I'm kind of new to this whole, custom PC building thing, but after doing some research, (and even after this research I'm still gonna get flaked), I've basically come up with the assumption... Solid State Drives are generally ONLY faster and more energy efficient than traditional hard drives. SSDs don't store as much, nor, from what I read, work as well either. I only recently heard about SSD's, so I'm assuming they haven't been around long or as widely appreciated or whatever... but any reasons WHY I should consider a SSD over a traditional Hard Drive? Thanks again for any help.
In a desktop pc it's generally not HDD or SSD, you purchase the SSD to supplement HDD (maybe in netbooks you'd go for only an SSD, but that's a different situation all together). Doing this you get the (incredible) speed of an SSD alongside the larger capacity of older style hard drives. I think SSDs are pretty reliable now, they are still fairly new tech but they're quickly gaining favour due to the returns they bring, and the returns are very noticeable.
Why is a Porche preferrable to a Prople carrier? I run 3 x 1TB HDD's in a RAID 5 and 2 x 80GB SSD's, one for OS and one for Steam. So I have masses of cheap storage for media and so forth, but my machine boots insanelt fast, programs load instantly and games effectively have no loading time. As for them being unreliable, that pure ass talk, they're rated at something stupid like 10,000,000 hours before failure, and even then you'll only stop being able to write to them, you can read your data off still. The only thing that is a issue is firmware bugs, like this Sandforce issue thats currently affecting users. An SSD is like superfast broadband, once you have used it for a time there's no going back... Oh, and they've been arounfd for about 3-4 years now, but they're very much enthusiast tech...
As far as I'm concerned an SSD is about the best thing you can buy for your computer. It makes using Windows insanely quick. I use a 128GB SSD for Windows and a traditional HDD for media/steam etc. I'd suggest thats what everyone should do!
Use an HDD for storage and an SSD for the operating system, and any programs that you want to put on it. SSD's are significantly faster, its one of the best upgrades you can make to a computer for general use. If your into gaming, you'll want at least a 90gb drive so you can store games aswell. SSD are also more reliable because theres no moving parts, so they definately work just as well as a normal hard drive. Short answer: using both is ideal, go for a 7200rpm drive if you cant afford an SSD, or want to invest your money on another component...
Indeed Hopefully it does. I poped it in last night along with my m/b but board refused to boot off the f3 drive. Hoefully I can get it going tonight.
I use a 240Gb Vertex 3 for my OS, apps and games and i have a 120Gb Vertex 2E for steam, storage is a 1Tb Samsung F3, as mentioned above an SSD is a really noticable upgrade for any pc and while u do pay alot more Gb/£ u only need enough space for an OS ans a few apps and a few games, the rest u can stick on a cheap HDD.
I just install games I'm not playing, you can only play one game at a time at the end of the day... Also my internet is crazy fast so redownloading isn't any kind of problem for me
Got 6 games on my 120Gb steam drive atm and its about 50% full, ur supposed to leave about 20% free on SSD's so i think i could get another 2 or 3 on, all non steam games go on the OS drive anyway.
Yep, if you get an SSD, you'll need an HDD to store data where access speed isn't critical (downloads, pron videos, music, etc) so you'll need to be more organised with your data. SSDs are likely to be more reliable (though some models are now using cheaper flash with fewer erase cycles) but should still be backed up regularly (any data you don't back up, is data that you want to lose). SSD pricing is a little strange at the moment too with 128GB (or thereabouts) being the sweet spot in terms of £/GB. If you want more storage, multiple 128GB drives in a RAID-0 array often work out cheaper (and faster) than a single larger SSD.
I had a thread on the choice of SSD recently. It's wort keeping an eye on the "daily specials" on places like scan, aria, ebuyer and overclockers as they sometimes have £5-10 knocked off. My thread was here if it helps...... http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=213800
Once you go SSD for your boot drive, you cant ever go back to HDD. I still use them for secondary storage because of price, but never for my boot drive. Its like going broadband from dialup!