Finally deciding to get a SSD hard drive

[Nemix]

@ Dave76

Given the fact that both the Crucial and OCZ SSD's cost 40-70% over the Kingston V100 it's really a no brainer for my decision. Others compared a 7200.12 to a WD Black and say it's a lot better and that's with just a 3ms reduction. Comparing my old 74GB Raptor to a VelociRaptor which both has a 7ms access time, the difference is only the SATA connection speed SATA-150 vs SATA-300 and read/writes times 70mb/s vs 105mb/s but benchmarks and real world performance shows the VelociRaptor pulls ahead a lot.

Considering the difference of only .2ms which is not even a 1ms with higher write speed over Crucial 40mb/s and a $40 reduction on the price tag. It's really no competition, if I were only to save $20 then I may have a dilemma. I'm almost positive a few months down the Kingston can probably be found for $80 which would give me 128GB RAID 0 option, 1.5x more read/writes times and only a $40 price bump from the Crucial now and the same cost as a OCZ right now. That's 64GB more disk space with reads speeds of the Crucial in SATA-600 (400mb/s) and write speeds of the OCZ (250mb/s) if I decide in the future go the RAID option.

I only considered getting a SSD because of the promotion going on for the Kingston right now, at regular price it would cost me $135 for the Kingston and obvious I would choose the Crucial over the Kingston both a regular price. On top of all that, I never considered a SSD to begin with, I'm perfectly happy with my 7200.12 in RAID right now.

Anyhow, I'm in the process of placing an order for the Kingston SSDNow V100 64GB along with a Seagate 7200.12 1TB and a MSI N460GTX HAWK 1GB videocard as an upgrade to my current XFX HD 5770 1GB.

Hope it all works out, thanks again to all for the inputs.

 

[Dave76]

Sounds like you've made up your order.

Enjoy, I'm sure you will like it.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Nemix77,
You'll be amazed at this upgrade of drives and GPU. Let us know how it all works out. Post some benchmarks before and after and some pic's !

 

[Nemix]

Thanks. linnemeyerhere

I really like to do a before and after pic but I'm not sure I can squeeze in the time to do so with with my schedule but I'll give it a shot. I'll take a picture of my XFX HD 5770 with Thermalright HR-03 (4 Heatpipes) 120mm Fan tonight before it's sold.

Another thing that made me jump into SSD is the fact that AMD AHCI drivers finally supports TRIM in the 10.11 package according to Crytalmark: AMD trim command support via AHCI driver? - GSKILL TECH FORUM

Couldn't be a better time for me to buy a SSD. Promotional Price + AMD TRIM Support = Win

 

[Dave76]

A good SSD benchmark: AS SSD

The upper left corner tell you the firmware version, driver version, if it's aligned (green font=ok, red font=bad), and total space.

This has many SSDs so you can compare the AS SSD scores.

AS SSD Benchmark thread

 

[Nemix]

@ Dave76 and everyone else who joined/helped with the thread.

I have good and bad news:

The good news is, I've placed my order and all things are to arrive early next week and I'm finally done with hardware upgrades for this year.

The bad news is, I decided not to go SSD and chose a WD Caviar Black 640GB SATA-600 + Seagate 7200.12 1TB instead and still got the MSI GTX 460 HAWK.

Ultimately, I came down to my self conscious and now so much the extra cash. I cannot explain it but ultimately I chose to stay on a regular hard drive, though I thinking WD Raptor 150GB (add to basket button) during checkout but noise complaints from user reviews put me off.

I've learnt so much about SDD's from this thread and for future reference I know I won't have a difficult time picking out the right SSD hard drive.

I'm really looking forward to the MSI GTX 460 HAWK (overclocking ability). And now with the extra cash, I'm thinking of buying a Asus Xonar DX PCI-e souncard possibly in 2011.

Thanks again everyone.

 

[spinifex]

The OCZ Vertex 2 50GB costs almost double the price of a Kingston SSDNow V100 64GB here in Canada: $100 vs $170

I did not want to misguide you. But I am obviously not aware of the Canadien prices. I only know the US and the German prices - the German prices being outrageously high too.

When i get home, i'll be setting up 2 x OCZ vertex in raid 0

.
This will give you nice numbers from the measurement tools. But for real life it will make little difference as compared to a single SSD because the access time does not change - Raid or no Raid.

Thanks for your reply whs.

Was not aware it would not make much difference. We have run Raid 0 on spinners, which appeared faster. Need to do some more research me thinks.

Still need more info on the faster sata, as the mobo has 2 of them, along side the 6 standard ones.
Can't do much whilst i am on the mine site as the connection is very slow and time on public computers is limited.

cheerio

Jon

 

[Dave76]

Glad that you got your order in Nemix77.

The Hawk sounds nice, sure you will enjoy it.

Next time, when your ready, I'm sure you will able to find more 'opinions' on just about anything

The other thing no one remembered to mention, the Gen3 SSDs are due to come out in the next couple of months.
They are supposed to be faster and cheaper, the rumor is that they may be as much as half the current price.
I'll be impressed if they're 30% less.

 

[whs]

Thanks for your reply whs.

Was not aware it would not make much difference. We have run Raid 0 on spinners, which appeared faster. Need to do some more research me thinks.

Jon, It seems to be a common misconception to propagate the Raid0 experience people have with spinning disks onto the SSDs - at least for now.

The extra speed you get from Raid0 is because it alternates the block writing between the raided disks and you therefore have a parallel write operation. That is a definite advantage when you move large amounts of data - especially in sequential mode.

However, for the current SSDs which are limited in capacity (and that will certainly change over time) and are primarily used for the OS, the data transfer speed plays a minor role. The operating system does not read or write big chunks of data (with maybe a few rare exceptions when you install a big program or edit a large video). The name of the game here is Access time. But a SSD Raid array has the same access time as a single SSD. I therefore think that in daily operations you will see little difference in performance between a single SSD and a SSD Raid0.

This will change the day we can afford 500GB or 1TB SSDs where we store and manipulate all our data. And if you want to practice for that day, that is a good thing too.

 

[spinifex]

Thanks for your reply whs.

Was not aware it would not make much difference. We have run Raid 0 on spinners, which appeared faster. Need to do some more research me thinks.

Jon, It seems to be a common misconception to propagate the Raid0 experience people have with spinning disks onto the SSDs - at least for now.

The extra speed you get from Raid0 is because it alternates the block writing between the raided disks and you therefore have a parallel write operation. That is a definite advantage when you move large amounts of data - especially in sequential mode.

However, for the current SSDs which are limited in capacity (and that will certainly change over time) and are primarily used for the OS, the data transfer speed plays a minor role. The operating system does not read or write big chunks of data (with maybe a few rare exceptions when you install a big program or edit a large video). The name of the game here is Access time. But a SSD Raid array has the same access time as a single SSD. I therefore think that in daily operations you will see little difference in performance between a single SSD and a SSD Raid0.

This will change the day we can afford 500GB or 1TB SSDs where we store and manipulate all our data. And if you want to practice for that day, that is a good thing too.

Thank you for explaining in terms i can understand. Since, as you say, the ssd is primarily used for the OS, and programs, it would be better served to run single ssd.
Then we can use the second one on another comp, like mine.

Jon

 

[whs]

Jon, looks like you got yourself a SSD. I am glad I could talk you into it. LOL

 

[Dave76]

Jon, that seemed to work out rather well for you

The speed you will have with a single SSD will put a smile on your face, the speed increase of using RAID'ed SSDs will likely need a benchmark to notice, according to info I have read as I haven't tried it.

As whs says, until you can get really big SSDs, then depending on your usage it may be helpful.

Enjoy your upgrade.

 

[spinifex]

Thanks for your input whs and Dave76. I realise this was not my thread, but it has evolved quite nicely with a lot of user friendly advise.

And best of all as you stated, "I have myself an SSD". Now to convince the Handbrake she only needs one, after talking her into having 2 to go raid 0.

Jon

 

[Devilz]

what about intel x25 ssd's? i'm thinking of getting one as well but can't decide which one, 40GB will be enough for me to run OS and photoshop on it, rest of stuff will go on 1TB HDD

 

[Dave76]

I for one would have to say that is an excellent choice, check my specs, mine has been great.

If you can wait a couple of months the 25nm Gen3's are due to come out.
Suppose to be faster at a lower price.

Still will recommend this SSD to anyone, it is very nice.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Devilz,
My only concern is going with a 40gb drive. I went with a 64gb and it's at 15.5gb free after OS, Office '07, ACT, Photoshop, AV, Quicken, MediaMonkey, all drivers and misc stuff. I think it's really the starting point and I'm really glad I didn't do a 32 or 40gb drive. I'm waiting for 128's and or 256's to fall even more over the next year. Heck I'm hoping we'll see 1/2 and 3/4tb drives coming at reasonable prices soon.

 

[whs]

The way I operate, 40GB would be ample. I have 11.700 Program files in 1.611 folders (Office 2007, Macrium and all the "helpers" one can think of) plus one vBox virtual machine with Ubuntu. My used space on the SSD is 24.5GBs. The only tweak I have done is to delete the hiberfile and move most of my user data to the HDD (but some user data is also on the SSD).

So I think for a desktop with an additional HDD, a 40GB SSD can work very well - provided you do not have some of those mega games on the SSD. For my new laptop, however, I got a 90GB SSD because there I cannot offload stuff to the HDD (although I do have USB3 ports and a USB3 enclosure which I plan to use for imaging and in case I have really very large files). I like to get one of those 10.000 Rpm Raptors for the enclosure. But then I have to wire the enclosure to an outlet to cool the raptor.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

whs,
You've got a great game plan there. I too am waiting for a 128 or 256 to drop in price as Sata III's push the price down on Sata II's. Then I'll snap up one for my lappy. Then wait for the new Sata III's to fall and with luck run a second SSD in JBOD. Any thoughts on that working out well rather than wasting the 64SSD in my desktop currently?

 

[whs]

whs,
You've got a great game plan there. I too am waiting for a 128 or 256 to drop in price as Sata III's push the price down on Sata II's. Then I'll snap up one for my lappy. Then wait for the new Sata III's to fall and with luck run a second SSD in JBOD. Any thoughts on that working out well rather than wasting the 64SSD in my desktop currently?

Yeah, I am going to show your posting to my "finance minister". She was not amused about me spending nearly $1400 for a toy that I really do not need. I work with desktops myself and our 3 laptops (that are spread over the 3 Locaions thousands of miles apart where we live over the course of the year) are all her's. I hope my game plan will work as planned. Right now, the bits are still "on route" with UPS. I hope they will make it under the Christmas tree.

The main purpose of that laptop is for teaching my classes at the local computer club. This Sony laptop has a backlit keyboard which will be handy because during the classes I sit under the beamer in the dark. Up to now, I have managed with her laptop and a lamp. It can be discussed though, whether I need an i7 quad CPU, a HD screen and a 1GB graphics card for that. But that might be handy for video editing which I do a lot.

Ideally, I would also like a BIG SSD for the USB3 enclosure. But at the current prices, she would probably get a heart attack - and who wants that - LOL.

 

[Devilz]

i guess 40GB will be enough cause i'll be installing OS, photoshop, openoffice, ashampoo and 3dmark vantage only. I'll be ordering SSD in first week of january, if funds allow then I might go with 80GB. Let see what happens

this seems promising

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-X25-M...1_6?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1292888843&sr=1-6