Anyone have experience with SSDs?

[Stavros]

I'm mulling over the possibility of getting an SSD for installing my OS and some games on. I would prefer something with multiple hundred Gig space. Are the affordable or would I have to shell out some money for a 200+ Gig SSD?

[ayu]

I have an 80 GB one that went for about 190 Euro.
There are cheaper ones now since the price keeps falling, but it's still very expensive.

But believe me, it's worth it
It's soooooo much faster.

[bad_brain]

hm, with multiple hundred GBs it's still too expensive imo. there are pretty cheap big ones, but when you look at the specs it's not worth it because they use outdated and slow controllers (compared to the up to date models)...I mean, if you get a SSD you want the max speed, right?
I have looked around for SSDs too because I am planning to get one in the near future, and for a decent 120GB one with up to date controllers you have to pay around 250-300 bucks.

the one I have an eye on at the moment is the OCZ "revo drive" series:
http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodr ... s-ssd.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
80GB go for about 230 Euro here, which is enough for the OS and 3-4 games. the price is actually pretty cheap when you look at the speccs:

Read: Up to 540 MB/s
Write: Up to 450 MB/s

P.S. guys, fix your avatars...

[ayu]

P.S. guys, fix your avatars...

haha yeah I will fix it tonight ... it got lost during the move to the new server

[floodhound2]

The SSD disk that you mention are great and all but there are some draw backs.

#1 expensive. You could raid 2 cheaper hard disk and be as fast as one SSD. Raid is my little secret that will make a PC scream.

#2 file structure. The SSD is not an efficient storing device, at least not yet. The basics is that a entire row in memory will have to be filled where contrast to a regular HDD just one bit can be placed anywhere on the disk. This could add up meaning that your 200gigs wont store the same as a normal 200gig HDD.

#3 reliability. Regular HDD are proven to be reliable.


Hope this helps.

[lilrofl]

I have a 128 GB SSD on my desktop, i find it plenty of room for games (I don't really play more then 2 or 3 at a time) and my netbook has 2 SSD's an 8 GB OS drive and a 24 GB data drive

I've been using them for over 3 years now with no failure, That's reliable enough for me to not regret the purchase, and the tech has evolved to be dozens of percent better then it was in 2008.

Yes RAID can compete with speed, but SSDs are silent, low power usage fast data retrieval and never fragmented.

You'll read a lot of mixed reviews about solid states, a lot of that information is not accurate any longer. The multiple read/write failure ate 100,000 read writes is not an accurate figure, and the absolute superiority of SLC drives over MLC drives is not such a drastic gap these days. I have to run, but I love my SSD; if I ever get my RAID 5 situation up and running again in my desktop, I'll still use a small SSD for an OS drive.

[Stavros]

This is pretty much what I was thinking. After looking I'm going to let SSDs get better/more efficient/cheaper before I buy. I like to install all my games on my fastest disk and have everything else not dependent on load times on a slower larger storage drive. I have enough that 180 GB is used on my Raptor although there are some that need to be uninstalled. Price was the main motivating factor, but hearing floody say they don't store efficiently just added to my wanting to wait. I never paid attention to SSD technology before, but in the next year or two I'll be paying attention. Hopefully they'll advance sufficiently in that time frame.

[lonewolf]

I have been looking ssd's for some time. Still a little too expensive for the amount of storage but it is getting better. I also wonder how well they handle the drop test considering I trashed two drives that way so far.

[lilrofl]

I also wonder how well they handle the drop test considering I trashed two drives that way so far.

YMMV but In my experience they handle a drop the same as other solid state media ie: thumb or pen drives. I'm not very careful with my netbook, and it's survived for several years now

[bad_brain]

well, SSDs can handle drops definitely much better than regular HDDs, simply because there are no moving parts inside. when dropping a spinning HDD the read/write head touches the disk surface, and that's it: congrats to your new doorstop.

to kill a SSD by dropping it a circuit board must break...

[lonewolf]

I sorta thought that they would. I might have to get one in the future to see how well it works.

[DNR]

you want a portable external HDD, they are cheap, up to 1tb

DNR