Mechanical Hard Drives or SSD's

[cigarjohn]

So, 10k mechanical dirves or SSD's.

Which will be better in gaming and other software programs?

For gaming, will the SSD make a bigger difference over the 10k mechanical drive? Will I notice the difference?


Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Peace.

 

[sminlal]

Neither type of drive will make much difference for most games once they've been loaded and are running. It's only games that have to load scenes or characters from disk as they're running that may benefit from a faster drive.

For those kinds of games, SSDs will be faster hands down. And SSDs will also start up any game (or any other program) much faster than a hard drive.

 

[dEAne]

For an SSD is faster and expensive not quite so simple to implement.
The 10K is also faster (but SSD is much faster) it is simple to install than SSD.

 

[house70]

It comes down to ease of use and budget. SSD do not need defragmenting, that would make their performance worse. They are better for laptops or netbooks, as they are shock-resistant. HDDs are cheaper and their maintenance is pretty much standard.

 

[Plumble]

If budget allows, SSD. Mechanical drives can't compete with small file loads.

 

[ahthurungnone]

I just installed an SSD on a new build last week and, in reality, I wasn't that impressed. Not only do you give up Gigs of capacity with an SSD, but the performance increase is so minute (compared to a 10,000 RPM HD) that few can really tell the difference. I'm convinced now that SSD's are just fueled by marketing and those who are trying to measure their "e-pen."

Don't forget, you also must consider that SSD's rely upon constant electrical current to keep memory in-tack, and they have limited writes before failure, and you can never recover lost data off an SSD because the data is merely electronic 1's and 0's. Data is not written to a "platter" that could, if needed, be disassembled and recovered as the data on a standard hard drive is "scribed" onto the platter. This risk alone is very concerning for anyone with data they value.

 

[sminlal]

I just installed an SSD on a new build last week and, in reality, I wasn't that impressed. Not only do you give up Gigs of capacity with an SSD, but the performance increase is so minute (compared to a 10,000 RPM HD) that few can really tell the difference.

What SSD did you install? There are fast SSDs and slow SSDs, and of course if you compare the fastest hard drive to the slowest SSD then you're not going to see as much of an improvement as a typical user.

I installed an Intel 160GB G2 drive and found boot times and program startup times to be way, way faster than with a hard drive. But you can't expect any improvement after a program has started unless the program is accessing files on the SDD.


> Don't forget, you also must consider that SSD's rely upon constant electrical current to keep memory in-tack

No, they don't. Otherwise they wouldn't remember anything when you turned your computer off and unplugged it. They only require power when being used, just like a hard drive does - and they need a LOT less power than a hard drive, which is why they work so well in laptops.


> they have limited writes before failure

This is true, but in most cases it's not as big an issue as a lot of people fear. My Intel SSD is rated to last "at least" 5 years if I write 20GBytes to it EVERY DAY. In heavy use as my Windows 7 OS drive with about 30GB of programs installed and my profile located on the SSD I've found that I'm averaging about 5GB of writes every day. That means the drive should last around 20 years - but of course it will be obsolete long before then.


> Data is not written to a "platter" that could, if needed, be disassembled and recovered

First of all, SSDs are a LOT less likely to fail than hard drives. Secondly, do you have any idea how expensive it is to recover data by disassembling a drive? You're talking upwards of $1000. The answer to data recovery is to do backups, not rely on being able to recover data from a dead drive - particularly when even hard drives can and do fail in ways that make data recovery impossible.

 

[cigarjohn]

Thank you guys for giving me great advice and options.

I think I'll get a Crucial C300 128 gb drive, hook it to sata III and use it as my system drive boot up plus install Microsoft Office 2010 on it.

And I guess I'll purchase a LSI Raid Controller Card to hook up two 600 gb 10k VelociRaptors on a Raid 0 configuration. I'm opting for the Raid card since the Rampage III Extreme only has two onboard SATA III connectors and I'll need at least three of them for all three of my drives. Now the LSI 9261-8i will accomadate SATA III drives and SSD's too. But I'd rather use the Windows 7 Trim instead of using the Garbage Collector on the SSD's.

Another question, will I get more reliable and better performance on a Raid card than my mobo's Raid? I know the Raid card has a built in cpu.

Any comments are always appreciated.

Peace.

 

[lsume]

I just installed an SSD on a new build last week and, in reality, I wasn't that impressed. Not only do you give up Gigs of capacity with an SSD, but the performance increase is so minute (compared to a 10,000 RPM HD) that few can really tell the difference. I'm convinced now that SSD's are just fueled by marketing and those who are trying to measure their "e-pen."

Don't forget, you also must consider that SSD's rely upon constant electrical current to keep memory in-tack, and they have limited writes before failure, and you can never recover lost data off an SSD because the data is merely electronic 1's and 0's. Data is not written to a "platter" that could, if needed, be disassembled and recovered as the data on a standard hard drive is "scribed" onto the platter. This risk alone is very concerning for anyone with data they value.

 

[lsume]

I have worked on and with computers for over 30 years. I can't remember how many times I have had a blow hard drive and then had to reinstall all of my software. My way of looking at SSD vs HDD is that anything mechanical will wear out. For example, I purchased a high end desktop about 3.5 yeas ago with high end graphics and two 500 gig HDD's. when the main HDD went out I told the shop to install an SSD. The builders try and cut costs everywhere they can. Consequently people buy based on the capacity of the drive and have no idea about the quality. I am a retired mechanical engineer and I have seen many examples of timed failure. I think in the long run you will be happy that you went with the SSD.