Are SSDs the new RAM for boosting system performance?

eburnettscd said:

How reliable are SSD drives? Horror stories of corrupted files lost - or is that just a USB device thing? On my part I've also been able to recover lost and raw partoons from my flash drive but not without some damaged goods. Imagination, heavy disk use maybe?

I have also wondered what is seek time like on SSD. I know USB is not the swiftest tool in the shed but what time cost savings could you expect from say - a comparable 7200 rpm?

And I hear you say no need to defrag - ahh what's this? I would like one to get rid of all the heat excess - when will a decent size (80+ GB works for me) at a decent price be on market?

These horror stories are just that, "stories". Many people on here have SSD's and I have not heard of one that has a problem. In my opinion, they are every bit as reliable as a HDD. == You ask about "seek time". If you put your OS and programs on your SSD, you will be amazed how fast they are. From the time you click your mouse on an icon until the program opens is one second. That is speed.

eburnettscd said:

How reliable are SSD drives? Horror stories of corrupted files lost - or is that just a USB device thing? On my part I've also been able to recover lost and raw partoons from my flash drive but not without some damaged goods. Imagination, heavy disk use maybe?

I have also wondered what is seek time like on SSD. I know USB is not the swiftest tool in the shed but what time cost savings could you expect from say - a comparable 7200 rpm?

And I hear you say no need to defrag - ahh what's this? I would like one to get rid of all the heat excess - when will a decent size (80+ GB works for me) at a decent price be on market?

A SSD has no "seek time" since there is no moving parts. A 7200RPM HDD has an average latency of 417ms, micro seconds. The time it takes bit of data to pass through the read/write heads until the next bit from the file arrives.
A SSD's access time, similar to seek time, is less than .1ms.

No need to defrag because the access time stays the same no matter where a file's bit are located.

mikiep said:

Microsoft needs to rethink the disk/file/path structure. Perhaps move the MyDocuments/MyPicture/MyMusic/Downloads etc to D drive along with optional maybe for program installs to manually choose C drive installs or not. Make the system a fast boot at least... Then most standard users can get by with a small say 64 or maybe 32gb ssd c: drive and a larger d: spinning drive with ample room to have a system image for when that ssd craps out.

I would call that the standard installation scenario today for a desktop - 60GB SSD plus user files on the HDD. For laptops 128 or 256GB SSDs are more advisable.

I still don't understand why people install big SSDs on desktops - a waste of money. My desktop 60GB SSDs are always half empty. I even have enough space to run at least 1 virtual partition on them.

bigmck said:

These horror stories are just that, "stories". Many people on here have SSD's and I have not heard of one that has a problem. In my opinion, they are every bit as reliable as a HDD. == You ask about "seek time". If you put your OS and programs on your SSD, you will be amazed how fast they are. From the time you click your mouse on an icon until the program opens is one second. That is speed.

Sorry to chime in here, but, I had a OCZ Vertex 3 120GB. It lasted 8 months. It had my OS and programs on it. All user data is on a spinner. It was used on my server, so it was not heavily used. Basically it ran WSUS, IIS and little else.

The SSD is being replaced under warranty. At the time I purchased it the cost was $278.00. Now a 128GB vertex 4 is under $100.

In my case, the SSD was either not detected at boot up, or if it was detected it could not boot.

I have 3 operating systems, so 60 GB probably wouldn't be big enough.

I run Win7, Win8 and Ubuntu on a 60GB SSD and have 10GB freespace. But that is tight. I still would recommend a 120GB SSD. They are cheap these days.

I'm thinking most people that buy a Windows 7 computer don't know and don't care to know about MSI installers, moving users around, changing page filing ect. They also don't know what a Linux or Ubuntu is and don't want to know. Windows 7 was made for millions and millions of users that just want a few ticks or keys to use it or install it. To give Windows options that a few tweakers want is not going to happen. Where would Microsoft stop. They could never put all the little tweaks in a operating system that tweakers could come with. Besides it would just raise the cost of the operating system to the millions and millions that wouldn't use them or even know what tweaks are included in the operating system. Does anybody know of a company that has 90 % of the market share of operating systems or any other product sold to the masses that does a better job than Microsoft?