Windows 7: Confused about SSD

Hello everyone,

Now... I have a few questions in relation to the Solid State Drive.



1. Does it replace the HDD completely?
2. I have 600GB space on my current HDD. I cannot even find an SSD that size. The most I've seen is around 250-300GB and they can be $1,000+. Surely it isn't worth spending that much money? An example, this Solid State Drive. That's only 256GB!!
3. Is it really worth the switch performance rise?

The best thing to do is get an SSD for your OS and applications and put the rest of your data on your SSD.

IT1,
No the SSD doesn't replace these large HDD's yet, as the expense for them is prohibitive. But what they do outstandingly well is when you place the OS and important software on them and then commit all your data and none essential software onto the HDD then back up both of these to an additional HDD or maybe a cloud based BU solution then you have a truly transformational change in speed.

Most people with an SSD use 2 hard drives. the SSD for the OS and apps, and a regular HDD for data and storage. When people have only 1 hard drive slot in a laptop, they learn to live with less space and store things on external hard drives.

They do make a big performance boost, but they aren't the be-all end all. If you are quite happy with your current performance, I wouldn't necessarily make the switch.

Thanks everyone. That has helped a lot.
It has cleared up my confusion.

If I may add... The SSD itself makes a huge difference!

Crucial, for instance, advertise a drive with 600mbps throughput... externally (through the USB interface). It's under 500mbps when used internally, through the SATA interface. But it's not that expensive.

For more money, a top of the range Integral or Samsung push more data using SATA.

You asked if it was "worth" it... well... Try this... Time how long it takes to fully boot your machine... How long it takes to start, say, A Word document. Now... Try to work out how much time you're waiting on your machine to do this each day and multiply that by the number of days a month you work. When I did it, I reckoned I was waiting for around 3 hours a month.

I charge my time out at £75 (GBP) an hour... That would be around $100?

So... $300 a month just WAITING on a spinning disk.

My laptop (now 3 years old bless it) starts and is ready to use in under a minute... Word takes 2.5 seconds to start...

A top line Samsung is probably 1 months savings right... So for the first year... An SSD saves me... 11 x $300.... $3300 x lifetime of SSD... 3 years say? $9,900!!!

Ok... I use my pc A LOT... The savings are definitely worth it!

Discuss...

Yes, exactly.
That's a common fallacy to believe in....turning seconds into dollars. There are a lot of assumptions and liberties taken to do so. You can't accurately turn it into cost savings, but what you can say is that an SSD makes a noticeable difference in everyday usage of a computer. Not just in some areas, but all usage. For example, a new video card may help in gaming, but with all other usage, it has no real bearing. Added memory may only help when you're doing something that requires more than you previously had. A new processor is great for intensive work, but hardly makes a difference in run-of-the-mill tasks. Yet an SSD boots faster, loads ALL apps faster, makes the system more responsive, and in laptops, it can increase battery life.