Is a SSD good when you add/delete 30 gigs data a day?

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XRWKEN

XRWKEN

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Dec 24, 2006
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Hi All,
Im trying to find out if it is a good or bad idea to get a SSD for my wife's computer. She manages her own web store so everyday see adds new products which means, downloading thousands of new/updated products from her suppliers web portal, editing them in excel then uploading to her site, She also does the same for images for each product. She usually downloads/edits/uploads/deletes aprox 30 gig's a day.
I dont know if that will kill the SSD in a very short time or not. She is currently using a old WD 640gig black edition 3gig/sec hard drive. I'm wanting to get her something faster but very reliable.
I have a Samsung 830 250 gig SSD in my gaming rig and love it, I would probably get her the same or maybe the 840 pro series.

I would appreciate it if you guys could steer me in the right direction. If the HD crapped out, that would be a very bad thing.

Thanks
Ken
 
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Short answer is yes.

SSD's are not meant to be used for a high volume of writes. An SSD used in this way is most effective as a cache drive paired with an HDD. That way even if you have an unexpected failure of the SSD which you have a high likelihood of experiencing in this case, the data is still stored on the HDD.

The future of SSD's is caching not as primary storage. The manufacturers know this and anyone who tells you otherwise is just riding the hype of retailers.

Good Luck
 
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http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269-5.html

PNY Prevail Elite: "This product's biggest differentiator, and the only reason we'd consider paying $60 more for it than Mushkin's Enhanced Chronos Deluxe, is that it employs eMLC flash rated for 10,000 program/erase cycles. That's substantially more than the 3,000- and 5,000-cycle drives it competes against. PNY backs the longevity of its NAND with a five-year warranty, too."

Edit - that's ~200 years of writing 30GB/day every day.

May be worth a look since it can take more wear and tear. Still need daily (or more) backups if you run your own store :)
 
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Always doing backups, but a HD failure would suck to get everything back up and running.

If a SSD is not a good idea what conventional HD is the fastest these days. Size wise 500-750gig is plenty, maybe the WD black series 6gig/second hd?
 
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They make hybrid HDD's that feature a SSD cache built in, I am not sure how great they are in performance, you could also go for a WD Velociraptor if you are looking for higher speed, although I am not sure what kind of warranties they provide with those.
 
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...You're mostly wrong. The only correct portion is this "The future of SSD's is [not] primary storage."

They aren't being sold as that. They're best used as drives for the OS and programs, with important data, as always, stored through redundancies. As for what you were talking about in the first paragraph, well... that was true for early SSDs with un-matured controllers. SSDs now are EQUALLY reliable with hard drives.
 
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According to what your specs are above, using an SSD for the operating system and programs (MS-Office & Image Editing Software). Use a WD Black drive for the data (move the documents, images, downloads, etc to the hard drive). Even the fastest internet connections out there aren't going to produce more than 6GB/s transfer rates to the hard drive. Launching the OS and programs will benefit greatly from the SSD...and you won't be writing 30 gig's a day to it.

Depending upon the programs she is using - you will probably only need a 120GB SSD, and maybe a 2TB HDD. By reducing the SSD size, you could get both drives for $250-$300....where a 250GB SDD is around $200-$250.
 
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Yes and NO.

Yes, because you handle a lot of information, you may want to do it fast.

No, because you are consuming faster the life time of that SSD with such amount of data.

but you can't move data faster than your internet connection, some editing saving from time to time.. since my humble point of view, you are not going to see any improvement in your work just for using a SSD rather than HDD, not for that kind of work that you are describing.
 
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A quality SSD will last as long as a hard drive when writing ~30GB of data a day. Especially if you get a larger ( 256GB ) drive and keep about half of the drive free.

Interesting read.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20070643-1/storage-talk-understanding-your-solid-state-drive/

" So how long is long? To help users estimate how long an SSD will last, SSD vendors such as OCZ have come up with formula: a drive's life span equals its capacity multiplied by its write endurance rating, divided by the average daily writes. For example, the 120GB Vertex 3 SSD has a write endurance rating of 3,000 cycles. If you write 50GB on the drive daily, the total number of days the drive will last before becoming unreliable is: (120 x 3,000)/50 = 7,200 days, which is about 20 years. If you write an average of 100GB a day, the drive would last about 10 years. "
 
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I agree that SSD technology has improved in the actual "length of service" you can expect from the drive. If you have 200GB of MP3 files...loading them on an SSD drive won't get them to play any faster.

SSD's are going for close to $1.00 per GB, a hard drive goes for $0.05 per GB (estimated)...so from a cost perspective, the SSD is almost twenty times more expensive for storage.

Performance wise, the SSD outperforms the HDD approximately 5-10 times the speed, depending upon the application.

Since your internet speed isn't bottlenecked by your hard drive - even at SATA II, why pay 20 times the price for storage? You will never upload or download a file faster on the internet by using a SSD.

**If Google gives us all 1GB connections like Kansas City....it might be possible then....
 
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So many thoughts and opinions, Thanks a bunch, so much to consider with all these great replies.
It would seems that I would be ok with a SSD because I dont keep any part of any comp for more then 6 years max
Then I need to consider that some have said I wont really notice a speed difference in the work she does, btw she uses Microsoft excel, Bimp, Photoscape.
Newegg is running a special for the Samsung 840 250gig SSD for $150, might be worth considering
 
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Sorry, but I have to disagree.

Members at Xtreme Systems purchase SSDs and write test data to them 24/7 until they fail.

Here's a link showing a 256GB Samsung 830 that had 6,294TB of data written to it before it failed: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm&p=5157050&viewfull=1#post5157050

Here's a link showing a 40GB Kingston SSDNow that has 1,517TB of data written to it and has not failed yet: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm&p=5166980&viewfull=1#post5166980

Here's a link showing a Samsung 840 that had 432TB written to it before it died:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm&p=5163560&viewfull=1#post5163560

The thread has 219 pages and over 5,400 posts, testing many models of SSDs.

6,294TB equals 6,294,000GB. So if the OP's wife wrote 30GB a day using the same Samsung 830 for her web portal then it would last 209,800 days or 574.79 years.

The Kingston SSDNow would last 138.53 years.

The Samsung 840 would last 39.45 years.
 
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The Samsung 840 250GB SSD will provide a big boost in performance for Excel, Bimp and Photoscape (load times - and with excel, sorting data, formatting, deleting, etc...will all go faster). Upload/download times from the net won't be faster, and in most cases, unless the spreadsheet is huge (>100MB???), I would doubt the loading time of the spreadsheet would be faster.

That is a good buy on the SSD - I paid $75 more for mine.

I wasn't trying to discourage the use of an SSD - they improve performance of a PC greatly. I was just trying to set reasonable expectations, and trying to offer a solution that would work well for you.
 
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^^^ And I appreciate your opinion, i value everyone's opinion, thats why I always come here when I need a quality think tank. more opinions equals more facets to the issue on hand to view for a wiser decision in the end 😉
 
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Dereck47 is the ONLY one here to post some actual research on SSD longevity. I was about to say the same thing. SSDs are perfectly fine for ALL your storage needs (and should be at least as reliable as HDDs even in enterprise situations- particularly if you get an SLC drive), IF you don't mind paying for it of course.
 
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I have a friend who spent almost $8,000 on a computer build (he didn't ask my opinion before he ordered it). Bought top of the line everything. The rig is unbelievably fast.

His biggest complaint? Farmville2 was still slow. LMAO. I could have told him that he could have built a $400-500 computer that would have played that game equally as fast.

I can remember being laughed at in 1992 for getting 4MB (that is MB not GB) of RAM. Everyone stated that 4MB would never be used....and my CD-ROM was just a toy.

Computers are constantly evolving. SSDs, other than costs, are virtually equally reliable as compared to a hard drive. I wouldn't dream of using any storage device that is over 5-6 years old to store "mission critical" data...be it SSD or HDD.
 
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$8K to play farmville, ROFLMAO! now thats funny.
Usually every 2-3 years I go with a total new rebuild. I just finished my gaming rig last week.
P8Z77-v deluxe mobo w/ i5-3570K oc'd around 4.3g w/ H60 corsair water cooler
16 gigs 1600 Jskill f3 sniper ram, Samsung 830 250g SSD, Evga gtx 580 superclocked corsair TX750 v2 ps
 
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Although it really isn't necessary I suggest taking a look at an enterprise level solid state drive instead of a consumer oriented drive. Specifically, I suggest the Intel DC S3700 enterprise ssd. Intel guarantees 2,000GB worth of writes per day for 5 years which is actually overkill for you. Performance is extremely consistent over time and very stable. Since it is an enterprise level ssd the price is higher.

I maintain the ssd database listed at the very top of this forum section but the database does not include enterprise level drives. I do have other databases I maintain.

Here is the link to this month's database of hardware reviews:

http://www.johnnylucky.org/reviews/index.html

Scroll down to the Data Storage/SSD section and then follow the links to 3 recently published technical reviews of the Inel DC S3700.

The ssd was released several months ago and there are more reviews. They are listed in the 2012 hardware review archives. Here is the link:

http://www.johnnylucky.org/reviews/2012-pc-hardware-reviews.html

And now a word about ssd caching. Here is a copy of my standard comment that I posted to numerous threads about ssd caching several years ago:

"There is a lot of misunderstanding about caching. Intel developed caching for clients and businesses that could not afford a large capacity ssd. Back when the concept was on the drawing board, Intel hoped clients and businesses would purchase a small 10Gb or 20GB for about $100.00. Microsoft Windows 7 and all software applications would remain on hard disk drives. The cache only produced a minor boost in performance. Intel hoped that once clients saw the slight performance boost they might be inclined to purchase a larger ssd.

Intel also researched the size of the cache. Intel determined that a 60GB ssd was the point where it made no sense to use the ssd as a cache for a hard drive. Instead if you have a 60GB or larger capacity ssd, then Windows 7 and software applications should be installed on the ssd to take full advantage of the ssd capabilities.

Since you are thinking of purchasing a large capacity ssd, it makes more sense to install Windows 7 and your software applications on the ssd. The ssd performance boost is much higher than the hard disk drive performance increase."

In addition to the comments I repeatedly posted, there was an additional comment posted by Christian Wood an official Intel representative:

"Will the Intel SRT (Smart Response Technology) give you a performance boost with a smaller SSD? yes it will. With that performance increase reach the level of a SSD as a boot drive? no it won't."

As for the future, at the end of the year you will start seeing the new SATA Express standard developed by the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) being implemented. It is the first step in the migration from standard consumer ssd's to affordable consumer oriented PCIe solid state drives.

RoninTexas - My first pc was a genuine IBM that I bought in December 1984. It came with 256K of memory. I upgraded to 512K and eventually to 640K. PC Magazine which was published by Ziff Davis back then quoted Bill Gates as saying 640K was all the memory we would ever need.
 
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