Finally got an SSD!

[Aonarch]

So I am a computer technician and with that I am a cheap ass when it comes to hardware. I go with leftover parts and last gen dirt cheap tech. I've always had new Mac's though, but for my PC's I have never gone crazy. Anyways this morning I turn on my laptop... it locks up after login, no BSOD, safe mode, locks up after login, no bsod, switch in known good memory, locks up, run system repair, disk errors found. WTF? New HDD week old OS, standard software, nothing crazy, no malware. I try scanning it, maxes out my other machines memory, I let it run for a couple of hours barely any progress. So I will hook it up to a HDD testing box at work monday morning, but it sounds like it is toast. Samsung Spin Point 1TB 5400 drive.

I was going to upgrade really soon anyways so this just gave me the incentive.

Today I go to my local Fry's and buy a Crucial M4 256GB SSD for $170 + tax.

Load it up, windows installs like the breeze, SP1 installs super quick, everything is running smooth!

Reboot speeds are currently 23-25 seconds.





^ Graphics card is pissing me off. GTX 660, but it keeps sticking to the on board. Right now I can't play any games, because it keeps running off the on board no matter what settings I change. Working on that now.



Anyways CSB I just wanted to share my experiences. A SSD is worth every penny. They seem to have finally gotten firmware and all quality issues worked out since their debut. Most HDD's are the bottle necks of systems. That 5400 crappoint was destroying all performance on my machine.

[sle39lvr]

I would compromise on processor speed, RAM, and even graphics card for SSD performance!

[BRealistic]

I like the concept of the ssd.
But the expected life span is still quite short, right?

[Aonarch]

I would compromise on processor speed, RAM, and even graphics card for SSD performance!

Yup the SSD really frees everything up. I had my high end system being killed by a 5400rpm crappy spin point. It really defeated the whole point of nice cpu, gpu, and memory.

I like the concept of the ssd.
But the expected life span is still quite short, right?

Hopefully untrue. This is the newer revision, originally they did have a lot of issues, but fingers crossed this one will be alright. They have 1 year warranties on them.

[SpiffyGTI]

I like the concept of the ssd.
But the expected life span is still quite short, right?

SSD lifespan is longer than you think.

[BRealistic]

SSD lifespan is longer than you think.

SSD= 1 to 2 years.
HDD= 5 to 10 years.

Amirite?

[Hostile]

SSD= 1 to 2 years.

Amirite?

Of course you're not...

[BRealistic]

Of course you're not...

Oh.. ok.

Anybody here have an SSD as the main drive in a daily used PC for more than 2 years without issue?

[Aonarch]

SSD= 1 to 2 years.
HDD= 5 to 10 years.

Amirite?

Not sure on SSD life, but HDD varies considerably. Some brands are better than others, but some models are troublesome.

[Mtl-Marc]

Oh.. ok.

Anybody here have an SSD as the main drive in a daily used PC for more than 2 years without issue?

Intel

[BRealistic]

Intel

I am glad at least one of the SSD manufacturers has a good reputation.


And I did not mean to be a negative nanny on the OP's thread.
It's just weird how insanely popular SSDs have been even with a very sketchy history- which is strange for computer hardware.

[SpiffyGTI]

SSDs have come a very long way from initial, ****ty hardware that a select few companies were generating.

Intel SSDs are rock solid and I've had one running as my primary OS drive for over 2.5 years. While some HDDs are capable of running 5-10 years, I've seen brand new drives die within weeks or a few short months. Everyone has their own opinion about the best/worst HDDs and best/worst SSDs, which I'm not trying to get into, but the general consensus is that SSDs last longer than 1-2 years.

[Vision33r]

If you want the best of both worlds, Rapid Storage is the way to go. SSD + Spindle together.

[ElixXxeR]

Oh.. ok.

Anybody here have an SSD as the main drive in a daily used PC for more than 2 years without issue?

I'm going on just over three years without a problem (Intel X25).

[PhReE]

Oh.. ok.

Anybody here have an SSD as the main drive in a daily used PC for more than 2 years without issue?

I have several SSD's in use that are from 2009 era that work just fine and have tons of lifetime left.

[Aonarch]

I have several SSD's in use that are from 2009 era that work just fine and have tons of lifetime left.

Good to hear.

[Brett92]

Congratulations OP, you will not want to go back to standard drives after having the speed of an SSD.

We just recently built a machine (well, added parts to an OEM system) for a customer and used an Intel 330 120 GB SSD. Read speeds are over 500 MB/s & write speeds are around 450 MB/s according to atto benchmark. Boot time is around 12 seconds, and that includes POST/BIOS! It's amazing.

I also have an Intel 330 SSD in my home machine, but it's connected to SATA2 ports (still plenty fast). Thinking of upgrading my motherboard to get SATA3 ports, and then buying an extra SSD and striping them. Seems mind-blowing just to even talk about! Wonder if it's possible to hit Gigabyte read speeds. Crazy!

[theevilshiftkey]

It's just weird how insanely popular SSDs have been even with a very sketchy history...

It makes your computer mega**** tons faster, what else do you need to know? Even if they were *guaranteed* to die in 2-4 years they'd be worth every penny. Are you sure you're a car guy?

I have 4 SSDs in my house, all but one of which are over 2 years old. One of the 1st generation drives (think I paid $400 for 80GB back then!) is starting to have hanging problems, but the rest are solid. Intel and Samsung.

[SpiffyGTI]

Yep, SSDs are probably the best upgrade per $$ right now. The performance upgrade is incredible.

[Hostile]

It's just weird how insanely popular SSDs have been even with a very sketchy history- which is strange for computer hardware.

A new technology had teething problems? You don't say.

SSDs are the one upgrade you can make to almost any computer and immediately see the improvement in just about every task you do.

[Aonarch]

Yep, SSDs are probably the best upgrade per $$ right now. The performance upgrade is incredible.

A new technology had teething problems? You don't say.

SSDs are the one upgrade you can make to almost any computer and immediately see the improvement in just about every task you do.

[Angry_Birds]

Not sure on SSD life, but HDD varies considerably. Some brands are better than others, but some models are troublesome.

I am glad at least one of the SSD manufacturers has a good reputation.


And I did not mean to be a negative nanny on the OP's thread.
It's just weird how insanely popular SSDs have been even with a very sketchy history- which is strange for computer hardware.

Yep, avoid OCZ like the plague.

I use Crucial M4's at home for my personal desktop and lab as they're a little cheaper than the Samsungs. We've probably bought close to 100 Samsung 830's at work (128GB's for workstations and laptops, probably about 20x 512GB's for our test and development servers), literally not a single one has failed.

[Aonarch]

Yep, avoid OCZ like the plague.

I use Crucial M4's at home for my personal desktop and lab as they're a little cheaper than the Samsungs. We've probably bought close to 100 Samsung 830's at work (128GB's for workstations and laptops, probably about 20x 512GB's for our test and development servers), literally not a single one has failed.

Good to hear. I was going to go with the Samsung, but I got the Crucial soo much cheaper than the Samsung after price matching. Notice the two O's in so. I'm super cereal.

[morbs_gt]

Oh.. ok.

Anybody here have an SSD as the main drive in a daily used PC for more than 2 years without issue?

I've been on a 40GB Intel SSD for about 3 years now on my main tower. Although I'm on linux, and the home directory is on that drive, most of my data is on a seperate HDD.

If I'm not mitsaken, it has mostly to do with the amount of writing being done to the drive. Chances are using an SSD solely for the OS and using another technology for storage that is more frequenty modified (as in more writes) would increase the SSD's lifespan.

[BRealistic]

I've been on a 40GB Intel SSD for about 3 years now on my main tower. Although I'm on linux, and the home directory is on that drive, most of my data is on a seperate HDD.

If I'm not mitsaken, it has mostly to do with the amount of writing being done to the drive. Chances are using an SSD solely for the OS and using another technology for storage that is more frequenty modified (as in more writes) would increase the SSD's lifespan.

My current win 7 PC boots from off to desktop ready to go in well under a minute.
If I am using a platter drive for storage, it seems like it wouldn't make everything I do faster..
If I can't use it for frequent read/write then what's the point?

[Mtl-Marc]

My current win 7 PC boots from off to desktop ready to go in well under a minute.
If I am using a platter drive for storage, it seems like it wouldn't make everything I do faster..
If I can't use it for frequent read/write then what's the point?

You can use SSDs for storage too. Knock yourself silly and buy a few of these bad boys.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16820167061

[Aonarch]

You can use SSDs for storage too. Knock yourself silly and buy a few of these bad boys.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16820167061

$$$$$$$$ Damn!

[morbs_gt]

My current win 7 PC boots from off to desktop ready to go in well under a minute.
If I am using a platter drive for storage, it seems like it wouldn't make everything I do faster..
If I can't use it for frequent read/write then what's the point?

Well to be blunt, you're better off with a large capacity SSD than small capacity if you're going to be doing lots of read/write. I guess the point is you'd have to write different areas of the chips, as opposed to writing over the same areas, which degrade the chips and eventually your drive fails after a couple years.

I'm using 2.5" SATA 3 HDD for media/data storage, and the 2.5" SSD for OS. It works fine. Then again I'm not running a pirate operation where I need high transfer rates 99% of the time, I just need to be able to transfer stuff from and to my NAS sometimes to watch stuff on the TV screen (the pc tower's card is 10/100 and that could use an upgrade since the NAS/Router have Giga ports.) and the phone's microsd which is pretty much the bottle neck.

[zhenya00]

My current win 7 PC boots from off to desktop ready to go in well under a minute.
If I am using a platter drive for storage, it seems like it wouldn't make everything I do faster..
If I can't use it for frequent read/write then what's the point?

Chances are that same computer would boot in under 20 seconds on a good SSD. Accessing storage is not generally the main bottleneck, it's the random access necessary during normal everyday stuff that a SSD makes so much better.

We have been using SSD's in our workplace for ~4 years now. The original 80GB Intel drive I started with for testing is still in service. We have approx a dozen Intel drives in service here, most at 2-3 years of life. The only ones I've had any trouble with were the 320 series drives, and I *think* that issue was related to the computer it was installed in, because that computer bricked two drives, and the new one has not bricked any. Plenty of other 320 drives have been holding up fine. I would not worry about drive lifespan in deciding to upgrade to a SSD.

[PhReE]

My current win 7 PC boots from off to desktop ready to go in well under a minute.
If I am using a platter drive for storage, it seems like it wouldn't make everything I do faster..
If I can't use it for frequent read/write then what's the point?

Installing windows on your SSD will make the biggest speed bump. You will be surprised. Also people WAYYYY over exaggerate how quickly SSD's die. I have an ssd in daily use that is from early 2010 (a 128GB C300) that still has 98% of total life remaining. This SSD gets plenty of heavy use and quite a bit of writing to it. Just forget about SSD lifetime, it's a non-issue. Get one and come to the next generation with the rest of us.

[theevilshiftkey]

Just forget about SSD lifetime, it's a non-issue. Get one and come to the next generation with the rest of us.

What he said.

Chances are that same computer would boot in under 20 seconds on a good SSD.

I have a new Dell laptop in front of me that POSTs *and* boots to desktop in 18 seconds using a cache drive. Another good option for people with space anxiety.

[spoonie]

are all SSD brands equal?

ocz, intel, sanforce, etc?

is there something i should be avoiding when looking for a 240-256gb ssd? they all seem to be similar prices.

[ATL_Av8r]

so back in the day, the bragging rights used to be based on MIPS, flops, polygons rendered, etc etc. Has that changed solely to boot time bragging with SSD?

[zhenya00]

are all SSD brands equal?

ocz, intel, sanforce, etc?

is there something i should be avoiding when looking for a 240-256gb ssd? they all seem to be similar prices.

I am not a fan of OCZ. Their drives tend to have the best benchmarks, but they also have a lot of failures.

In that size range I would be comfortable with something from Intel or Samsung. The Samsung 830 is a good drive at a good price right now.

[Power5]

Not ready for SSD lifespans but still attracted to them.

What is the program for boot times you used?