We all look at benchmarks and milliseconds, but in real life, how do you feel a SSD?? I talked today with the owner of a retail shop for PC components (and other tech things) since I wanted to buy the new Intel 34nm SSD drive. His advice was to buy the Samsung F3 or Seagate 7200.12, since in real life he did not notice any great difference compared to SSD, that would be big enough to justify the difference in price. Of course the load times are somewhat faster, but... The ones that have a SSD, what is your realistic opinion???
I would actually like to second the question. I've yet to hear from users using SSD drives day to day... are they really worth the somewhat enormous price?
I just got one delivered so should be able to tell you soon. One thing that is amazing though straight off is how light they are (a Crucial M225 128GB). I thought the box was empty when the courier handed it to me. I've picked up USB sticks that are heavier.
Yes. It can load Word and Firefox faster than I can click the button. Everything loads at once when you hit windows too and installing things like service packs and games (from ISOs) slashes the install time to a fraction of what it was. We haven't yet had an SSD die on us from natural causes either - only the full format bug on the Corsair/Samsung one really caused us issues.
Kod mene bi upotreba bila baš svakodnevna, jer cijelokupna masa podataka ne iznosi više od 30 GB (možda 40GB). HDD tako neću uopšte imati u PC kutiji; ni kao arhiv. Real impressions please, from everyday use; not installing Windows and similar (we do that once in 3 Years). I don't plan to have a HDD in the case, not even as an archive, since I don't store unendless things-data (especially games; films, and similar garbage) in my PC (that are never used). talking about hardcore How was with "superior" HDD so far?
Right just finished building the new system and installing Vista and so on. Immediate impression is that it is a lot quicker, although I couldn't promise this was just the SSD (I upgraded CPU Q6600>i7 920 and RAM at the same time). Things that I suspect are the SSD are that it boots up blistering quickly now. No more hanging around for the best part of a minute. The slowest bit of booting is the BIOS stuff by far. Also access on C is much much quicker. A few examples of this - installing software (not just OS) is very quick, but also virus checks and adware checks (e.g. by superantispyware) are also much faster. So - does it seem to make a real world difference? After playing around for 30 mins or so I would have to say yes so far.
I just installed it as usual. There are some gubbins about alignment I don't quite understand but I did pick up that it was an issue for XP only and not Vista or W7. The only issue with Vista is to turn off all the disk thrashing stuff. There is an excellent guide here that contains full instructions (it is on the OCZ forums but is applicable to any SSD I believe).
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=171289 Well, it's now been three months since I installed the Vertex alongside a Core 2. The drives are still working away quite happily. The contrast between my home machine, with the drives and work machine with traditional mechanical storage is like day and night. Home fast, work slow. Admittedly, the work machine has an identical motherboard but half the RAM and a slightly slower processor. Cost is the biggest factor here. Prices have come down a bit since I bought the Vertex, but it's still prohibitive. Because of this I wouldn't recommend SSDs it to friends and family just yet, although personally I'm not going back to a mechanical OS drive.
Put it this way, I think it's one of those things that your perfectly fine without - i.e get a F3 1tb. However once you get one, you can't turn back. Right now.. I cant see the price to justify it really.
I got an ocz vertex 120Gb a couple months back and was really happy with the difference when loading up applications and surfing the web, the internet was practicaly instant with an ssd. Before the ssd i was using two 500gb samsung drives in raid. Its just a pity they have such limited space on them just now.
Intel 80Gb 34nm Postville drive has gone into a complete SHORTAGE all across EU; the shops have such waiting lists that they have even put it out of assortment not capable of servicing the requests on the line of: "when is the next shipment due?". I did speak just two days ago with one of the major suppliers; I wanted the SSD in question myself,... If we are speaking about wish list, than SanDisk. Toshiba's 43nm manufacturing has only a less than 10% disadvantage per die-size compared to Intel's 34nm; add the X4 technology and you can build a 256GB SSD for just 20% more money than a 128GB model. X4 tech has Error checking and correcting, advanced signal processing,... Now I'm in dilemma; should I wait for SanDisc X4???
Do some digging first. Is Sandisk using a new controller? The Samsung ones have been reported in the wild to have stuttering/slowdown issues. The only drives that seem to be foolproof are the Intel X25-M, X25-E and OCZ Vertex and Agility.
Outlook - bam, it's there. It's like the mouse barely finishes clicking. Windows Media Player - boom, it's there. I reinstalled Win7 x64 on my ssd last weekend as there was funky stuff going on (pdf's wouldn't load, itunes choppy) - something I did rather than the ssd I should think. Reinstalled and got all that lovely speediness back - don't know what was wrong but it was so quick to back up and reinstall it didn't matter much. Once you've been bitten, there's no going back. Like a zombie going downhill on jet propelled rollerskates.
I've heard on 14 secound boot times with Windows 7 but that was in Raid 0 I was thinking of getting one but there are more important upgrades me computer need first
If you pare down an OS it's not that hard to get silly boot times. Iirc sub-10's on XP aren't uncommon.
The problem is another, when you go from 2bits/cell to 4bits/cell you double the failure ratio. and SanDisc says it has a revolutionary solution...
I'm in a somewhat similar dilemma. Win7 will be here in the post soon, and I'm definitely planning to change my storage around when I install it. Atm I have 3 mechanical drives, no proper external backup (just copy key files to iPod from time to time) and I would definitely like that to change. Am also very tempted by an SSD, and slightly horrified by the price. Currently using an old and slow 120GB drive as boot (this HAS to change), and a 250GB and a 500GB for storage. Across all three I've probably actually only filled 500GB in total, if I reduce some of the duplication of stuff. 1) I could buy a Samsung F3 1TB disk, and use that as my sole internal drive. It's nice and fast so will make a good boot drive, and has all the space I need too. No SSD. But then, what do I do about external backup? None of my existing drives is big enough to back up the 1TB one alone, and a multi-drive e-sata enclosure is really expensive. 2) I could get an SSD and use that as the boot drive. But again, not sure what to do about backup. The ideal solution, 3) is get an SSD and a 1TB drive and an e-sata enclosure and just dump all my existing drives (add them to the stack of components knocking around which would then only lack a CPU to make a new PC, actually :S ). But that's just too expensive. An SSD would be a lot of money to swallow, no way I will add to that cost right now. Sigh. Dilemmas. An SSD is tempting. I know bittech gives glowing reviews and reccommends them but I can't help thinking - you guys are testing on the latest and fastest systems in terms of processors, ram, mobos, etc, and so are probably more apt to notice the HDD as a bottleneck than someone with a more average system. Not that the HDD isn't still a bottleneck of course, but whether an SSD will make quite as much of a 'wow' difference to an average system as to a top-end one is hard to tell from where I am.
What system have you got? I use an M225 on a core2 rig, running XP, and the difference is staggering. Fast boot times, no more waiting around for applications to load. I ran a full virus scan whilst installing updates and it still opened MS Word in a split second. You don't need the latest and greatest system to benefit from a SSD. Yes they are expensive but, as the HDD is the slowest piece of kit on your PC, they make your rig much more responsive. It is, without doubt, the best upgrade I have ever bought.
