Anyone running SSD's yet?

[acstech]

Title says it all. I find the technology interesting, but I've heard too many horror stories to bother trying one yet. Has the technology matured enough to be as stable as a mechanical hard drive?

[digge]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

Ive been running SSD for quite some time now, no issues whatsoever. Dont know what horror storries youve heard. If you stick to the more stable brands, in this case i think intel and samsung are among the top quality/stability wise there is not much that should go wrong. Some if not all manufacturers have had their share of firmware issues but they are usually solved quite fast and patched. So as long as you dont buy a brand spanking new model there shouldnt be any issues.

[delaware74b]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

I am in the process of loading Win 7 on my wife's 6 year old Compaq along with all of her files. I ordered a SanDisk Ultra SDSSDH-120G-G25 2.5" 120GB SATA II SSD along with a copy of Win 7 Home Premium 32-bit. Her machine is already maxed out at 2GB RAM, so no x64. It scores a 7.2 in the windows hard disk performance test.

So far, the laptop is faster than the old setup, 80GB Seagate and Vista. Officially HP/Compaq does not support Windows 7 on this model (Presario C502us), but I didn't have any problems with drivers through Windows Update.

[smason]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

One as the only drive in my notebook, one as the c: drive in my desktop. Both super fast and stable.

[ratdude747]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

off-topic:

My Dell Latitude D630 currently runs a 160gb WD scorpio blue (5400RPM) hdd... how big of a speed/ battery life boost would going to an SSD have?

other specs:

cpu: c2d 2.4ghz (t7700)
2gb 66mhz ddr2
nvidia graphics

[mariushm]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

Well... that scorpio blue uses about 2-5 watts constantly when motor runs.

later edit: actually, the data is on their page, https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...c0ec73fc80.pdf :

5 VDC
Read/Write 500 mA
Idle 400 mA
Standby 45 mA
Sleep 38 mA

Power Dissipation
Read/Write 2.50 Watts
Idle 0.85 Watts
Standby 0.23 Watts
Sleep 0.19 Watts

from pdf:

Average power requirements (W)
Read/Write 2.5
Idle 0.85
Standby/Sleep 0.20

A ssd uses about 0.2 w idle, about 0.2-1w when reading, about 1-4w when writing. Intel 520 advertises: Power - Active - Up to 850mW (TYP), Idle: 600 mW (TYP) , so idle 0.6w, 0.85w when running.

So you'll get some extra battery life , maybe 10-20% extra?

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

off-topic:

My Dell Latitude D630 currently runs a 160gb WD scorpio blue (5400RPM) hdd... how big of a speed/ battery life boost would going to an SSD have?

other specs:

cpu: c2d 2.4ghz (t7700)
2gb 66mhz ddr2
nvidia graphics

You will use -more- battery.
The V and A ratings on you mechanical drive are max for full speed.
Mechanical drives spin down to a low power state.
SSD's don't so the ratings are full time.
.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ry,1955-2.html
.

[ratdude747]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

I see... I am a bit of a road warrior so maybe an SSD is a poor investment...

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

Well... that scorpio blue uses about 2-5 watts constantly when motor runs.

later edit: actually, the data is on their page, https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...c0ec73fc80.pdf :

5 VDC
Read/Write 500 mA
Idle 400 mA
Standby 45 mA
Sleep 38 mA

Power Dissipation
Read/Write 2.50 Watts
Idle 0.85 Watts
Standby 0.23 Watts
Sleep 0.19 Watts

from pdf:

Average power requirements (W)
Read/Write 2.5
Idle 0.85
Standby/Sleep 0.20

A ssd uses about 0.2 w idle, about 0.2-1w when reading, about 1-4w when writing. Intel 520 advertises: Power - Active - Up to 850mW (TYP), Idle: 600 mW (TYP) , so idle 0.6w, 0.85w when running.

So you'll get some extra battery life , maybe 10-20% extra?

No you won't.
The wear leveling algorithms in SSD's keep them at full power nearly full time.
.

[dmill89]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

Title says it all. I find the technology interesting, but I've heard too many horror stories to bother trying one yet. Has the technology matured enough to be as stable as a mechanical hard drive?

I've been running a Samsung 830 series SSD 128GB as a boot drive in my main tower since November and haven't had any problems whatsoever. It replaced an old WD Raptor, the SDD is faster and of course much quieter than the Raptor it replaced. I'm using a WD Caviar Black 1TB for as storage drive (it's been in the system since I built it). I did a clean windows install when I put the SSD in.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

I see... I am a bit of a road warrior so maybe an SSD is a poor investment...

I personally think they are a waste all the way around.
.
For normal tasks you just don't need one. Like you can email or browse that fast? RIGHT!
.
If you -really- need that much drive speed (say for a game) then you can get a system that takes more RAM and set up a virtual drive [RAM drive] in the extra RAM and that will get 'drive speeds' that are around 10x what an SSD can do.
.
And, unlike the SSD drive, the extra RAM isn't going to wear out.
.

[smason]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

off-topic:

My Dell Latitude D630 currently runs a 160gb WD scorpio blue (5400RPM) hdd... how big of a speed/ battery life boost would going to an SSD have?

My Notebook is a D830 (widescreen brother of the 630, I think)
The speed difference from a standard Seagate to the SSD was dramatic.
Boot speed, app startup and disk intensive stuff like Photoshop is waay faster.

[ratdude747]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

My Notebook is a D830 (widescreen brother of the 630, I think)
The speed difference from a standard Seagate to the SSD was dramatic.
Boot speed, app startup and disk intensive stuff like Photoshop is waay faster.

larger brother... the d630/20 are widescreen too.

maybe when SSDs use less power... the 5400rpm drive is as slow as hell...

[Junk Parts]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

I was toying with the idea of putting a SSD in my Hp too. It has a 1TB standard hard drive in it now. All I can tell you is that its 7200rpm. Win7 System has this to say about it. ST310005 28AS Sata. Its fast and quiet. It will also not die from a defrag. I think I will stick with it for now.

[Scenic]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

Here's a VERY interesting thread.
Basically, a bunch of people decided to sacrifice their SSD's for an extreme write endurance test. (writing data nonstop till the drives fail)

The results are all over the place..

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...e-25nm-Vs-34nm

First post contains a sort of overview so you don't have to read all 3611 posts on 145 pages

The testing was done as close to real life scenarios as possible (with random data on the drive, some space left free for wear levelling, etc.)

The Samsung 470 series was the most predictable IMO, but clearly not the best in terms of amount of data written etc.

[b700029]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

You will use -more- battery.
The V and A ratings on you mechanical drive are max for full speed.
Mechanical drives spin down to a low power state.
SSD's don't so the ratings are full time.
.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ry,1955-2.html
.

First of all, that article is nearing 4 years old now. SSDs were quite power-hungry at the time, compared to now (although the situation is starting to change a little, see below).

Secondly, they're comparing battery life while continuously running benchmarks - not a typical use case. The CPU uses much more power than a regular disk when it's running at full load --- because SSDs are faster, the CPU spends less time waiting in idle for the drive to complete a read/write operation, and more time doing processing. With a hard drive, even though the drive does consume more power, the CPU spends more time waiting in an idle state, and CPU power consumption dwarfs everything else (the CPU they used in that test can consume up to 35W).

SSDs can have lower power consumption - see here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ve,1968-9.html

Keep in mind that these drives are also nearly 4 years old.

Intel was the first to really push the power consumption down with their X25-M : 150mW active and 60mW idle. But the later models are clearly not intended for laptop use as the power consumption is creeping up again...

Intel 520 advertises: Power - Active - Up to 850mW (TYP), Idle: 600 mW (TYP) , so idle 0.6w, 0.85w when running.

I have an X25-M in my laptop so I can speak from experience: it does increase battery life by a noticeable amount. I upgraded from a rather old Fujitsu MHV2060BH (600mW idle, 2.1W active) and it increased battery life from ~6.5 to over 7 hours.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

First of all, that article is nearing 4 years old now. SSDs were quite power-hungry at the time, compared to now (although the situation is starting to change a little, see below).

Secondly, they're comparing battery life while continuously running benchmarks - not a typical use case. The CPU uses much more power than a regular disk when it's running at full load --- because SSDs are faster, the CPU spends less time waiting in idle for the drive to complete a read/write operation, and more time doing processing. With a hard drive, even though the drive does consume more power, the CPU spends more time waiting in an idle state, and CPU power consumption dwarfs everything else (the CPU they used in that test can consume up to 35W).

SSDs can have lower power consumption - see here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ve,1968-9.html

Keep in mind that these drives are also nearly 4 years old.

Intel was the first to really push the power consumption down with their X25-M : 150mW active and 60mW idle. But the later models are clearly not intended for laptop use as the power consumption is creeping up again...


I have an X25-M in my laptop so I can speak from experience: it does increase battery life by a noticeable amount. I upgraded from a rather old Fujitsu MHV2060BH (600mW idle, 2.1W active) and it increased battery life from ~6.5 to over 7 hours.

I'm not buying it.

If anything the algorithms have gotten more intensive so on average they are using more power than before.

And choosing one of the crappiest disc drives as a basis for your argument isn't going to fly.
Neither is a single sample example.
.
.
There's also that they don't have room for much bulk storage so if you need to to keep things you don't use much available [photos, programs] when on the road you end up needing a second drive.
.

[cheapie]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

I once got a Wintec 64GB SSD. It developed several thousand bad sectors within a month. I went back to hard drives.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

I once got a Wintec 64GB SSD. It developed several thousand bad sectors within a month. I went back to hard drives.

That's because you bought a wintec. Stick with INTEL or SAMSUNG!

My intel 320 series 160GB SSD still going strong, it's nearly a year old. I bought it in may 2011, I never had a problem with it.

[Wrog]

Re: Anyone running SSD's yet?

I've been running a couple of Kingston V100+ 64GB SSDs as OS drives (two different desktop systems and one laptop) for a few years now with zero issues. They do their own wear leveling (not OS dependent) and although they are not nearly as fast as today's SSDs, they are still a huge step up performance-wise over magnetic drives. We store our documents, pictures, media etc. on a dedicated file server so the only things local are the OS and installed apps, so we don't need much local space. We recently added a new desktop to the network with a Patriot Pyro 120GB SATA III, and it definitely seems much faster than the Kingstons. Time will tell how long it will last!