SSDs are fast, but do they last?

[toughbook]

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative over the fact that a device that brings a small advance in computing, is so advantageous that it is worth forking out £85 Crucial CT064M4Solid State Drive2 64GB M4 Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories (25% of a new computer). When you already have a HDD drive doing the exact same function only milliseconds of difference which add up too not much over a week.
If your talking about boot time then ''why don't you go and make yourself a cup of tea whilst the computer boots up like most people do''! Or, just leave it on.
£85 not worth it. £30 I'll consider it but there are disadvantages that I have pointed out before.
I don't think I have anything more to say on the subject.

This has got to be the most off base comment to this point. Why do I enjoy an SSD when a spinner does the same job?
Hmm...Is that sorta like I guess we should all be using netbooks since they are doing the same thing as my Toughbook? If that was the case we would be living in one huge boring world. Heck, we might as well all be driving the same cars then.

Sit back, sip your Tea very slowly.......Now try to come up with a better defense.

 

[pparks1]

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative over the fact that a device that brings a small advance in computing, is so advantageous that it is worth forking out £85 Crucial CT064M4Solid State Drive2 64GB M4 Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories (25% of a new computer).

Well, that assumes that the advance itself is small. I guess whether it's worthwhile is in the eye of the person who purchased it. Many have upgraded a processor, memory, CPU cooling, from 32bit to 64bit only to find that it really didn't make a noticeable change. The SSD on the other hand, does make a change, it's quantifiable. You can measure things with a stopwatch and see without a doubt it's faster.

When you already have a HDD drive doing the exact same function only milliseconds of difference which add up too not much over a week.
If your talking about boot time then ''why don't you go and make yourself a cup of tea whilst the computer boots up like most people do''! Or, just leave it on.

It's not just about boot times. While these do improve, there are other beneficial areas as well.
#1). I don't bother hibernating my laptop anymore, I simply reboot it because it's fast
#2). A malwarebytes scan of my entire laptop takes 2:30 and scans 230,000 items
#3). My laptop is now silent, no more clicking and clacking from the hard drive
#4). A game that used to take 20 seconds to get to the menu and another 25 seconds to get into game now takes about 8 seconds total and I'm playing.
#5). My Windows XP Mode VM (where I test most things), boots and is at desktop in just 11 seconds.

£85 not worth it. £30 I'll consider it but there are disadvantages that I have pointed out before.
I don't think I have anything more to say on the subject.

Money is always the key. Whether it's worth it to you, only you can decide.

I used to poo-poo SSD's as well when they first came out and didn't feel like they were worth it. I finally decided to get one, simply to see what all of the fuss was about (I do computer work for a living, so some of the cost went towards educating myself)...and I'm glad that I bought it. No regrets. I now have one in my work laptop as well...was even willing to go from a 160GB mechanical to an 80GB SSD and simply have less on the computer for the speed advantages. No regrets on that choice either.

I'm not at a point where I consider the SSD a "must have" for any computer. But it's certainly a "want to have" on my powerhouse boxes that I consider high end performers.

 

[Dave76]

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative over the fact that a device that brings a small advance in computing, is so advantageous that it is worth forking out £85 Crucial CT064M4Solid State Drive2 64GB M4 Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories (25% of a new computer). When you already have a HDD drive doing the exact same function only milliseconds of difference which add up too not much over a week.
If your talking about boot time then ''why don't you go and make yourself a cup of tea whilst the computer boots up like most people do''! Or, just leave it on.
£85 not worth it. £30 I'll consider it but there are disadvantages that I have pointed out before.
I don't think I have anything more to say on the subject.

Spoken like someone that has never used an SSD.

Once you finally do, you will say 'should have gotten one sooner'. Many others have already.

Let's just call it a draw and let every 'Grown Man' decide for themselves

As already mentioned by several, I will continue to use a SSD in my system and will recommend them to anyone.

It is not just a few milli-seconds of boot time. Everything runs much faster, the OS and every app you have.
I had to disable the swirling windows at the startup because it never had time to finish.
Word, excel, onenote, and all programs actually pop open, no waiting, none.
I enjoy my 18 second boot time

 

[CreepinJesus]

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative ...

Who you calling "grown man"? :sarc:

 

[Tarka Dal]

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative over the fact that a device that brings a small advance in computing, is so advantageous that it is worth forking out £85 Crucial CT064M4Solid State Drive2 64GB M4 Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories (25% of a new computer). When you already have a HDD drive doing the exact same function only milliseconds of difference which add up too not much over a week.
If your talking about boot time then ''why don't you go and make yourself a cup of tea whilst the computer boots up like most people do''! Or, just leave it on.
£85 not worth it. £30 I'll consider it but there are disadvantages that I have pointed out before.
I don't think I have anything more to say on the subject.

This has got to be the most off base comment to this point. Why do I enjoy an SSD when a spinner does the same job?
Hmm...Is that sorta like I guess we should all be using netbooks since they are doing the same thing as my Toughbook? If that was the case we would be living in one huge boring world. Heck, we might as well all be driving the same cars then.

Sit back, sip your Tea very slowly.......Now try to come up with a better defense.

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative over the fact that a device that brings a small advance in computing, is so advantageous that it is worth forking out £85 Crucial CT064M4Solid State Drive2 64GB M4 Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories (25% of a new computer).

Well, that assumes that the advance itself is small. I guess whether it's worthwhile is in the eye of the person who purchased it. Many have upgraded a processor, memory, CPU cooling, from 32bit to 64bit only to find that it really didn't make a noticeable change. The SSD on the other hand, does make a change, it's quantifiable. You can measure things with a stopwatch and see without a doubt it's faster.

When you already have a HDD drive doing the exact same function only milliseconds of difference which add up too not much over a week.
If your talking about boot time then ''why don't you go and make yourself a cup of tea whilst the computer boots up like most people do''! Or, just leave it on.

It's not just about boot times. While these do improve, there are other beneficial areas as well.
#1). I don't bother hibernating my laptop anymore, I simply reboot it because it's fast
#2). A malwarebytes scan of my entire laptop takes 2:30 and scans 230,000 items
#3). My laptop is now silent, no more clicking and clacking from the hard drive
#4). A game that used to take 20 seconds to get to the menu and another 25 seconds to get into game now takes about 8 seconds total and I'm playing.
#5). My Windows XP Mode VM (where I test most things), boots and is at desktop in just 11 seconds.

£85 not worth it. £30 I'll consider it but there are disadvantages that I have pointed out before.
I don't think I have anything more to say on the subject.

Money is always the key. Whether it's worth it to you, only you can decide.

I used to poo-poo SSD's as well when they first came out and didn't feel like they were worth it. I finally decided to get one, simply to see what all of the fuss was about (I do computer work for a living, so some of the cost went towards educating myself)...and I'm glad that I bought it. No regrets. I now have one in my work laptop as well...was even willing to go from a 160GB mechanical to an 80GB SSD and simply have less on the computer for the speed advantages. No regrets on that choice either.

I'm not at a point where I consider the SSD a "must have" for any computer. But it's certainly a "want to have" on my powerhouse boxes that I consider high end performers.

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative over the fact that a device that brings a small advance in computing, is so advantageous that it is worth forking out £85 Crucial CT064M4Solid State Drive2 64GB M4 Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories (25% of a new computer). When you already have a HDD drive doing the exact same function only milliseconds of difference which add up too not much over a week.
If your talking about boot time then ''why don't you go and make yourself a cup of tea whilst the computer boots up like most people do''! Or, just leave it on.
£85 not worth it. £30 I'll consider it but there are disadvantages that I have pointed out before.
I don't think I have anything more to say on the subject.

Spoken like someone that has never used an SSD.

Once you finally do, you will say 'should have gotten one sooner'. Many others have already.

Let's just call it a draw and let every 'Grown Man' decide for themselves

As already mentioned by several, I will continue to use a SSD in my system and will recommend them to anyone.

It is not just a few milli-seconds of boot time. Everything runs much faster, the OS and every app you have.
I had to disable the swirling windows at the startup because it never had time to finish.
Word, excel, onenote, and all programs actually pop open, no waiting, none.
I enjoy my 18 second boot time

Well all I can say is well done lads for making your points for...I can't agree with you at this point but perhaps in the future when they are worth it!

 

[pparks1]

Well all I can say is well done lads for making your points for...I can't agree with you at this point but perhaps in the future when they are worth it!

Like I said, whether it's "worth it", is a personal issue. Your finances are just that, your finances.

Perhaps a better approach would have been to say, "unfortunately at this point I cannot afford to upgrade to one", or "I have other priorities at the present time".

Edit: But I see posts earlier where you say that money isn't the issue and you could buy hundreds of them if you wanted to.
Do you actually have hands-on experiences with an SSD product? And what are the reasons why you are against them at this point?

The only thing I can see you saying at this point, is that "it's too expensive for such a small increase in performance". But what experience do you have with regards to the actual performance gain...and what's the issue with money...you said earlier you could buy a hundred of them.

Please clarify, it might help us.

 

[Tarka Dal]

Well all I can say is well done lads for making your points for...I can't agree with you at this point but perhaps in the future when they are worth it!

Like I said, whether it's "worth it", is a personal issue. Your finances are just that, your finances.

Perhaps a better approach would have been to say, "unfortunately at this point I cannot afford to upgrade to one", or "I have other priorities at the present time".

Edit: But I see posts earlier where you say that money isn't the issue and you could buy hundreds of them if you wanted to.
Do you actually have hands-on experiences with an SSD product? And what are the reasons why you are against them at this point?

The only thing I can see you saying at this point, is that "it's too expensive for such a small increase in performance". But what experience do you have with regards to the actual performance gain...and what's the issue with money...you said earlier you could buy a hundred of them.

Please clarify, it might help us.

I have the finances. I just don't think their worth it. Maybe in a year or so then the speed and value will be more attractive, but at the moment NO!

 

[sygnus21]

Do you actually have hands-on experiences with an SSD product? And what are the reasons why you are against them at this point?

The only thing I can see you saying at this point, is that "it's too expensive for such a small increase in performance". But what experience do you have with regards to the actual performance gain...and what's the issue with money...you said earlier you could buy a hundred of them.

Well I guess we got an answer from his post above.

 

[seth500]

SSDs are overpriced compared to HDDs and don't offer larger capacities

They are far more expensive that HDD's, but they are substantially faster. Access times of 0.1ms versus 12-15ms on most standard HDD's.

Large capacities are usually not available or are tremendously cost ineffective. But the beauty of the SSD is to run your OS and programs from. You should continue to use HDD's for the storage of all data. Therefore, you likely don't need huge capacities.

+1 for that I always backup my SSD partition to a HDD and with the time it saves on loading programs they are worth the price and that being said they will come down in price as well. I won't certainly put the money towards raptors or anything like that it will always turn to the SSD because of the speed. Yes the do wear out and so do HDD's but how often is an SSD going to go on the blink if your taking care of them, everything needs maintenance trim needs to be enabled an offset of 1024KB needs to be set on the partition before install of the operating system and you need to know how to secure erase one proper as well.

 

[GeneO]

I'm also interested in hearing more about how the SSD will slow down to protect iself from excessive writing
is there a way for the user to monitor this scenario provided by the SSD manufacturers?

Also I never heard of "garbage collection" being required to maintain an SSD until reading here, I didn't think they needed that. How does this work compared to "defragmenting" of a HDD.

Again does anyone know of a PC OEM like HP offering an SSD on their desktops?

I'm surprised that the major OEMS don't because you can configure many different options and price points with them.

Anyone know WHY the big OEM PC markers haven't migrated to offering SSDs yet, aside from price?

Only certain brands of SSD, in particular Sandforce based, will throttle writes for endurance. Intel and Crucial don't.

Garbage collection or TRIM are needed to provide clean blocks to write to, otherwise all your writes would require an erase cycle and slow you down a lot.

For PC makers, bottom line price and their support wants to deal with a well known quantity like disk and not have to worry about write throttling and TRIM and all that.

 

[GeneO]

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative over the fact that a device that brings a small advance in computing, is so advantageous that it is worth forking out £85 Crucial CT064M4Solid State Drive2 64GB M4 Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories (25% of a new computer). When you already have a HDD drive doing the exact same function only milliseconds of difference which add up too not much over a week.
If your talking about boot time then ''why don't you go and make yourself a cup of tea whilst the computer boots up like most people do''! Or, just leave it on.
£85 not worth it. £30 I'll consider it but there are disadvantages that I have pointed out before.
I don't think I have anything more to say on the subject.

Computers operate at the microsecond level so milliseconds do make a big difference. And it is not just boot time or progrqam load times that improve. Windows is constantly writing and reading data to/from disk, so Windows overall responsiveness improves. Also improved is web browsing or any program that uses a disk cache to improve performance, like Photoshop to name one.

 

[legacy7955]

@GeneO:

Thanks for filling in the pieces of the SSD puzzle for me. I am not the biggest geek so while I'm somewhat informed about PC tech I don't know all the details all that well.

Although I have always been curious about the latest computer tech, unfortunately my mathematical skills have prevented me from going too far in the direction of programming or engineering. I wish it were different!

 

[smarteyeball]

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative

Sadly, I don't.

SSD's are yet another device that has joined the 'Holy War' computing list.

Windows/Linux/OSX, AMD vs intel, AMD vs Nvidia, SSD vs HDD, Which browser, which A/V, which method blah blah friggin blah.

The same arguments repeated all over the internet ad nauseam. All of it bloody irritating and utterly pointless.

Ultimately a persons computer is their own to do with as they wish, yet people feel compelled to push an issue. Knowing when to 'agree to disagree' appears to be a dying art on the internet.

 

[preiius]

One thing that I read that finally convinced me why you'd want to buy a ssd, ssd is about performance, not storage capacity. If you use $/GB metric to compare buyinig a ssd and hd, you will never buy a ssd. Of course, buying it at a cheaper price is never a bad thing.

 

[toughbook]

I find it hard to believe that a few grown men, can get so argumentative

Sadly, I don't.

SSD's are yet another device that has joined the 'Holy War' computing list.

Windows/Linux/OSX, AMD vs intel, AMD vs Nvidia, SSD vs HDD, Which browser, which A/V, which method blah blah friggin blah.

The same arguments repeated all over the internet ad nauseam. All of it bloody irritating and utterly pointless.

Ultimately a persons computer is their own to do with as they wish, yet people feel compelled to push an issue. Knowing when to 'agree to disagree' appears to be a dying art on the internet.

We are not pushing any devices on anybody. We are simply pointing the facts out about SSD's. I would consider this a debate more than trying to "push" it on someone. If you dislike this type of nauseam why do you stop here and look around?

 

[smarteyeball]

We are not pushing any devices on anybody. We are simply pointing the facts out about SSD's. I would consider this a debate more than trying to "push" it on someone.

Generalization. Ever heard of it?

Perhaps you rushed into posting without comprehending what happened above.

Please allow me to explain.

A statement was made, I selected the text I wished to quote. Once selected, I responded in a similar vein.

Now here is where it may get a little tricky for you - the selected quote itself was a generalization. A generalization can be defined as:

1. The act or process of generalizing.
2. A result of this process; a general statement, idea, or principle.

So continuing in this similar vein (generalization), this means that rather than focusing on SSD's or specific members, I focused on the type of pointless argumentative behaviour that is fostered by computing in general. As such, I used 'general' examples. Perhaps too general.

At this juncture, I'll admit it was remiss of me not to initially state emphatically that the tone of the entire post was not intended to denigrate any one individual. Since that was not the aim, nor did it occur, I was under the misapprehension the blatant was obvious.

Please accept my profound apologies for the confusion. I hope this clarifies things for you.

If you dislike this type of nauseam why do you stop here and look around?

To clear up outstanding misunderstandings it would seem

 

[sygnus21]

Look the bottom line this - If SSD's are for you buy them, if not don't buy them.

However outside of arguing price, I find it hard for anyone to argue about the performance of a technology they've never used. Sorry. It's like me arguing about the quality/performance of AMD's processors, or Nvidia's video cards, neither of which I've never used, and thus can't possibly speak on the performance or quality of them.

No one is pushing SSD's on anyone - if anything, it's seems to me that there is a push to tell us how bad the product is, despite never using said product.

Again, we all agree the price is a little high, to me, that's where the debate should stop as there isn’t one expert who thinks mechanical drives are better performers than SSDs. Yes mechanical drives store more data, outside that they get crushed in access/seek times and read/write speeds.

At any rate it may be time to close this thread as some are starting to take things personal.

My two cents.

 

[essenbe]

Look the bottom line this - If SSD's are for you buy them, if not don't buy them.

However outside of arguing price, I find it hard for anyone to argue about the performance of a technology they've never used. Sorry. It's like me arguing about the quality/performance of AMD's processors, or Nvidia's video cards, neither of which I've never used, and thus can't possibly speak on the performance or quality of them.

No one is pushing SSD's on anyone - if anything, it's seems to me that there is a push to tell us how bad the product is, despite never using said product.

Again, we all agree the price is a little high, to me, that's where the debate should stop as there isn’t one expert who thinks mechanical drives are better performers than SSDs. Yes mechanical drives store more data, outside that they get crushed in access/seek times and read/write speeds.

At any rate it may be time to close this thread as some are starting to take things personal.

My two cents.

+1 You can't debate on the merits of something you have never used.

 

[toughbook]

I agree with all you guys. I'm certaintly not meaning to personally attack anyone. I guess we all must remember that we all have our own opinion on these matters.

 

[seth500]

One thing people must remember is that SSD's are fairly new to say the least and 10 years down the road I'm sure the price will have dropped significantly and the size of them increase as well to catch the eye of users who are now opposed to the ideas of owing one and trying them. Just give them time HDD's were once pretty expensive as well for what you got.