If you don't have a SSD, get one.

erifdekciw said:
I thought I knew all about computer technology, but I have no idea how these work. I know what they are, but when i look at them they look like graphics cards and how they plug into pci slots.
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There are some that do plug in to a PCI slot, but others (and most common) you can hook up just like any other hard drive using an SATA connector and mount in a typical hard drive mount.

How do these work exactly? Is it like plugging in a USB drive and using that as extra memory to make your computer a little faster? Is that the general idea behind it?
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They are basically RAM on a board that plugs in and can be used to store information just like a hard drive. Unlike typical ram, when it turns off the data is not lost. Although they do slowly break down, and are not able to store information in certain sectors eventually. However lifetime of most drives should be in at least the 5 year range.

Also I noticed that they have pretty..weak.. storage capacity so I am guessing these things aren't ment to store anything? And if they are ment to store things, are the things you store on it the only things that will load faster?
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You can store things on them, but overall they are pretty expensive. Most people use them to boot their OS off of, also any programs you may want to run. A 60 GB or 120 GB SSD will get the job done. All your other stuff (data, files, music, movies, etc..) you'd leave on a secondary hard drive, one that is more typical (platter based). Overall will give you a very large boost of speed.
 


erifdekciw said:
I thought I knew all about computer technology, but I have no idea how these work. I know what they are, but when i look at them they look like graphics cards and how they plug into pci slots.

How do these work exactly? Is it like plugging in a USB drive and using that as extra memory to make your computer a little faster? Is that the general idea behind it?

Also I noticed that they have pretty..weak.. storage capacity so I am guessing these things aren't ment to store anything? And if they are ment to store things, are the things you store on it the only things that will load faster?
Click to expand...

They use regular sata connections, just like a normal hard drive and they are 2.5 inch, the size of a laptop drive. They are flash memory, like usb drives, so that means no moving parts and they stay cool. If you want to learn about how they actually go about reading/writing data, I'm sure there's a ton of articles out there.

And right now they are mainly used as boot devices, which means you install your OS to it and then use another drive for storage of videos, pictures, music, etc... All of your software gets installed to the SSD, so things like Photoshop, Chrome, etc, all load fast. Photoshop loads in under two seconds after a cold boot, which takes 12 seconds.
 
dmnEPC said:
Other than the size any other specs to look out for w/ these drives?
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The newer, the better. Some of the older drives from a few years ago aren't nearly as efficient as the new ones. The new ones can easily last twenty years under normal usage, whereas the old ones had a much shorter lifespan. And there's no reason to not get a SATA III drive now. Even if your motherboard doesn't support it, your next one will.

Also, another key point about SSD is that when they fail, it's not nearly as bad as when a mechanical drive fails. Mechanical drives fail all at once and you're fucked... SSD's simply start losing available space over a long period of time.
 
dmnEPC said:
Other than the size any other specs to look out for w/ these drives?
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Read write speeds, this is often a big factor in the price of a drive. Also if your computer can't handle SATA III then don't buy a SATA III drive, get an SATA II drive.

Also look through reviews about firmware, OCZ has been notorious of lately of having old firmware on their drives, and if you use it as a windows boot you can't update the firmware which is retarded.
 
Yeah...suppose your right. Can you say bottleneck?

26993bottle.jpg
 
Got a 64GB SSD for just the OS and quick access programs. Going to need to upgrade soon. Have a 1TB for storage where I install and save most programs.
 
Dwight Schrute said:
Who needs to DL pr0n when there's all the free tube sites?
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That's what I used to think, until I downloaded a hi-def porn vid ... I can see the single strand of public hair on her labia, and pimples on her ass.

It was never the same again.
 
Yea boot speed is amazing with an ssd. From power button to windows desktop is about 8 seconds or so. Got a TB hdd for my pr0n and games and any big software like photoshoop.
 
subigo said:
Also, another key point about SSD is that when they fail, it's not nearly as bad as when a mechanical drive fails. Mechanical drives fail all at once and you're fucked... SSD's simply start losing available space over a long period of time.
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Not true, I've had 2 fail in quick succession (Kingston and OCZ3) about a month after buying. In both cases the mobo stopped finding the SSD on boot and all data was lost.
 
The ideal setup for a workhorse PC (for me what I'm running) is this:

SSD to boot the os, in my case ubuntu 11. Install all of the bloatish, large software on the SSD. I even made sure I installed mozilla on my SSD because I tend to have a million tabs open and feel that it helps. I also install any video software or photo editing software on it. On a 320 gig SD HD, with all of that installed including the OS, it is barely at 20% capacity. Leaves room for any future bloatware I want to install.

HD2 is then reserved for the libraries. Pictures, home movies, documents and anything where a lot of data is involved, and also a lot of r/w action is involved.

This satisfies two concepts: making sure that the SSD handles the program that I want to run quick, and leaving the traditional HD to be the storage device.

+1 to my colleague who has his SSD's in a raid configuration. If I were setting up a new machine I would do that with the latest components and probably see extremly fast boot times...esp with Linux!

SSDs are good, they are not going anywhere, and eventually will replace other HDs.
 
To the tech people who know this better - could you replace a laptop HD with a SSD ?
Also would you need to get drivers etc or how would this work ?
 
DreamMachine said:
Not true, I've had 2 fail in quick succession (Kingston and OCZ3) about a month after buying. In both cases the mobo stopped finding the SSD on boot and all data was lost.
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+1 on this.

Got a on sale Crucial one - dead in a few weeks.

Switched to Intel: great, no problems.
 
shawnhag said:
+1 to my colleague who has his SSD's in a raid configuration. If I were setting up a new machine I would do that with the latest components and probably see extremly fast boot times...esp with Linux!
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Not so fast. First make sure your SSD can support TRIM in a RAID config.
 
No doubt SSD's can be a huge improvement but it's not perfect yet. Alot of chatter about reliability, anandtech.com has a recent review on some of the latest ssd drives and the safe bet was the Intel drives.
 
subigo said:
The newer, the better. Some of the older drives from a few years ago aren't nearly as efficient as the new ones. The new ones can easily last twenty years under normal usage, whereas the old ones had a much shorter lifespan. And there's no reason to not get a SATA III drive now. Even if your motherboard doesn't support it, your next one will.

Also, another key point about SSD is that when they fail, it's not nearly as bad as when a mechanical drive fails. Mechanical drives fail all at once and you're fucked... SSD's simply start losing available space over a long period of time.
Click to expand...

SSDs also have a maximum number of times each block can be written to, so you need to watch for that. Drive health with SSDs is an issue for boot drives since virtual memory does a lot of writes.
 
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