SSD's are awesome

[Uranium-235]

Never really used them before.

I had a business client. His front computer (office worker) had Quickbooks 2013 (running database from it), UPS worldship, and several other programs. Memory usage was low, CPU usage was low, HD was going crazy. Took 10 mins to full boot (win7 x86-4G, Ath II X240). Checking Defraggler, the UPS folder and the programdata\intuit folder was always fragmenting. And aven after a full defragment, a few days later it would be just as bad. So I convinced him to get a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (one of the best ones around right now). Cloned with Easus. Boot up time is now from windows first bootstrap...10-15 seconds. quickbooks 2013 startup time, about 10 seconds. The case has two 3.5"/2.5 HD swap slot on top. I told him he can use EPM to clone the SSD to the old hard drive I took out just incase something goes wrong with the SSD (the 840 Pro has a 5 year warranty on it, one of the reasons we got it). I am concerned with wear though cause the sheer amount of writing done on an average day on this particular computer

he is shocked at the difference (he is somewhat tech savvy). Now he wants an SSD for his own back computer, even though it is rather fast itself (uses QB 2013 client only, multi access to the front computer)

guys pretty cool. The room behind his office, where is safe is, he has a small fridge FULL of beer, and towards the end of the day, he starts drinking. "Its my company, I do what the hell I want". Hah, love it.

I can't wait for new SSD tech and prices to go down. I'd make a video editing computer, two sets of 512GB SSD's in Raid 0 just for video processing (one in, one out). Backup storage will probably be some 3-4TB raid HDD's.

probably a single SSD for OS and another single SSD for games

[Pentium4]

Re: SSD's are awesome

Wow that's an amazing difference! Even with older hardware too, I'm impressed. They really are amazing...it makes clients much happier at work, because they install everything so quickly! And they hardly generate heat with makes them awesome for laptops

Tech guy with a fridge full of beer next to his work space? He sounds cool indeed

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: SSD's are awesome

just some links about ssd endurance i dug up around the net.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/s...ce-of-tlc-nand
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/51...end/index.html

yes yes i know they refer to a different drive than ts is talking about but it has comparisons between mlc and tlc. with the info provided on the above websites, u can actually calculate how long ur client's ssd is going to last.

u need to know how many p/e cycles the 840 pro 256gb can take (3000?); find out what is the average gb written to the ssd per day for a week or two; measure or estimate the write amplification of the ssd using known data write patterns of the apps being run.

u can thus actually come up with an estimation of how long his ssd is going to last in his usage scenario and present this info to him. the info will then be extremely useful to preemptively replace an almost worn out ssd to prevent data loss.

thats what i call the hallmark of a good systems technician lol!

[c_hegge]

Re: SSD's are awesome

I used a Samsung 840 120GB SSD in my parents PC. It's a Pentium E5300 with 2GB RAM running XP. I replaced the original 250GB Mechanical HDD with it when it failed (my parents were only using maybe 20GB of it), and it easily halved the startup time. The only drawback is that XP lacks trim support, so it has to be done manually every once in a while. You also have to partition the drive with a windows 7 PC to get the best alignment.

[goontron]

Re: SSD's are awesome

i had a 300GB Intel 320 Series SSD it only lasted a year before it went read-only and it had a 5 year warrantie. im thinking it was test installing 6 os offshoots that i maintain and install every 6 months that killed it, they do have a short write life correct? because it says so on this site

[Uranium-235]

Re: SSD's are awesome

this is the 840 Pro and its MLC. I should use the samsung 'optimization' tool. Point is, most of these suckers last a very, very long time (at least now that samsung released a firmware that fixed problems causing them to die-which this one already had on it)

[smason]

Re: SSD's are awesome

Yeah, I'm not worried about longevity, modern drives are fine, even older ones weren't as bad as some would have you believe.

I just replaced an Intel SSD in my notebook, and a Corsair SSD in my desktop.
Only because they were just 80 and 40GB and I needed more space, and the 240GB Sandisk was on sale.
The Corsair has been in use 24/7 since Dec 2010.
Yes most data is on a spining disk, but a couple of photo image databases, and my IP video cam software live on it, and do a considerable amound of writes.

No issues in 2.5 years

[goontron]

Re: SSD's are awesome

Yeah, I'm not worried about longevity, modern drives are fine, even older ones weren't as bad as some would have you believe.

the technology still needs to evolve more, just till ssd's can write as many times as an hdd.
for example i have a quantum bigfoot TS 12.7AT 5.25 series that still works and runs bodhi linux very well. see pics
so when ssd are that reliable then there great drives!

[shovenose]

Re: SSD's are awesome

Yep, SSDs are great. I need to get an SSD for my desktop. But you know where SSDs are really awesome? Servers! If you're doing a lot of heavy MySQL database stuff on a server an SSD will really help speed it up.

[Time2Retire]

Re: SSD's are awesome

On Linux, I wouldn't put the swap partition on a SSD. I usually put it on a conventual drive, or max out the RAM and eliminate it. For Windows, it uses the Page File System/virtual memory. I don't know if you can do something similar.

I also don't do hibernation, so I don't need all of that memory space.

[Uranium-235]

Re: SSD's are awesome

with windows vista/7/8 you can disable paging completely, yes, XP, no

[Per Hansson]

Re: SSD's are awesome

the info will then be extremely useful to preemptively replace an almost worn out ssd to prevent data loss.

Using up all write cycles of an SSD does not cause dataloss.
The standard mandates that the data must be readable 12 months from when this occurs on client drives.
For server drives it is 3 months.
The SSD will simply become "read only"

EDIT: Yay, 2500:th post
Oh, and don't take this as a reason to not perform backups, they are of course still necessary (theft, fire, lightning, flooding, data corruption, viruses & "error 40" just to name a few reasons)

[shovenose]

Re: SSD's are awesome

Just bought two new Intel 520 Series 120GB SSD's at Best Buy can't wait for my new computer parts to show up tomorrow! Gonna RAID0 them