SSD - Observations

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  1. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #11

    You are absolutely right. Dollar for Dollar, an SSD is the best investment if you are looking for performance. No upgrade of any other component in the system will yield a comparable result for the same amount of money.
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  2. Posts : 5,795
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
       #12

    I'm not sure what your goal was with this post, as most people understand what and why they would add an SSD or hold off for now.
    Victor S said:
    So for what I usually do, which is browse the net, watch Youtube, read/send e-mail, and play games, the difference hasn't added up to much more than a hill of beans.
    Again, I'm a bit confused. Why would you expect that an SSD would speed up your internet access? These things you mention are all mostly dependant on the speed of your internet connection, before any hardware specs get involved.
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  3. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #13

    @Deacon, I don't think the OP thought his internet would be faster, but based on how much people rave about SSD's, I can see some people making an incorrect assumption that the addition of an SSD would make a night and day difference on their PC and they would be absolutely blown away.

    For example, WHS absolutely loves his SSD's and seems to have 1 in every system he uses. So, for him, these devices have become a critical component to the point where it doesn't seem like he would own a system without an SSD. On the flip side, I have an SSD in my primary desktop and my laptop...and that is it. None of my other boxes have an SSD, none of my other boxes are slated for SSD upgrades. They are perfectly fine, right where they are. The desktop computer that I use at work, more than any other computer, has a Western Digital Caviar Blue spinner in it. I have 0 need whatsoever to have an SSD in this machine.

    I rarely hear somebody say after gettting an SSD that they regret it. But like this OP, I have heard people say that the change is there, but not as significant as they thought. Somewhere along the line, their expectations were set at too high a level.
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  4. Posts : 5,795
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
       #14

    pparks1 said:
    I rarely hear somebody say after gettting an SSD that they regret it. But like this OP, I have heard people say that the change is there, but not as significant as they thought. Somewhere along the line, their expectations were set at too high a level.
    The only regrets I've seen are from people who had their drives misaligned, or were expecting too much, as you said. There was a recent thread in which a person cut their boot time down from 54 seconds to 24 and was asking what was wrong...that the system wasn't "instant on". I'd be willing to bet someone put that idea in their head...that an SSD could give an instant on computer, and cure cancer at the same time.
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  5. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #15

    Well, take my desktop computer that I use at work for instance. It "rarely" get's rebooted. It's on a UPS to keep it up in the event power goes out. I have scripts and such which run overnight, so turning the computer off to save electricity isn't an option. So, from a bootup standpoint, an SSD in this computer would provide very few benefits.

    This desktop computer predominately provides local storage for me for virtual machines and such. I have about 1.5TB on this desktop. So, with my storage needs, SSD's provide no real value.

    The applications that I use the most on this particular computer include 1). notepad 2). google chrome 3) vmware client 4) vmware workstation 5). filezilla client 6). MS word 7). MS Exel. These particular apps are tiny, and load instantly from a spinner, so no advantage to an SSD here.

    So, my needs here, don't dictate an SSD as needed. It would really be an absolute waste of corporate dollars to put an SSD into this machine.
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  6. Posts : 5,795
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
       #16

    You seem to think I was disagreeing with you, or at least that's the assumption I'm making. I completely agree that an SSD isn't the magic bullet for every computer.
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  7. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #17

    For example, WHS absolutely loves his SSD's and seems to have 1 in every system he uses. So, for him, these devices have become a critical component to the point where it doesn't seem like he would own a system without an SSD
    You are absolutely right. No way in the world would I ever put the OS on a spinner again. But, of course, I know the limits of the SSDs and do not expect my internet to get any faster.
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #18

    DeaconFrost said:
    You seem to think I was disagreeing with you, or at least that's the assumption I'm making. I completely agree that an SSD isn't the magic bullet for every computer.
    Sorry, I wasn't clear. I knew that you weren't disagreeing with me. I was just using an additional post as reinforcement material to the point we were marking.

    whs said:
    You are absolutely right. No way in the world would I ever put the OS on a spinner again. But, of course, I know the limits of the SSDs and do not expect my internet to get any faster.
    And that is where we differ, although a fan of SSD's, I would in many cases stick with a spinner for the OS drive. I just built a new file server for home use and I used a spinner there for the OS.
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  9. Posts : 325
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #19

    pparks1 said:
    And that is where we differ, although a fan of SSD's, I would in many cases stick with a spinner for the OS drive. I just built a new file server for home use and I used a spinner there for the OS.
    Though I think we're in agreement about most of this, I'll always use a SSD for the OS from now on. But I keep my OS and app footprint small, and use image restores as my "system restores," housekeeping, and virus protection. I don't see my images as getting past about 20gb, so a 64gb SSD works well for that. Still room for a couple/few big games between restores.
    I already like the seconds saved with booting and imaging. And I image cold, not background.
    So I "feel" and see that. Ghost logs the time right there in front of me.
    I expect to get better load times with games, but haven't added any yet.
    whs mentioned virus scans, which I hardly ever do, but I ran AVG against the same folder on the SSD and on one of the WD Cav Blacks, 47 gb, 13,000 files.
    The WD took 64 seconds, the SSD 46 seconds. About a 28% gain.
    Now if you go back to the spinner from the WD, you can look at that as a 39% loss. Perception!
    There's no doubt the SSD is faster, but unless I'm doing a logged benchmark similar to the above, I wouldn't notice the difference on anything I would normally run in the background.
    See no difference in opening a 500k Word doc. Might be some, but can't tell.
    Noticed the find all files was faster with the SSD. Because I looking for it.
    Again, that's just me. Others doing more data-heavy read/writes will see more difference.
    Going to an I7, SATA 2, and the Cav Black spinners was the biggest performance gainer I've seen - after putting a Winchester HD in my original IBM PC.
    The SSD improvement pales in comparison. Still like SSD's. Depends on where you started from and what you're doing.
    I'm more of a space freak than a speed freak.
    Just picked up half a gig by compressing the Installer folder. Not recommending that, just saying.
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  10. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #20

    Victor S said:
    Going to an I7, SATA 2, and the Cav Black spinners was the biggest performance gainer I've seen - after putting a Winchester HD in my original IBM PC.
    Well of course, if you buy a whole new PC, with all new parts, it's going to be a substantial gain.

    I think when we say SSD's offer great bang for the buck, we mean that if you put $100 into an SSD, or $100 into a higher end CPU, or $100 into a higher end video card, or $100 into more RAM...chances are the $100 spent on the SDD will make more or a difference.

    I'm using an 80GB SSD at home and my OS drive is around 50GB used now. But that's running Diablo III and BF3, both of which are consuming nearly 40GB of space alone. But instead of 25 second load times, my games load in about 5 seconds and am off gaming.
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