anyone here use a "Solid State Drive" yet?

tvalentine · June 2009

i've been a bit curious as to how these new SSD (or is it still HDDS?) compare up to the mechanical HDDs out right now? TBH i cant wait till SSD's catch up with HDDs in capacity, i'm tired of HDDS dieing on me or coming DOA. Not saying SSD's wont, but i doubt it will be as bad as what i've encountered.

lugal · June 2009

I work for a "Contract Manufactuer"(CM) that assembly's PCBA's for various clients. Basically, we put the chips on the boards for your pc's. Not any PC anybody here would use. I'm in the QA dept. I do the audits, documentation, test, inspection and whatever else they need, even solder from time to time. But to get to the point, the solid state drives are about a year to year and a half, away from being able to hold the same amount of data per dollar of regular current HD. But on that point, good quality ones will be hard to find. Sadly, a majority of electronics are made and assembled in China. In the industry, its widely known that the quality of items made in China are inferior to that of those made in the West. In the industry, majority of CM's use a international standard to determine and enforce quality levels on products. In China, they will claim to be "Class II"(Chips no mare than 50% off pads, no toe over hang, etc etc) but they dont always build to it. Open up your Linksys router some time, look at the solder joints, especially the thru hole parts. YOu will see just enuff solder to bond the lead to the barrel at the top, but on the bottom side on the barrel it would look like there was no solder. Quite common and we see it all the time when we get premade boards for our assemblies.(We had a client that wanted us to modify routers, replace the connectors with an wired connector) That would be a "Class I" build, not a problem if that what you are paying for. More often than not you pay for Class II and get Class I. So, when you can, get your new solid state drives from Japan. They will be faster, last longer, and give you a better ROI.

Edit: typo

Xasapis · June 2009

I don't think we'll be replacing the classic harddrives with solid states any time soon as far as storage space is concerned. When 150GB SSD costs as much as 2000GB HD, you won't buy them for storage. We will use them however to speed up parts of the system not dedicated to storage, like the operating system and programs and the games you play. So one SSD for frequently used programs and one HD for storage space. Or maybe two SSD, one for operating system and one for games, storage space on a HD.

Duvious · June 2009

To add another two cents, most current SSD's are MLC or multi-level cell technology. This is inferior to SLC or single-level cell technology. Prices on SLC based drives are about double, sometimes triple the same capacity in a MLC SSD. I have read it is also about a year to year and half away from the SLC type drives to be at the same capacity and price as where we are seeing the MLC's as of right now. I am holding off until a 120GB or so size SLC drive is available for under $200. I think we will see that sometime in 2010-2011. From the numbers I've seen on average the write times on SLC is about double that of MLC. The read times are pretty freakin' fast on both. I do a lot of writes so having 150/MBs instead of 70/MBs is huge.

tvalentine · June 2009

well thanks for giving what information you guys know of. I'm always excited to learn of new technologies that will make an older more annoying technology obsolete.

noquarter · June 2009

My buddy has a cheaper SSD with a low write speed, which is still nice because the read speed is what you are waiting on 90% of the time and it still has great read speeds compared to a HDD, plus it's 100% quieter than a HDD. Loading games, booting up, etc are all reads, and Windows 7 is supposed to be smart enough with SSD's to write less temp files to the drive to cut back on slow writes.

Agricola1 · June 2009

Right now a SSD offers to little in performance gains over a good double platter HD to justify the expense. Gigabyte for Gigabyte SSD doesn't have a prayer right now, certainly not in most home PCs. When the price drops for larger SSDs so that they become comparable to conventional HDs on a € to GB basis then they'll become more desirable. But for now the performance gains are so small and sometimes they're just the same as a raptor!

terrant · June 2009

SSDs make an awesome executable drive. You don't want them for storage, and you don't want them anywhere you're writing a lot of data. as an OS drive though, they're awesome.

Mind you, I saw a crazy video a while back about some guys that RAID 0'd something like 200 SSD drives together. The end result was 40TBs of space and a computer that could got from start to a windows desktop in like 6 seconds. They can be incredibly fast for read-only applications.

Phelcher · June 2009

Originally posted by tvalentine

i've been a bit curious as to how these new SSD (or is it still HDDS?) compare up to the mechanical HDDs out right now? TBH i cant wait till SSD's catch up with HDDs in capacity, i'm tired of HDDS dieing on me or coming DOA. Not saying SSD's wont, but i doubt it will be as bad as what i've encountered.

I am using SSDs.

Capacity is a non-issue, SSDs are for speed and performance. You don't need that while loading an MP3 or a Movie, thus a second 1GB hard drive is perfect, etc.

I use 3 HD's in each of my systems:

One 30Gb SSD for OS
One 300Gb VelociRaptor for Games / Office
One 750GbWD Black for movies / storage

Phelcher · June 2009

Originally posted by Agricola1

Right now a SSD offers to little in performance gains over a good double platter HD to justify the expense. Gigabyte for Gigabyte SSD doesn't have a prayer right now, certainly not in most home PCs. When the price drops for larger SSDs so that they become comparable to conventional HDs on a € to GB basis then they'll become more desirable. But for now the performance gains are so small and sometimes they're just the same as a raptor!

Dude, you are incredibly wrong!

SSD out perform tradition HD with ease. Sustained Writes is the only area where a traditional HD can actually keep up with an SSD. But how often does that matter? Sustained writes don't impact a system performance. Where as, information sitting on a HD waiting to get into memory is where the bottle neck comes.

Thats the exact reason SSDs are 10X better than traditional HD's.

Agricola1 · June 2009

Originally posted by Phelcher

Originally posted by Agricola1

Right now a SSD offers to little in performance gains over a good double platter HD to justify the expense. Gigabyte for Gigabyte SSD doesn't have a prayer right now, certainly not in most home PCs. When the price drops for larger SSDs so that they become comparable to conventional HDs on a € to GB basis then they'll become more desirable. But for now the performance gains are so small and sometimes they're just the same as a raptor!

Dude, you are incredibly wrong!

SSD out perform tradition HD with ease. Sustained Writes is the only area where a traditional HD can actually keep up with an SSD. But how often does that matter? Sustained writes don't impact a system performance. Where as, information sitting on a HD waiting to get into memory is where the bottle neck comes.

Thats the exact reason SSDs are 10X better than traditional HD's.

I think you're exaggerating when you say that an SSD is 1000% better than a traditional hardrive. Sure a 32GB SSD is fast, but what is it really useful for? An SSD performs at about 10-15% better than the best HD at most, some areas they perform worse. As someone said above you're only gonna use it to boot your OS or something unless your name is Bill Gates and you can afford to have say 4 64GB SSDs in a raid0 configuration!

Are SSDs the future of hard drives? I think so, but right now no one is paying that much for a 32GB SSD so that they can boot windows 10 seconds faster than before. Also it'd be interesting to see how a 1TB SSD would perform in the future. I'd be willing to bet you'd need a good case and PSU to keep up with its power and cooling needs. It wouldn't suprise me if they started needing HS fans!

In theory it can be alot better, but right now it isn't. I'd bet a 32GB velocirator could boot windows or read/write information with similar speeds to an SSD, but it'd be about as usefull as a fart in a bottle due to its limited size. Then imagine tripiling the price, that's what an SSD is now. One day they'll be a viable option.

Duvious · June 2009

its somewhere in the middle.......but I wanted to say Terrant and Phelcher both have it setup correctly in the fact that SSD they have they use for the OS. My last post wasn't that clear. I stated I am waiting until there is a 120GB SLC SSD for under $200. But I should have mentioned that would be my OS drive. When I was talking about also waiting because the write speeds are too slow as well, I was referring to larger capacity drives I would want for data storage not OS. So only look into SSD's right now for an OS drive. I also hear that there are some tweaks that need to be done in Windows or they will run horribly slow. Does anyone know anything about that? I haven't installed one yet so I have no experience.

tvalentine · June 2009

Originally posted by Duvious

its somewhere in the middle.......but I wanted to say Terrant and Phelcher both have it setup correctly in the fact that SSD they have they use for the OS. My last post wasn't that clear. I stated I am waiting until there is a 120GB SLC SSD for under $200. But I should have mentioned that would be my OS drive. When I was talking about also waiting because the write speeds are too slow as well, I was referring to larger capacity drives I would want for data storage not OS. So only look into SSD's right now for an OS drive. I also hear that there are some tweaks that need to be done in Windows or they will run horribly slow. Does anyone know anything about that? I haven't installed one yet so I have no experience.

the only tweaking i know of to make SSDs perform better are software/firewire updates. Reading from reviews on newegg, someone noticed an incredible difference from what his SSD was putting out after he updated his SSD.

@Agricola: I dunno if capacity ever factors in to energy use or heat, but atm SSDs are much less hotter (as there is no moving parts) and they take less power.

meadmoon · June 2009

I have a ss drive in my Netbook and for that particular machine, its perfect. Couple that with a non-bloated OS (I use Ubuntu) and you have a really sweet machine that's very portable and really fast. All the space I save not using Windows can be used to carry a shitload of music and movies along with me.

Phelcher · June 2009

Originally posted by Agricola1

Originally posted by Phelcher

Originally posted by Agricola1

Right now a SSD offers to little in performance gains over a good double platter HD to justify the expense. Gigabyte for Gigabyte SSD doesn't have a prayer right now, certainly not in most home PCs. When the price drops for larger SSDs so that they become comparable to conventional HDs on a € to GB basis then they'll become more desirable. But for now the performance gains are so small and sometimes they're just the same as a raptor!

Dude, you are incredibly wrong!

SSD out perform tradition HD with ease. Sustained Writes is the only area where a traditional HD can actually keep up with an SSD. But how often does that matter? Sustained writes don't impact a system performance. Where as, information sitting on a HD waiting to get into memory is where the bottle neck comes.

Thats the exact reason SSDs are 10X better than traditional HD's.

I think you're exaggerating when you say that an SSD is 1000% better than a traditional hardrive. Sure a 32GB SSD is fast, but what is it really useful for? An SSD performs at about 10-15% better than the best HD at most, some areas they perform worse. As someone said above you're only gonna use it to boot your OS or something unless your name is Bill Gates and you can afford to have say 4 64GB SSDs in a raid0 configuration!

Are SSDs the future of hard drives? I think so, but right now no one is paying that much for a 32GB SSD so that they can boot windows 10 seconds faster than before. Also it'd be interesting to see how a 1TB SSD would perform in the future. I'd be willing to bet you'd need a good case and PSU to keep up with its power and cooling needs. It wouldn't suprise me if they started needing HS fans!

In theory it can be alot better, but right now it isn't. I'd bet a 32GB velocirator could boot windows or read/write information with similar speeds to an SSD, but it'd be about as usefull as a fart in a bottle due to its limited size. Then imagine tripiling the price, that's what an SSD is now. One day they'll be a viable option.

No.. SSD's are 1000X quicker where you computer needs it most, disc access and random read/writes. Thats the whole point of SSDs. To speed up your COMPUTER. SSD's are the whip.. they are Solid State and use no power, make no heat and makes your computer snappy as hell.

You can thow them around the room, and even the cheapest of them deliver incredible disk access and random read/writes.

The point is, you mount your Operating System on an SSD, making boot-ups and everything else on your machine crispy and instant.

You don't need a large SSD..! What would you use it for? MP3..? (lol)

Agricola1 · June 2009

"No.. SSD's are 1000X quicker where you computer needs it most, disc access and random read/writes."

OK please someone show me a bench test where an SSD is 100,000% faster than the fastes conventional HD, because all the ones I've seen they come nowhere near that kind of performance.

"The point is, you mount your Operating System on an SSD, making boot-ups and everything else on your machine crispy and instant."

Which is my whole argument, why would I bother spending £85 so I could boot windows 10 seconds faster? Or I could get a 160GB SSD for £550, but would you rather have a top of the range GPU or be able to load Crysis 10-20 seconds quicker with a so so GPU? All the SSD for the most part is going to do is help with load times, that would be great if they had the same GB to £ ratio as conventional HDs. Until that happens it's far to expensive for the average user, better to have higher FPS than load times in my opinion.

I do agree it will be an exciting future prospect but the technology still needs developing and prices need to drop.

oramio · June 2009

Originally posted by Agricola1

"No.. SSD's are 1000X quicker where you computer needs it most, disc access and random read/writes."
OK please someone show me a bench test where an SSD is 100,000% faster than the fastes conventional HD, because all the ones I've seen they come nowhere near that kind of performance.
"The point is, you mount your Operating System on an SSD, making boot-ups and everything else on your machine crispy and instant."
Which is my whole argument, why would I bother spending £85 so I could boot windows 10 seconds faster? Or I could get a 160GB SSD for £550, but would you rather have a top of the range GPU or be able to load Crysis 10-20 seconds quicker with a so so GPU? All the SSD for the most part is going to do is help with load times, that would be great if they had the same GB to £ ratio as conventional HDs. Until that happens it's far to expensive for the average user, better to have higher FPS than load times in my opinion.
I do agree it will be an exciting future prospect but the technology still needs developing and prices need to drop.

It is not that hard to find benchmarks about SSD's on internet. Do you own search on google and stop being lazy and demanding this and that.

When you check performance, do not check the top speed of the products on sequential reads, as on daily usage, it is not the problem you're using with your HDD, even a single application at a time (check the term fragmentation). On each head change from track to track on a hard disc, a fast harddisk needs 8ms=8000microseconds. An SSD can do the seeks (logical seeks at different locations) in 10-30 microseconds. You do the math and find the potential in randiom access speeds.

It is good to have an opinion, but having an opinion without reading and doing your homework is not good and wise. At least go and read articles before talking about something

Agricola1 · June 2009

Originally posted by oramio

Originally posted by Agricola1

"No.. SSD's are 1000X quicker where you computer needs it most, disc access and random read/writes."
OK please someone show me a bench test where an SSD is 100,000% faster than the fastes conventional HD, because all the ones I've seen they come nowhere near that kind of performance.
"The point is, you mount your Operating System on an SSD, making boot-ups and everything else on your machine crispy and instant."
Which is my whole argument, why would I bother spending £85 so I could boot windows 10 seconds faster? Or I could get a 160GB SSD for £550, but would you rather have a top of the range GPU or be able to load Crysis 10-20 seconds quicker with a so so GPU? All the SSD for the most part is going to do is help with load times, that would be great if they had the same GB to £ ratio as conventional HDs. Until that happens it's far to expensive for the average user, better to have higher FPS than load times in my opinion.
I do agree it will be an exciting future prospect but the technology still needs developing and prices need to drop.

It is not that hard to find benchmarks about SSD's on internet. Do you own search on google and stop being lazy and demanding this and that.

When you check performance, do not check the top speed of the products on sequential reads, as on daily usage, it is not the problem you're using with your HDD, even a single application at a time (check the term fragmentation). On each head change from track to track on a hard disc, a fast harddisk needs 8ms=8000microseconds. An SSD can do the seeks (logical seeks at different locations) in 10-30 microseconds. You do the math and find the potential in randiom access speeds.

It is good to have an opinion, but having an opinion without reading and doing your homework is not good and wise. At least go and read articles before talking about something

I have looked at benchmarks on the internet thankyou, however I've yet to find one where the performance comes anywhere near what is being claimed. So I'm asking where these figures are coming from and would like to see the proof, I've looked and seen a 10-15% performance increase overall and even a lower performance in some areas. As far as I'm aware there is no article showing an SSD performing ten times or even a thousand times faster than the fastest conventional HD.

I'm sorry if I touched a nerve with you but I didn't mean to insult anyone.

BTW, I did say "please" when asking for the benchmarks.

oramio · June 2009

Originally posted by Agricola1

Originally posted by oramio

Originally posted by Agricola1

"No.. SSD's are 1000X quicker where you computer needs it most, disc access and random read/writes."
OK please someone show me a bench test where an SSD is 100,000% faster than the fastes conventional HD, because all the ones I've seen they come nowhere near that kind of performance.
"The point is, you mount your Operating System on an SSD, making boot-ups and everything else on your machine crispy and instant."
Which is my whole argument, why would I bother spending £85 so I could boot windows 10 seconds faster? Or I could get a 160GB SSD for £550, but would you rather have a top of the range GPU or be able to load Crysis 10-20 seconds quicker with a so so GPU? All the SSD for the most part is going to do is help with load times, that would be great if they had the same GB to £ ratio as conventional HDs. Until that happens it's far to expensive for the average user, better to have higher FPS than load times in my opinion.
I do agree it will be an exciting future prospect but the technology still needs developing and prices need to drop.

It is not that hard to find benchmarks about SSD's on internet. Do you own search on google and stop being lazy and demanding this and that.

When you check performance, do not check the top speed of the products on sequential reads, as on daily usage, it is not the problem you're using with your HDD, even a single application at a time (check the term fragmentation). On each head change from track to track on a hard disc, a fast harddisk needs 8ms=8000microseconds. An SSD can do the seeks (logical seeks at different locations) in 10-30 microseconds. You do the math and find the potential in randiom access speeds.

It is good to have an opinion, but having an opinion without reading and doing your homework is not good and wise. At least go and read articles before talking about something

I have looked at benchmarks on the internet thankyou, however I've yet to find one where the performance comes anywhere near what is being claimed. So I'm asking where these figures are coming from and would like to see the proof, I've looked and seen a 10-15% performance increase overall and even a lower performance in some areas. As far as I'm aware there is no article showing an SSD performing ten times or even a thousand times faster than the fastest conventional HD.

I'm sorry if I touched a nerve with you but I didn't mean to insult anyone.

BTW, I did say "please" when asking for the benchmarks.

I think I have overreacted in my reply, I am just tired about reading posts having very strong opinions on things without trying to find out information on their own (I am not trying to point at you here). Do google for "ssd hdd performance comparison", and read the articles to find the difference. I've run into two and read them in this time frame, you can do the same.

www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_vs_Raptor/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_Raptor.html

www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-notebook-portable,1913-5.html

I could not find out the article yet, but you'll generally find that operating system boot time generally cuts into half or a bit worse, writes are faster on harddiscs, random reads are slower. Try to find an article that they test 2-3 application launch at once kind of tests, SSD's can be more then 10 times faster on those conditions (background virsusscan, launch an application scenario, add virtual memory swap to make it more dramatic kind of scenario).

If you have a single application accessing the disk at a time, it is not worth of spending the money for HDD, in daily life, the only time you have lots of parallel access to harddisc is when you bootup and startup applications access the harddisk all at once, virsusscan/memory swap conditions, for which SSD's really shine, even MLC's. I could not find the article's I've read about these though to back up the information.

I am not an expert on SSD or working on SSD business, my source of information is more then 50 articles on sites like tomshardware.com, xbitlabs.com, anandtech.com kind of sites, and I am keeping an eye on the area for more then a year to figure out a time frame to buy one. I believe the products haven't matured yet to bring the prices down, and the practical problems faced in the process are being handled one by one.

LordDevil · June 2009

Well it really depends on which SSD you use... if you go for the unbeatable Intel X25-M (E) Edition you are really alot faster.

I had a Veliciraptor (300GB) Raid-0 and upgraded shortly to the Intel X25-M (80GB) SSD - also Raid-0 and all I can say is that the performance gain was awesome. Random access is something that happens everyhwere and the SSD are simply many many times faster than convenient harddisks. Even the fast Veliciraptor were blown away.

So I myself would never go back... but surely for now you have to pay a lot for these Intel SSDs - so its up to you if the performance gain will be worth your hard earned money

Agricola1 · June 2009

No offence taken, I've read those test before and I'd like to point out some massive flaws in them. Firstly you're testing a 32GB SSD vs a 300GB velociraptor in one of the reviews. Now I'm all for these SSDs but this test is a bit silly in my opinion concerning the size of the HDs. Imagine a 32GB velociraptor VS a 300GB velociraptor, which is going to boot windows first? Yes the 32GB one because there is so much less space for it to read. Some might say "but it makes no difference what size the SSD is, at 300GB or 1TB it's load at the sametime", well I don't know if that's true (bigger SSD more space to search more power more heat and so forth). Even if that is true the point is moot as the velociraptor is put at a severe disadvantage since it's 300GB. Still the SSD outperformed on radom reads by yes 15 times but lost by the same amount in random writes, overall it's a better performer but not by a massive amount due to having deficiencies compared to HDs in some areas.

The second test was even more flawed, Tom's Hardware test a 5,400RPM 160GB HD VS a 32GB SSD. I mean what's the point? were they paid by Mtron to do that? When a 640GB SSD goes up against the fastest 640GB HD then that'll be a real benchmark in my opinion, one which the SSD will win no doubt.

Until larger SSDs are in use only then can we see the true potential of such drives, do they overheat and slow down at larger sizes or not? I'm not saying they aren't better, I'm saying wait and see.

noquarter · June 2009

Originally posted by Agricola1
No offence taken, I've read those test before and I'd like to point out some massive flaws in them. Firstly you're testing a 32GB SSD vs a 300GB velociraptor in one of the reviews. Now I'm all for these SSDs but this test is a bit silly in my opinion concerning the size of the HDs. Imagine a 32GB velociraptor VS a 300GB velociraptor, which is going to boot windows first? Yes the 32GB one because there is so much less space for it to read. Some might say "but it makes no difference what size the SSD is, at 300GB or 1TB it's load at the sametime", well I don't know if that's true (bigger SSD more space to search more power more heat and so forth). Even if that is true the point is moot as the velociraptor is put at a severe disadvantage since it's 300GB. Still the SSD outperformed on radom reads by yes 15 times but lost by the same amount in random writes, overall it's a better performer but not by a massive amount due to having deficiencies compared to HDs in some areas.
The second test was even more flawed, Tom's Hardware test a 5,400RPM 160GB HD VS a 32GB SSD. I mean what's the point? were they paid by Mtron to do that? When a 640GB SSD goes up against the fastest 640GB HD then that'll be a real benchmark in my opinion, one which the SSD will win no doubt.
Until larger SSDs are in use only then can we see the true potential of such drives, do they overheat and slow down at larger sizes or not? I'm not saying they aren't better, I'm saying wait and see.

Hmm I think a 300GB Velociraptor would actually beat a 32GB Velociraptor - the HD will be able to stay on the faster outer track of the HD much longer and pick up contiguous data quicker and less distance to travel on random reads on a densely packed platter especially if you only use 32GB of the outside track

I suppose it's not proven but an SSD should scale from 32GB to 300GB with no change in performance because reads/writes just depend on a table lookup to access the data - looking up any given block/page is exactly the same. In fact the larger the SSD gets it should gain performance because they make them larger by adding more storage internally in parallel, effectively built in RAID performance.

Obviously HDD's have the size advantage but you buy a Raptor for speed not size and good SSD's can beat it in all areas now while cheap ones at least match or beat it in the important areas.. The ideal situation is to use an SSD for OS/apps and a large 7200rpm HDD for storage/data where you would never notice the speed anyway. SSD's seem much better at multitasking I/O operations as well - I like the real world load time tests Anandtech benches here:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=13
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=29

oramio · June 2009

Originally posted by Agricola1

No offence taken, I've read those test before and I'd like to point out some massive flaws in them. Firstly you're testing a 32GB SSD vs a 300GB velociraptor in one of the reviews. Now I'm all for these SSDs but this test is a bit silly in my opinion concerning the size of the HDs. Imagine a 32GB velociraptor VS a 300GB velociraptor, which is going to boot windows first? Yes the 32GB one because there is so much less space for it to read. Some might say "but it makes no difference what size the SSD is, at 300GB or 1TB it's load at the sametime", well I don't know if that's true (bigger SSD more space to search more power more heat and so forth). Even if that is true the point is moot as the velociraptor is put at a severe disadvantage since it's 300GB. Still the SSD outperformed on radom reads by yes 15 times but lost by the same amount in random writes, overall it's a better performer but not by a massive amount due to having deficiencies compared to HDs in some areas.
The second test was even more flawed, Tom's Hardware test a 5,400RPM 160GB HD VS a 32GB SSD. I mean what's the point? were they paid by Mtron to do that? When a 640GB SSD goes up against the fastest 640GB HD then that'll be a real benchmark in my opinion, one which the SSD will win no doubt.
Until larger SSDs are in use only then can we see the true potential of such drives, do they overheat and slow down at larger sizes or not? I'm not saying they aren't better, I'm saying wait and see.

Why do you think that smaller harddisks boot faster? If the files are not fragmented on a harddrive, and the data is stored on the outermost part of the platter, it will perform the best. When talking for an 3.5 inch drive, capacity of the harddisc doesn't effect these parameters. For an SSD, addressing may not be an issue for bigger sized ones, so there may not be a difference in speed? Or it may favor bigger capacities becouse there may be more parallel cells accesed at once?

For the second article, you're completely right, as the comparison is against a laptop, which is hosting a 2.5 inch drive, and possible an 5200rpm disk, which I expect to have really slow access times. For a laptop, you're concerned about both on battery exhaustion time and performance at once, hence the test. If you're looking for pure performance advantage, instead of looking for conspiracy there, move on to a more relevant article. It is not a good attitude to blame everyone you run into becouse of difference in test procedures. Why don't you email them about that article giving a feedback to them that their article can mislead people becouse it is titled as performance comparison?

Those two links are found and read in 5 minutes, so I am sure you can find better ones in more time, and you can run into the tests I had read. Sorry that I cannot dig in to just find them again for you.

Edit: first paragraph, SSD addition

drbaltazar · June 2009

mm if you set up a ssd in raid configuration and put page file in the ssd but still use the normal drive for storage use

lol you will feel a very big jump in performance with say an x25 from intel the fastest one will be close to 3 time as fast just for page file and all it will boost speed a lot but since they re so small i d advise take 1 ssd to act as the page file instead of the regular 7 k speed drive

how fast

normal drive are around 70

ssd are around 200+ yes they are that fast

that being said are they worth it ?

not really if you got 2 regular drive in raid and put page file on the drive that microsoft dont use you ll be fast enough for

any big graphic intense game out there ,most of the time you hit slower server then your computer

so your speed will rarelly be a problem

unless you use miccrosoft firewall(yes their firewall are ressource hog )check online for the best

check everything from microsoft why?

9/10 they got a tendency to be too mutch on the safe side like power option, its set to balance

connection, they keep 20% of the bandwith for themselve (true its not always on but if your fighting a close match and it pops on 9/10 your dead

its all on the net xp,vista

i dont mind to adjust, the problem is average joe cant touch this these setting. should be avail somewhere simpler we shouldnt have to go to their registery setting to optimise these setting

its like the connection speed test lol you got 3 mb/sec right so when speedtest ask your connection you write 3000 kb/sec right wrong .you got to divide by 8 to get actual speed then take 90 % of that and thats the number you write when you speedtest

you puted a bigger number lol you just gimped your speed

thats whats bad ,microsoft should auto-detect max setting lol they wont do that can you imagine you got a computer you think is running at 100 % but in reality is running at 50 % just because microsoft lock it there .anoying to no end no onder we hit website that are very slow ,most dont play with these setting

and its wise most setting are so deep in the registery ,1 false number and you could have big issue with your computer

microsoft should ad a gamer option so that when you click that on all setting are putted to max setting everywherefrom modem speed to processor etc(like that will ever happens lol)

Phelcher · June 2009

Originally posted by Agricola1

No offence taken, I've read those test before and I'd like to point out some massive flaws in them. Firstly you're testing a 32GB SSD vs a 300GB velociraptor in one of the reviews. Now I'm all for these SSDs but this test is a bit silly in my opinion concerning the size of the HDs. Imagine a 32GB velociraptor VS a 300GB velociraptor, which is going to boot windows first? Yes the 32GB one because there is so much less space for it to read. Some might say "but it makes no difference what size the SSD is, at 300GB or 1TB it's load at the sametime", well I don't know if that's true (bigger SSD more space to search more power more heat and so forth). Even if that is true the point is moot as the velociraptor is put at a severe disadvantage since it's 300GB. Still the SSD outperformed on radom reads by yes 15 times but lost by the same amount in random writes, overall it's a better performer but not by a massive amount due to having deficiencies compared to HDs in some areas.
The second test was even more flawed, Tom's Hardware test a 5,400RPM 160GB HD VS a 32GB SSD. I mean what's the point? were they paid by Mtron to do that? When a 640GB SSD goes up against the fastest 640GB HD then that'll be a real benchmark in my opinion, one which the SSD will win no doubt.
Until larger SSDs are in use only then can we see the true potential of such drives, do they overheat and slow down at larger sizes or not? I'm not saying they aren't better, I'm saying wait and see.

Honestly, I always thought you were a level headed guy... whats with all this^^ ignorance ..?

Accept the fact that SSDs are indeed superior to HDs.

First, SDD are performance HD, just like you pay a premium for a VolicRaptor (10,000rpm), you are going to pay for an SSD. SSD's are not used for STORAGE, you don't need large one.

I never shut my computer off, so I really don't care how fast my computer boots up. THOUGH... SSD speed up everything. As you are reading this, your HD light is flittering doing all kinds of stuff in the background. You will not beleive how much faster an SSD makes your computer. From browsing the web to just doing anything such as opening up a windows or program. Because the SSD's access times is 0.11ms ..! (ie: instant). An SSD can find 65 files, before the 10,000rpm VoliciRaptor can find ONE.

It can find and load many files before a premium VelociRaptor can find just one file. That is impressive and something that cannot be dismissed. The only benchmarks in which SSD have competition from noramla HDs are in Sustain writes, like when saving an MP3, large file or even a movie. But then again, SSD are not meant for storage.

Almost everyone I know use 2 hard drives in the computer. Seperating the OS hard drive from Office & Games partitions on the second drive, allowing for better IO. The size of a SSD doesn't matter, as no OS is 30gigs. Plus you want your swap file to use the SSD for added performance, if needed.

Agricola, your points are highly irrational and I find you trying to "hold the line", instead of just admiting you haven't fully grasped the speed or use of modern SSDs. Hard drives are the slowest thing in your computer, a fast HD speeds up everything!

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anyone here use a "Solid State Drive" yet?

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anyone here use a "Solid State Drive" yet?

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