QOTD: Have You Bought An SSD Yet?

[nebun]

yes, i have 4x16gb raided for performance. i get about 520mb/s read and about 300mb/s writes. it's fast

 

[SpadeM]

I chose something in "between". I got a gigabte i-ram drive loaded with 4GB of memory from an old build. It maxes out the SATA port at 1.5Gbs speeds and for windows xp it does the job quite nicely.

 

[Guest]

The price vs. storage equation is not the same for all applications. I went with a 32 gig OCZ Vetex SSD in my laptop because for my OS, applications, some music and documents I really didn't need any more space than that. At about $100 it wasn't an expensive upgrade and there is a very noticeable performance boost in general day to day tasks. On the other hand, I kept a big HDD RAID in my desktop system because that is where I store all my movies, tv shows (it has a tv tuner card so I use it like a TiVo which takes up tons of drive space), pictures and music. Both machines are on a gigabit LAN so I can easily and quickly transfer files from one to the other when I need them and the laptop automatically backs up to the desktop every night so I can take advantage of the redundancy of the RAID.

When I got my Mom a new notebook, I went with an SSD in that. For someone who only really uses Office and goes online, big storage is not an issue but she really notices the fast boot, shut-down, and application launching. The SSD makes her low-spec, long battery life, very light laptop perform day-to-day tasks much faster than more expensive, noisier, more power hungry, heavier, performance books.

I believe SSDs may be one of the first "cutting-edge" technologies to come around in a long time that will benefit casual users sooner and more noticeably than power users.

 

[Guest]

Just bought a 80G Intel X-25M. I use to have three Raptors in a RAID 0 configuration so when I went to a single VelociRaptor I missed the speed.

 

[xizel]

id prefer a velociraptor before getting ssd they are just to expensive

 

[killmenow]

No, not yet, running 150 V-Raptor and 500G Seagate 7200.11.
Will replace raptor with ssd oneday, 60G for Win7 should be OK.
Bigger the drive, the crap you have to backup.
Will allways run at lease 2 drives in a system, no question.
VMware should love SSD's.

 

[haze4peace]

I will buy one with my next computer purchase, which will be sometime this year. I'll use it as a boot drive, then have a normal hdd (or two) for storage

 

[lonewarder]

I'll give up my Raptor when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

 

[lonewarder]

I'll give up my Raptor when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

 

[ratn9ne]

nope. Too many firmware performance bugs.

 

[themagicnumber]

Right now $120 buys you a pretty good (Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, WD Caviar Black, etc.) 1TB standard hard drive. Same $120 gets you a pretty good (OCZ Vertez, Patriot Warp II, etc.) 32GB SSD. Now, as long as I can remember, something in the $100-$120 range was what you paid for a pretty good hard drive, so lets assume that this remains the price point companies are trying to hit for mainstream consumers.

According to Kryder's law (a formulation similar to Moore's law hypothesized by Mark Kryder, PhD from Cal Tech and founder of Carnegie Melon University's Data Storage Systems Center) the data capacity of a given magnetic drive doubles every 12 months. If that trend holds true for SSDs, they should hit the 1TB mark at about $100+ in about 5 years.

Now, another version of Moore's law says that RAM capacity doubles every 18 months, basically in sync with processor transistor count. If we say that SSD technology is more similar to RAM technology, that would mean the 1TB mark is 7.5 years away.

Split the difference and its 6 years, 3 months. That's a long time to wait. Furthermore, if we assume HDD capacity will be growing at the same rate it has been since the 1950's those 1TB SSDs will be competing against HDDs with over 75TB capacity.

Alternative Scenario: The WD VelociRaptor currently has a max capacity of 300GB at a cost of about $220. Assuming that 300GB is a reasonable level of storage that most people will be willing to accept in order for a significant performance boost than we need only calculate when SSDs will reach the 300GB for $220 (or 150GB for $180 if we look at the previous generation) level. At those price points, current SSDs offer 128GB and 64GB storage respectively. Therefore, a reasonable prediction would be that SSDs will reach current high-performance HDD capacities and prices in 18 to 23 months.

Therefore, I would suggest that purchasers look at SSDs being competition for current high performance HDDs like the VelociRaptor, not mass storage 7200rpm drives. SSDs will most likely never replace those HDDs. Remember, most companies still use tape drives for large data storage or backup and HDDs, rather than replacing tape, have become a complementary technology. SSDs will most likely go the same route, supplementing HDDs and replacing them in certain applications but not spelling the complete end of spinning platters by any means.

 

[kiang]

I'm buying a new system this fall, but if prices don't change dramatically, I won't buy one.

currently the cheapest decent model is the 30GB OCZ Core V2, and that one's €110 ($142). I don't mind a small SSD, if it's enough for windows to boot from I'm satisfied, but I don't want to pay more than €75 for just a boot-disk.

 

[Guest]

Am on the brink of getting an OCZ Vertex. Just a 30 GB drive to hold my OS and programmes, while data will remain on regular drives. IMO the Vertex currently provides a pretty reasonable cost/performance ratio, and by performance I am not just referring to sequential read/write but random I/O where some SSD'd do REALLY poorly

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Too expensive, not really practical, poor value for the cost per gigabyte.
I have many concerns about SSD's but just to name a few:
1. The lifespan issues - you can cnly read and write a limited number of times to a flash drive and failure rates come into play.

2. Still a new technology for PC storage and wouldn't want to lose important data.

3. No info on SSD's are compatible with overclocked CPUs, FSBs, etc... read/write errors more frequent?

4. Small storage for photo/video editing use.

 

[alexander]

I haven't bought one yet but will probably buy a 30 or 60 GB OCZ Vertex. Sure, they are a bit pricey but they are not ment to store ALL your terrabytes of data, so they can't really be compared to normal hard drives (as some do here). Having one for the OS and applications and one normal big drive for data would work perfectly for me. And about the price: they are a lot less pricey now than for a couple of years ago, and also much better.

/Alex

 

[avericia]

NO. I am waiting for NTFS and the better management of deleting files so they don't degrade in performance so much worse then normal hard drives.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

Not planning on aquiring any ssd at any point soon.
I'd rather have one of the drives using ddr modules

 

[Guest]

I am going to get both an 120 GB SSD (or two 64 GB in raid 0) and a 2 TB HDD soon. The former will be the system disk and the latter will store audio/video media files. I see no clash between the two techologies, they just excel at different things.

 

[DjEaZy]

... tha price iz too salty... few years and maybe...

 

[Tattysnuc]

Waiting for the price to come down, and the write performance to go up.

Got 2x300gb velociraptors, and they're more than fast enough at the moment.

 

[tharnjaggar]

Yes. I bought OCZ Vertex 250Gb for 607€.
Expensive gigabytes... but well worth it!

 

[apache_lives]

why the hard choices?!!? PERFORMANCE = SSD, STORAGE = NORMAL HDD

im eyeing off 2xIntel SSD (X25M's) in RAID0 for my next HDD setup

 

[apache_lives]

[citation][nom]HundredIslandsBoy[/nom]Too expensive, not really practical, poor value for the cost per gigabyte.I have many concerns about SSD's but just to name a few:1. The lifespan issues - you can cnly read and write a limited number of times to a flash drive and failure rates come into play.2. Still a new technology for PC storage and wouldn't want to lose important data.3. No info on SSD's are compatible with overclocked CPUs, FSBs, etc... read/write errors more frequent?4. Small storage for photo/video editing use.[/citation]

Are you stupid enough to trust any single HDD with all your important data?

 

[nigelf]

Yes. The Momentus 7200.2 200GB in my laptop died. Replaced it with a 128GB MLC G.Skill titan drive. Works a charm

 

[ceteras]

Everybody wants to wait for the prices to come down, but they will come down only as the demand rises, so early adopters have to make this sacrifice.
If the SSD vendors would provide some price cuts for upgrades to these early adopters, that would be great (coupons or something would do it).