with a pair of Raid-0 SSD's for the system drive, and an array of regular drives for the exchange store.

This thing boots up Windows 2008 SBS, ready to log in, in well under a minute.

VERY happy with the performance.



Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[kjv1611]

pair of Raid-0 SSD's for the system drive,

I frankly had to stop reading at that point, and slap my hand, saying, "no!" you know the consequences of spending money right now.

 

[kjv1611]

Actually, on RAID and SSDs, I have read from some user reviews that if you use SSDs in a RAID array, you cannot take advantage of TRIM, which with SSDs doesn't seem a smart option.

Or is there some light at the end of the TRIM tunnel which I've not since read.