[est1895]

I was wondering what kind of SSD drive to get, since I have heard many bad things about them. 

It is for an AMD and Intel System. (2 different towers)

[Polpolion]

I have this Solid State Drive drive and it's serving me well. Solid State Drive drives really are good pieces of hardware. You can't beat a good Solid State Drive drive!

[redsniper]

They're still so expensiiiiiive.

Well... compared to hard drives.

[Rodo]

too expensive, better get a meaner gpu.

[Polpolion]

I dunno I personally think it's worth being able to boot in eight seconds.

[QuantumDelta]

Yea my PCs boot times never get old.
Though lets be honest, most of us leave our computers on 24/7 anyway so boot times aren't that important...

Load times on your favourite game though.... hell yes!

[Galemp]

I prefer this SSD drive.

[G0atmaster]

Lol.

Even if you leave your machine up all the time, fewer moving parts means longer life.

[Herra Tohtori]

Unless write cycles exceed the amount the SSD is specified for.

Solid state memory has limited amount of writes for each memory location. With repeated writes on the same location, that spot will eventually be rendered unwriteable (or unreliable) and, if drive is smart, will be mapped out and eventually the size of useable memory, or worse, drive reliability, will start to suffer from that.

Available memory getting smaller would be better option than losing file integrity without warning.


This means that SSD's are ideal for storing information that needs to be accessed fast (like loading programs or operating system) but produces very small amount of writing on the drive. If you install operating system or programs on SSD, you might want to disable page file on that particular drive, and either get a smaller, more "disposable" SSD for fast page file, or just use HDD for page file.

Paging data in and out of memory would be the type of continuous writing that would wear SSD's out the fastest, so if you want to maximize the life time of your SSD, disable the pagefile on it, and use it as little as possible for saving actual data on.

However, it's worth noting that the fast read/write speeds for SSD's would also make them ideal for being used as a page file; it would certainly mean faster operations with memory paging, than with a regular HDD. So, if you have the monies to shell out for a small, say, 16-32 GB SSD just for a page file (disable page file for all other drives but that particular one, set page file to the drive's full size, and leave it otherwise empty), that might work out quite well.

Of course, the ever increasing amounts of memory means going to page file is a rare occurrence. In my case, that requires heavy render work on Blender with huuuge textures and render resolutions taking up massive amounts of memory, but I have had Blender go into page file, and naturally that slows things to a crawl.


Has there been any benchmarks on how much better performance SSD's have compared to HDD's when stuff goes into pagefile territory, and compared to RAM operations?

[IceFire]

I took the plunge about a year ago. Best upgrade I've ever made to my system. Windows starts up with no waiting. Applications loaded on to it start... with no waiting. It's just brilliantly fast. I got a Mushkin Callisto 2 60GB and it's sufficient for OS and core programs. I have a 1TB Caviar Blue to back it up for all of my things like games and music. Since last year the prices have dropped and the cost for a larger drive is quite a bit less than I paid for this one.

I figure in 10 years or so we'll see SSD's start to take over. Until then we'll see SSD's alongside traditional platter drives. There are even some hybrid models out there worth having a look at too.

[G0atmaster]

Did the hybrid tech ever get realized? I heard about it just before SSDs went slightly mainstream.  But I never heard of any finishing development.

[Klaustrophobia]

Solid state memory has limited amount of writes for each memory location. With repeated writes on the same location, that spot will eventually be rendered unwriteable (or unreliable) and, if drive is smart, will be mapped out and eventually the size of useable memory, or worse, drive reliability, will start to suffer from that.

yes, but how high is that limit?  low enough to present a very real drawback, or long enough to be outside an average lifecycle of the drive?  long enough to even be a net benefit over mechanical?  EVERYTHING ultimately has an endurance limit, but it may not be THE limiting factor.

[QuantumDelta]

It was in drives when I was looking at buying them, I don't know about now, but it's a very real drawback, SSDs are much less likely to last as long as a normal HDD.

[Nuke]

Lol.

Even if you leave your machine up all the time, fewer moving parts means longer life.

granted i have hard drives from 8 years ago that still work great. but as i understand flash technology, it has long term reliability issues. limited write cycles are limited, thats just the way flash works. much of the ssd technology revolves around wear leveling to compensate the inherent issue of memory cell degradation. that said i still like the technology, and will probably switch to them once their prices are more affordable with respect to mechanical hard drives. ssds have other bonuses such as removing inductive loads (motors), and the electrical noise that comes with them, from the system, requiring lower voltages, and generally reducing overall power consumption. my next computer or two will likely have mechanical drives.

[QuantumDelta]

Just have both, mechanical for storage/less often used stuff, SSD for regularly used/system stuff.
Then it's all gravy.
What's more, if you can avoid writing to the SSD much after you've installed system stuff on it the drive lasts a significantly longer period than the 'suggested' lifetime, which I've probably exceeded on mine now.

[The E]

In statistical terms, write access really is the exception. If you're putting largely static bits of data on your SSD, like the OS and programs, and put the stuff that gets the most write hits like the pagefile onto a normal HDD, you'll get a very good lifetime out of the disc.

Also keep in mind that SSDs have wear-levelling hardware built in that will distribute the data written to it as evenly as possible in order to maximize the lifetime, and that even in the worst case you are looking at a very gradual failure process with plenty of opportunity to back things up.

[Mikes]

As reliability was my primary concern the only option was Intel (for me).

[Nuke]

working with microcontrollers it was interesting to read in the datasheet that a flash cell can be written to about 10k times, while an eeprom cell can be written to 100k times. i had avoided using the eeprom because i was always concerned id wear it out and make it useless, but long before that happens it will be impossible to reprogram the flash.

[FlamingCobra]

Unless write cycles exceed the amount the SSD is specified for.

Solid state memory has limited amount of writes for each memory location. With repeated writes on the same location, that spot will eventually be rendered unwriteable (or unreliable) and, if drive is smart, will be mapped out and eventually the size of useable memory, or worse, drive reliability, will start to suffer from that.

Available memory getting smaller would be better option than losing file integrity without warning.


This means that SSD's are ideal for storing information that needs to be accessed fast (like loading programs or operating system) but produces very small amount of writing on the drive. If you install operating system or programs on SSD, you might want to disable page file on that particular drive, and either get a smaller, more "disposable" SSD for fast page file, or just use HDD for page file.

Paging data in and out of memory would be the type of continuous writing that would wear SSD's out the fastest, so if you want to maximize the life time of your SSD, disable the pagefile on it, and use it as little as possible for saving actual data on.

However, it's worth noting that the fast read/write speeds for SSD's would also make them ideal for being used as a page file; it would certainly mean faster operations with memory paging, than with a regular HDD. So, if you have the monies to shell out for a small, say, 16-32 GB SSD just for a page file (disable page file for all other drives but that particular one, set page file to the drive's full size, and leave it otherwise empty), that might work out quite well.

Of course, the ever increasing amounts of memory means going to page file is a rare occurrence. In my case, that requires heavy render work on Blender with huuuge textures and render resolutions taking up massive amounts of memory, but I have had Blender go into page file, and naturally that slows things to a crawl.


Has there been any benchmarks on how much better performance SSD's have compared to HDD's when stuff goes into pagefile territory, and compared to RAM operations?

What's a page file?

[The E]

Lrn2wiki.

A pagefile is used to store memory pages (that is, chunks of content from main system RAM) that have not been accessed in a while, and for which there is no room in system RAM anymore due to another program needing the active memory, but which can't be unloaded completely because the program that allocated that memory is still actively running. So these bits of memory are written out to the HDD. Most Linux distributions dedicate a small partition on the HDD to this duty exclusively, while Windows uses a hidden file on the main system drive called pagefile.sys.