QOTD: Have You Bought An SSD Yet?

[kittle]

not yet.
Too many conflicting reviews on them.
once the read AND write speeds are fast, and fast over a long peroid of time, then I'll look into upgrading.

I will miss the HD chatter though ... no way to tell if something is writing to the disk when it should not be.

 

[WyomingKnott]

No. Mostly because of the expected lower lifetime, compared to hard drives. My "no" used to also be because the write rates were inferior to rotating platters, but not the write.

And I do spend time thinking about disks. I bought (at surplus) an 8-drive rack-mounted raid array with Ultra-SCSI320 interface to play with RAID levels. (the SCSI interface was so that I could use a long cable; I do this playing at home and that sucker is loud.) Aside from the expense, right now doing anything to lower reliability or lifetime is just not for me.

When I do go to SSDs, it will probably be OS and apps on the SSD, with data on platters for high capacity and swap file on platters so as not to contribute to the gradual demise of the SSD.

And finally, a question. Flash wears out. RAM is ephemeral. Why not put a bunch of RAM in a box with a hard drive and a battery. Use the RAM as a disk. If power is lost, copy it all to the hard drive so nothing is lost, then re-load it (I know, there would be a long delay there) when power comes back.

 

[ph3412b07]

Not yet. Key word, yet. I'll get a Intel X25 series ssd once the price goes down more, and when I decide to update all of my storage devices.

 

[mavroxur]

[citation][nom]Airborne11b[/nom]I agree with last 2 posters. I use 7200 rpm hard drive, and I don't feel as if my load times on any games or programs are so slow to the point where it's an issue.[/citation]


You've apparently never run the same games on a machine with 2 x fast hard drives in a RAID 0 or any SSD for that matter.

 

[ktcrow]

SSDs do not have an expected lower lifetime than HDDs. That is a myth. It all depends how much you write to the drive. Even at MLC if you have an SSD greater than 32GB you can write 20GB each day for five years. That endurance goes up the larger the SSD you have. Anything different than that is Seagates attempt to misinform you. 'Forward Insight' published an analysis on that. Furthermore HDDs have a higher AFR due to 'shock and vibe'. SSDs have the higher tolerance there.
RAM SSDs I've seen are really expensive. I think Texas Memory's drives are like 10x the most expensive NAND SSD.

Maybe its just a matter of consumer education before these things sell more?

 

[benfea]

Hell no. Not only are they more expensive byte-for-byte, not only are the performance and power-consumption improvements not enough to make the higher cost acceptable, but they go bad after a certain number of writes. I figure by the time they address that last issue, the cost issue will have become less of a factor, so I'll wait until then.

 

[yoda8232]

Too expensive for most still.

 

[aknight]

No, I don't have a noticeable IO bottleneck in my current striped HD setup. Will buy one for next build boot drive but storage will remain on HD's unless much larger SSD's become available.

 

[TeKEffect]

I got my 300gb Velociraptor untill prices come down.... I want one for my PS3

 

[AngryClown]

NO.
I will never spend 50% of my build budget on a (too small) hard drive, to load my OS a few seconds faster.

 

[nebun]

[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]

my i7 920@3.8ghz and no issues at all. i have a 4ssd raid set up

 

[jwl3]

It's not so much the pricing anymore - for me, it's the seemingly endless confusion of how fast it really is. There's a lot of misinformation out there. I'm concerned that I have to jump through hoops to get it to work well with XP and Vista. (e.g. can't use it on the system drive, can use it on the system drive, never defrag, use it only for reads, not writes, bad for games, good for apps, continuous writes are slow, random writes are slow, etc.)

Reading all the SSD reviews on Newegg, each model and brand seems to be unique and some seem to get horrid reviews mixed with fantastic reviews. It's not a mature technology yet. I consider myself on the cutting edge of technology (most of us on THG are) but I'm going to wait until Microsoft updates their OS to take advantage of SSD's strong suits.

 

[Guest]

I have an Intel X-25M 80GB in my business Laptop.

I am waiting for prices to go down to purchase one 160GB for my private desktop Computer.

 

[Guest]

Not yet - though i am definitly looking at them.

My main use is for editing and creation 3D - video - Audio.

Latency is a big issue with spindle drives so i'm attracted to the SSD's.

The MLC's are being past off to the consumer - why when prices are down on the components - who knows, while the prefered SLC stay high priced.

Heat is also an issue - using portables in my usb sd flash drives - they damn sure heat up - more than i expected. And from what I've read SSD's in general get hot. Hotter than spindle drives.

Price a huge factor - 120 gig to 160 gig is an average need for the consumer for OS and apps. Especially with all the crap softwares added from the factory and increased app weights.

Just looking at the 120gig by OZC (ML) priced at around $350 while the Single layer 80 gig was $600 - way too much. Though i hear good about both versions - and why not... even the Multi Layerd version is faster than the fastest spindle... but they are new... When they are common place in the consumer market the ML's won't even be looked at - like the 5400rpm spindles are now with the exception probalby by manufactures of laptops dumping low end low priced components to save costs and pass them off on the consumer to upgrade.