Solid State Drive

Hi,

I was wondering, with 400 Dolars to spend on HDs, which one do i choose?
I will never use more than 500 GB, which i think is too much.
And i wanted a fast drive, like an SSD.
But i heard that SSDs have a short-life, and they're speed are decreased according to its age.

So, what would be better?
Buy 4x 250 GB 7200 RPM HDs and make Raid 4

Or 1x 128 SSD and a 500 GB for storage

I would do the SSD and a storage drive if you want the best performance. The 2nd generation Intel X-25M's are very strong and the 80GB can be had for under $300.

Captain Zero said:

For $500, I would recommend 2x or even 4x smaller SSDs in a RAID formation and used for your OS. It will be outrageously fast.

I think for most people, just a single SSD drive is going to be a significant improvement and outrageously fast. Plus, people seem to really have a need for large amounts of storage...so I don't think that the smaller SSD's in an array provide enough storage for most. I mean, $500 would get you 4 x 30GB OCZ drives...but in a RAID0 stripe that's only 120GB drive. When for under $100 you can easily pick up a 1TB storage drive where speed isn't near as important.

Ok, so i read everything, like a book. 30 Pages of SSD and i am even more confused than i was before.

According to the review, i should buy the Intel x25m or the OCZ Vertex.
Now, which one do i choose?

I mean, have they fixed that problem?
How long does the SSD's life takes before it slows down?
1 month? 6 months? 1 week?

Would it fix the problem, if i would run CCleaner to erase the Free Spaces once a week?

The new Intel X-25M Gen 2's have tested very well and Intel has dropped the prices. Should be around $300 for the 80GB drive. I'm really close to buying 1 myself just for the learning experience and the hands on experience versus just the reading and heresay that I deal with today.

As far as fixing the problem...what problem are you speaking of? If it's stuttering, that can still happen but with 128MB caches, it's less of an issue. If you are talking about the slower write speeds as blocks are used....it's always going to be an issue with SSD based on design...but with the TRIM functionality and so forth on Windows 7...it really isn't an issue to be concerned with

With regards to slowing down, it depends upon how fast you fill the drive. And keep in mind that SSD's do drive leveling which spreads all future writes out against all of the blocks on the drive...rather than using the same ones over and over. So, if you do a lot of writing, deleting and writing...it would possibly slow down more quickly. However, TRIM really addresses this issue.

I honestly don't think with the newer drives like the Intel or anything with the Indilinx controller that you have to really have to actively spend time maintaining these anymore.