Ssd!

Bucknasty · 11-13-2012, 13:51

Hey guys building a new desktop and I'm really flirting with getting an SSD. However I'm terrified of the lifespan. I've read several conflicting arguments so I'd like to hear some first hand experience. I'm just wanting to use it as a boot drive keeping my games and files and such on a hdd.

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JimmyN · 11-13-2012, 14:24

So far I have purchased 16 SSD drives to put into new system builds.

Six were Corsair Force 3 drives, two of those failed within a month. The RMA replacements and the other 4 are still working fine.
10 were Intel 520's, and all of those are still working great, the oldest is about 9~10 months.

That's my experience so far with actual usage.

Bucknasty · 11-13-2012, 15:10

Well from reading reviews on newegg, a year seems to be the lifespan of several of the drives I looked at. For $100 or better that's not gonna cut it for me.

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CitizenOfDreams · 11-13-2012, 15:21

Here are the statistics from my machine. The SSD contains the operating system (Win7), swap file, and a few disk speed critical applications.

Power on hours: 3500 (or 5 months)
Total host reads: 3.5TB
Total host writes: 7.5TB
SSD life left: 100%

The SSD is Kingston HyperX 3K (the one with the cheaper 3000 cycles memory).

joe0121 · 11-13-2012, 19:04

I like OCZ SSD's good price for the money.

Second SSD use less power and create less heat.

now as to life span.

An SSD is basically non volatile memory (Giant SD card) which is billions of tiny transistors that store either a 1 or a zero. These capacitors have a limited number of times they can be written.

This leads to the Idea that SSD's don't last long.

Let me ease your mind by bringing up two points.
First the mean time before failure on SSD as a general rule is 5 years or more. and that's if you are running heavy IO.

SSD typically go bad over a longer period of time where as HDD are more likely to have a catastrophic failure. You are more likely to have data loss on an HDD than an SSD

If you are still worried some things you can do.

1 if you run windows make sure disk fragmentation is disabled (windows may or may not do it on it's own) Fragmentation doesn't matter on SSD's so it is a waste of needless read/writes.

Don't use an SSD to store lots of data that will get read and more importantly written a lot. Use an HDD for storing music/video etc. Us an SSD for the OS.

Also lets not forget a HDD is a bunch of discs spinning around at 5400 =-15000 RPMS with read write heads hovering over them held up only by a cushion of air provided by the spinning disk. Bearing goes out in the spindle = game over. Read/write head crash becuase of vibration = game over.

SSD's have no moving parts and have built in methods the balance IO operations on individual capacitors to increase life span.

A lot more info here:
http://arstechnica.com/information-t...s-really-work/

Bucknasty · 11-13-2012, 20:21

That helps ease my mind. I've been really lucky with my hdds, only replacing them because of upgrades. So if I were to kill the paging and the fragmenting and all the other things generally recommended, I should be ok as long as I'm saving all data to hdd.

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joe0121 · 11-14-2012, 10:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bucknasty

That helps ease my mind. I've been really lucky with my hdds, only replacing them because of upgrades. So if I were to kill the paging and the fragmenting and all the other things generally recommended, I should be ok as long as I'm saving all data to hdd.

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Correct. That is how I am set up. I'd watch Tiger Direct. The OCZ will occasionally go on sale for 60 bucks. An SSD at 1 dollar per gig is a no brainer. 60 gig is just enough for Windows and programs to fit on and leave about 20-ish gigs of breathing room. What I did was use a USB 3.0 thumb disk plugged into a USB 3.0 port and installe most of my apps on the thumb drive with http://portableapps.com/.

You can make USB 3.0 perform better by allowing write cahce http://www.instructables.com/id/Make...d-Flash-Drive/ But if you do this YOU MUST SAFELY REMOVE THE DRIVE or you will lose data.

There are also some registry setting you can do but I wont post them because modifying the windows registry is a scary thing and you can easily huff your OS.

Portable apps is really pretty awesome and I would use it even if you dont go the SSD route.

cowboy1964 · 11-14-2012, 14:42

The hard disk has been the bottleneck in my system for YEARS. I'm close to finally getting an SSD myself.

boomhower · 11-15-2012, 03:48

I've used SSD's for years and they are the biggest improvement since dual core processors. I the difference is night and day, you won't believe you waited so long. Set up properly they will last for years. Keep in mind while reading consumer reviews those who write them are either enthusiasts or had problems, more people with problems speak out than those who don't.

I'm currently using a Crucial M4 and love it. My other choice would be a Samsung 830.

srhoades · 11-15-2012, 09:38

Just use the built in Windows backup to make system images. If the drive fails you can RMA it and be right back where you were without having to reinstall anything.

Detectorist · 11-15-2012, 11:42

For those in the market for an SSD, keep amazon.com in mind. Sometimes their normal prices for computer stuff is equal or better than Tiger or Eggnog..

Amazon.com: ocz solid state drives

Adjuster · 11-15-2012, 13:05

Are all ssd drives 2.5"? If I replace my regular 3.5" hd with ssd its ok to use the smaller size?

/

joe0121 · 11-15-2012, 13:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Detectorist

For those in the market for an SSD, keep amazon.com in mind. Sometimes their normal prices for computer stuff is equal or better than Tiger or Eggnog..

Amazon.com: ocz solid state drives

Amazon prime FTW!

For the Op

Amazon.com: OCZ Technology 128GB Vertex 4 Series SATA 6.0 GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) With Industry's Highest 120K IOPS And 5-Year Warranty - VTX4-25SAT3-128G: Computers & Accessories

joe0121 · 11-15-2012, 13:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adjuster

Are all ssd drives 2.5"? If I replace my regular 3.5" hd with ssd its ok to use the smaller size?

/

Most come with a tray to convert it. But yes all SSD are a 2.5 inch form factor.

Bucknasty · 11-15-2012, 16:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by boomhower

I've used SSD's for years and they are the biggest improvement since dual core processors. I the difference is night and day, you won't believe you waited so long. Set up properly they will last for years. Keep in mind while reading consumer reviews those who write them are either enthusiasts or had problems, more people with problems speak out than those who don't.

I'm currently using a Crucial M4 and love it. My other choice would be a Samsung 830.

The 830 64gb is on newegg for $40 right now. Just picked one up and love it so far.

wheelsoffreedom76 · 11-15-2012, 16:29

.....

handyman · 11-15-2012, 16:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adjuster

Are all ssd drives 2.5"? If I replace my regular 3.5" hd with ssd its ok to use the smaller size?

/

Just some info if you use the system discs you made, the hdd has to be the same size or larger.

joe0121 · 11-15-2012, 19:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheelsoffreedom76

I have been using usb thumb drives as boot drives and as main drives running linux operating systems. The one has been running near continuously for around three years with a full lubuntu install. Given that these thumb drives were cheap office max sunday specials and they have held up this long, I would say that ssd main drives designed for such purpose would have to last much longer. The only issue I have had is some thumbs are slower causing a delay when running full os, but fine for booting a live os. I know this is slightly different than what op is doing, but should give some insight to the durability of ssd.

Itoyed with the idea of a software raid array of USB drives. in the end it was cheaper to go SSD as the fast PCEi USB cards that supported 3.0 where $$$$$. I have about four bootable USB drives in my tool bag I use for work. Very handy. Micro center had a sell on 64 gig USB 3.0 a while back. Once a week I use clone zilla and clone my home OS to the thumb drive. Nice you carry your OS around in your pocket.

GlockFanWA · 11-15-2012, 19:37

Running an SSD under windows 7 for about a year, no issues. Just the o/s on it, moved the swap file to my hard drive. System boots in about 20 seconds.

AZson · 11-16-2012, 18:47

How about the hybrid drives, how reliable are those?

JimmyN · 11-17-2012, 05:14

I don't have any experience with the hybrid drives, and I don't know anyone that is currently using a hybrid.

If you want really fast try two SSD's in a RAID 0 striped setup. One of my game system configurations was two Intel 520's in a RAID 0 for a 240gig system drive. Boots in 6~7 seconds, shuts down in about 3 seconds. POST takes longer than it does for Windows to boot. Awesome fast, and even better when supplemented with a ramdrive for temp and cache files, as a ramdrive is more than 20 times faster than even an SSD.

DO, and I repeat DO maintain daily system images if you run two SSD's in a stripe, but that applies whether it's a mechanical drive or solid state. If either drive fails all is lost..... resulting in many cries of woe, a gnashing of teeth, and grown men openly weeping upon discovering their most recent backup is 6 months old.

joe0121 · 11-17-2012, 12:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlockFanWA

Running an SSD under windows 7 for about a year, no issues. Just the o/s on it, moved the swap file to my hard drive. System boots in about 20 seconds.

Disable the swap file. My system has 16 gigs of memory. Once you get over 6 the swap becomes very pointless.

joe0121 · 11-17-2012, 12:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimmyN

I don't have any experience with the hybrid drives, and I don't know anyone that is currently using a hybrid.

If you want really fast try two SSD's in a RAID 0 striped setup. One of my game system configurations was two Intel 520's in a RAID 0 for a 240gig system drive. Boots in 6~7 seconds, shuts down in about 3 seconds. POST takes longer than it does for Windows to boot. Awesome fast, and even better when supplemented with a ramdrive for temp and cache files, as a ramdrive is more than 20 times faster than even an SSD.

DO, and I repeat DO maintain daily system images if you run two SSD's in a stripe, but that applies whether it's a mechanical drive or solid state. If either drive fails all is lost..... resulting in many cries of woe, a gnashing of teeth, and grown men openly weeping upon discovering their most recent backup is 6 months old.

I ran Raid 0 on to 60 gigs for a while. INSANE fast. I switched to Ubuntu 12.10 so I switched to a raid 1.

Not really necessary to do a daily image in a raid 0. I would invest in a cloud drive like drop box. I have like 120 gigs for ten bucks a month. Do a weakly image back up, easily set up in windows this will capture all your OS setting and installed apps (a better idea is using portable apps and a usb 3.0 drive). Systems setting don't change that often and when they do having to re download your desktop background isn't that annoying. Important files should get back up on a cloud drive or raid protected internal drive. I like using a cloud because the files I need most often are available EVERYWHERE. That and if my house burns to the ground there is no amount of raid protection that will save your files.

joe0121 · 11-18-2012, 03:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by AZson

How about the hybrid drives, how reliable are those?

Hybrid drives IMO are a waste. They provide very little real world performance increase.