SSD...Worth it?

[DodgerKing]

Boot up time is not that big of a deal to me either. I seldom if ever turn off my desktops and the few times I do reboot or turn them on after the rare occasion they are turned off, they boot up pretty quick (if not the extra few seconds to couple of minutes is not that big of a deal).

I am more curious if others have noticed a difference in performance when running programs and if the SSDs are more reliable

 

[JAG72]

I am more curious if others have noticed a difference in performance when running programs and if the SSDs are more reliable

Performance really depends on what the application is doing. If the program reads or writes a lot of data from disk then SSD's would give the application a performance boost. Most apps really only see a boost at the startup of the application. They pretty much run the same once all of the application resides in memory.

 

[mike123abc]

They make a huge difference in a laptop with hibernation and sleep. They are nice but not as noticeable in a desktop if you do not turn it off.

 

[TheForce]

In windows you can turn on your task manager and set to performance tab. Then click on resource monitor and get a list of your hard drives activity vs the CPU and then you can see where the bottlenecks are.

 

[Frank Jr.]

Until I read a trust worthy article or an informed someone I trust tells me they are faster, more reliable or at least as reliable and cost about the same, I will stay with the spinning platter. Don't get me wrong, I like the concept for an OS at least, but until they can put faster, reliable and cost together in one sentence, no thank you.

 

[diogen]

...until they can put faster, reliable and cost together in one sentence, no thank you.

If cost means price per gigabyte, it's not likely to happen.

Moore's law is often quoted in the silicon business.
It isn't often mentioned that "spinning metal" has it's own law and was dropping the $/GB faster than Moore's law (~12 month vs. ~18 months to "double").
And today, after perpendicular recording went mainstream, spinning metal has less problems than silicon going forward...

Diogen.

 

[mcintire123]

From what I have read over the past few years SSD's have been around it is one of those things that just depends on what you want out of a drive really. As with anything new they were garbage at first. But now it seems they have it mostly figured out, low failure rates and some places contend 85% better performance over the old spinners. Just keep an eye on the big servers using one or two thousand SSD's right now and youll see that statistically they are solid (Unintended pun) . Thing is tho that when they do fail its usually with no warning whatsoever just poof and its done.

(Edit: SSD sounds dirty doesnt it?)

 

[John Kotches]

If cost means price per gigabyte, it's not likely to happen.

Moore's law is often quoted in the silicon business.
It isn't often mentioned that "spinning metal" has it's own law and was dropping the $/GB faster than Moore's law (~12 month vs. ~18 months to "double").
And today, after perpendicular recording went mainstream, spinning metal has less problems than silicon going forward...

Diogen.

except that they can never get past the rotational and seek latency.

ssd have come down by a factor of 2 in the last year. we don't know when if ever the disk prices will come back down.

there is simply no comparison in performance parameters. i defy you to show me a $300 hard disk solution that out performs my 2+ generation old ssd. you need to top 250 MB/second.

ssd for the os and apps. hard disk for big storage needs.




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[DodgerKing]

except that they can never get past the rotational and seek latency.

ssd have come down by a factor of 2 in the last year. we don't know when if ever the disk prices will come back down.

there is simply no comparison in performance parameters. i defy you to show me a $300 hard disk solution that out performs my 2+ generation old ssd. you need to top 250 MB/second.

ssd for the os and apps. hard disk for big storage needs.




Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk

Do you store the individual files for the APPs on the SSD or on the Harddrive? For example, you will place iTunes on the SSD, but will you put your iTunes music and movie library on the harddrive? Won't placing the files the APP needs to access on a secondary drive slow that APP down more than if the whole thing were on the same drive?

 

[John Kotches]

Do you store the individual files for the APPs on the SSD or on the Harddrive? For example, you will place iTunes on the SSD, but will you put your iTunes music and movie library on the harddrive? Won't placing the files the APP needs to access on a secondary drive slow that APP down more than if the whole thing were on the same drive?

i dont use itunes. why would i want to be stuck in their jail? i use a variety of tools to manage ny media.

i use a netgear readynas for big storage. i don't do any work on large files other than ripping, There i am limited to the speed of the optical drive.



Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk

 

[DodgerKing]

i dont use itunes. why would i want to be stuck in their jail? i use a variety of tools to manage ny media.

i use a netgear readynas for big storage. i don't do any work on large files other than ripping, There i am limited to the speed of the optical drive.



Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk

iTunes was an example. Pick any APP of your choice. Do you place the files of the APPs on the hard drive or with the APP on the SSD?

 

[JAG72]

iTunes was an example. Pick any APP of your choice. Do you place the files of the APPs on the hard drive or with the APP on the SSD?

Dodger, with an app like iTunes, you should store your media files on a secondary HDD and not the SSD. There is no real benefit of having those media files on the SSD.

 

[harshness]

Michio Kaku stated that Moore's Law has pretty much reached its end as there is not much more you can do with Silicon. Basically you cannot make it much smaller without compromising its integrity from the heat that is generated passing electric currents through it.

There was a time when authoritative industry people insisted that they couldn't get smaller than .09 micron chips. They're at .032 now.

 

[harshness]

What is the average life of one of these drives?

Life expectancy is closely tied to how many writes you put on the drive. Most drives have a number associated with them that indicates what the average hours will be and IIRC, it is somewhere around five years but it could be longer or shorter depending on activity.

My suggestion is that if you go SSD, make sure you have gobs of conventional RAM so your operating system isn't going to the whip with swap files all the time.

 

[diogen]

except that they can never get past the rotational and seek latency.

Rising density has taken care of that for the last 50 years.
Seagate is at 1TB per platter by now.

there is simply no comparison in performance parameters.

Who cares about parameters? This is "Worth it?" discussion.
Even the much despised Windows turns this into 100fps vs. 200fps video card comparison.
Good for bragging rights and nothing else.

Get 16GB of RAM and something like a Seagate hybrid drive and it will do 90% of what an SSD does for $500 less.

You are not talking about ZFS and dtrace again, are you?

Diogen.

 

[Stargazer]

I believe using a combination of SSD and hard drive is the way to go.

 

[digiblur]

I believe using a combination of SSD and hard drive is the way to go.

I have doing this for a couple of years now. I couldn't go back to using a regular hard drive on my pc for a boot drive. Night and day difference. I use a 500gb drive for my drive d for large applications and other files. It doesn't get much use though since I tend to use my 5TB NAS for my media storage.

 

[John Kotches]

Rising density has taken care of that for the last 50 years.
Seagate is at 1TB per platter by now.

It's nice, but there are no great speedups with the technology. Even hybrids are of limited value in comparison.

The future is probably a hybrid, with SSD and whatever might succeed it for primary storage and spinning rust for the big storage.

Who cares about parameters? This is "Worth it?" discussion.

You're saying objective performance isn't part of a value-based discussion? It's one of my determining points, i.e. is it worth it to pay an additional X for performance gain Y.

Even the much despised Windows turns this into 100fps vs. 200fps video card comparison.
Good for bragging rights and nothing else.

Depends on what you use your machine for.

Get 16GB of RAM and something like a Seagate hybrid drive and it will do 90% of what an SSD does for $500 less.

Very few laptops go beyond 8GB of RAM.

I'm not a fan of hybrids, as I think they're a band-aid onto the same old same old.

You are not talking about ZFS and dtrace again, are you?

Diogen.

Preofessionals use those on business systems. I've used zfs on personal machines. Your point?

 

[John Kotches]

Life expectancy is closely tied to how many writes you put on the drive. Most drives have a number associated with them that indicates what the average hours will be and IIRC, it is somewhere around five years but it could be longer or shorter depending on activity.

My suggestion is that if you go SSD, make sure you have gobs of conventional RAM so your operating system isn't going to the whip with swap files all the time.

IIRC the latest generation of SSDs is in the vicinity of 5 years straight writing each block twice daily before wear starts to come into play.

 

[diogen]

Depends on what you use your machine for.

Exactly!
What I emphasized right here.

I'm glad we can agree on something...

Diogen.