[sigtau]

So, I just installed this SSD as part of my Christmas presents from the family, and I have discovered the wonderful world of sub-10-second boot times, instant program startups (even Internet ****ing Explorer starts instantly), and virtually no waiting for game levels to load.

I'm interested in hearing you guys' opinions on SSDs in general, and if there's any caveats I need to be on the lookout for.

[General Battuta]

SSDs own, i like running an SSD with my OS and a regular hard drive or two with everything else

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Yep, despite trying to keep the costs down, I was absolutely adamant about having a SSHD in my PC when I built it in the summer. I would never go back, NEVER. Mine is 120GB, more than enough for Windows, web browser, other commonly used programs like 7zip, and even a game or two that is bottlenecked at the HDD. It's rare, but one that comes to mind is when SWTOR first came out. No idea if it's still like that. Now, if only they could fix the slowdowns over time and the obscene cost, we could get rid of one of the most common sources of frustration and broken moving parts that is a magnetic HDD. Well, for home PCs, at least. Large HDDs would undoubtedly still be used in business applications.

[Trivial Psychic]

Think it would boost FS performance to have it on the SSD as well?

[sigtau]

Anything that uses disk access while loading would be positively affected by using an SSD, at least that's how I've found it.  Virtually all of my loading times were eliminated or shortened to negligible.

[est1895]

I'm looking for a SSD myself.   Does OCZ make good drives?  I do like Samsung better, but their warranty is not what I would have expected.  They replace your broken drive with a recertified one.  What do you guys suggest? (120gb-128gb).

[Klaustrophobia]

I'm looking for a SSD myself.   Does OCZ make good drives?  I do like Samsung better, but their warranty is not what I would have expected.  They replace your broken drive with a recertified one.  What do you guys suggest? (120gb-128gb).

EVERYONE does that.

anywho, i'm not a believer in SSDs at all, but i don't really care to get into that argument again so i'll just leave it at that.

[watsisname]

That's a shame, I was hoping to hear what your thoughts were.  (Genuine interest; I don't know a lot about SSDs other than what's been said already.)

[Klaustrophobia]

the gist of my reasoning is the insane price for what i consider to be trivial benefit of loading times, that i already don't notice.  also, i'm not terribly impressed with a technology designed around limited life and ever-decreasing performance. 

[AtomicClucker]

I do want to get a shiny new Intel SSD, but it's simply the lack of any form of secure erasure for the majority of them that leaves me with cold feet. It's one reason I've stuck with hard disks for both security and reliability purposes.The other is data recovery being problematic as well when the drive goes bonkers.

[Nuke]

ive yet to use one so idk. im still waiting for prices to go down and capacity to go up. on the other hand the quality of mechanical hard drives seems to be diminishing. every hard drive i bought over the course of the last decade has never given me a problem, and they all still work, with the exception of my most recent terabyte drive, which damn near cost me a bunch of data. when i switch over it will be an all or nothing affair (and by then most software should be smart enough not to ravage them).

[achtung]

Yeah I'm still waiting for better $/GB. I might splurge on a tiny one and just put all the mostly read only OS components on it and use an HDD for everything else. I imagine it would be more difficult to do a symlink equivalent innawindows though.

[Dragon]

Yeah I'm still waiting for better $/GB.

So am I. It might take a while, Polish currency being what it is, but I hope to have one next time I do a major upgrade to my PC.

[Luis Dias]

I heard there were some OS tools that automatically placed everything that required constant HDD use into the SDD while resting all the other stuff in the larger slower disk. Macs apparently have this ability now too.

[LordMelvin]

I do want to get a shiny new Intel SSD, but it's simply the lack of any form of secure erasure for the majority of them that leaves me with cold feet. It's one reason I've stuck with hard disks for both security and reliability purposes.The other is data recovery being problematic as well when the drive goes bonkers.

The only truly secure data erasure method has always been and will always continue to be a liberal application of thermite to the hardware in question.

[Nuke]

yay thermite!

[Zacam]

I'm still a little iffy on the lifespan idea of an SSD operating as an OS drive, what with all the atomic timestamp updates and the like.

My next build will have one, however, it will be mounted as a mapped folder or as a dedicated drive for all of my game installs (Steam, GoG, etc) under the theory that outside of a few updates, will essentially be "write once, read a lot" which should (theINory) allow it a slightly longer lifespan.

[Nuke]

most of the datasheets for flash ram ive used (these are smaller lower end units as well, probibly not what gets used in ssds) say about 10k cycles. but ive hered thats a very conservative estimate. some chips have been seen to perform about 100k cycles before breaking. also consider the fact that most of your data will be essentially static data. things on my hard drive that take up memory are things like movie files, music files, and code libraries (they eat space because large allocation unit in modern drives + large number of small files == a lot of wasted space), and installed games and other software. most of that data doesn't change once created. it just sits there.

[Luis Dias]

That's good news, nuke.

Although I still remember the promises made about CDs and their "eternality" and so on. But I was naive back then.

[Nuke]

there is no perfect storage medium. they all have their quirks. but given the expected and practical life of mechanical hard drives, i suspect ssds are an improvement in terms of long term durability. when a hard drive wears out its a catastrophic failure, but when an ssd wears out, it only gets smaller.