Patriot SSD vs Seagate HDD

[Jackofspades0]

Hi guys,

The last couple of days I was thinking of buying myself a SSD. I always thought it's a crazy idea to buy such a small hard drive for such a large amount of money untill I found out that some people buy both, put the OS on the SSD and the rest on the HDD and enjoy a huge increase in the speed of the computer. Anyway I want to know how this SSD: Patriot 32GB SATA2 PS-100 Series Solid State Drive would compare to my current Seagate Barracuda 500 GB 16 MB 7200 RPM Cache Hard Drive. Is it much faster?

The SSD costs twice as much as my HDD originally did and that's for only 32 GB. Does anyone know how large Win 7 is? I'd like to install the OS and Crysis 2 on the SSD if I buy myself one.

Thank you!

 

[jefe323]

the ssd is much faster then a mechanical hdd

you should have enough room for 7 and crysis

win 7 installed is <10gb

 

[Jackofspades0]

Thanks I didn't know Win 7 was that small lol. Thought it was 20 Gig.

Anyway I see that the speeds of the Patriot are 210 MB/s read and 150 MB/s write. Is that fast? I see I can order drives from a different country which is much faster, but I'd rather buy one here.

 

[toudoku]

All my Win 7 installations consume about 12-16GB plus 3-10GB for hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys (depending on the memory configuration: 2-6GB RAM). If you add the folder size for Documents & Settings and Program Files you will see, that there is not much space left on a 32GB SSD. That's why you should rather go for at least a 64GB SSD. If your budget is very limited have a look at anandtech's Value SSD Roundup. Otherwise Intel's G2 would be a good choice.

The numbers you wrote give nothing more than the maximum streaming performance, which is the least important performance number for a desktop drive (as long as you are not mainly doing high end video streaming). The more important number is the random access time which leads to faster os & program startup, especially if you start several programs at the same time. It's mainly concurrent disk accesses which will be much faster. So you can imagine under which conditions you can expect performance improvements with a SSD.

If I were you I would right now wait until Q4



Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Source: computerbase

 

[Jackofspades0]

OK thanks a lot I'm still going to wait a while since I'm an extremely poor student lol. Searched around a bit and found a 64 GB Kingston SSDNow V series hard drive. It's read & write speeds are a lot slower, (read/write=100/80) but you told me not to worry about these speeds too much?

Found some access times for a few hard drives. The Kingston, when compared to a WD Velociraptor (which I believe is a very fast hard drive) it's a lot faster (0,2 vs 6,9) but it writes and reads slower.

So let's say if I install a game on my Seagate and a SSD, it might take longer on the SSD, but when I play the game it will launch much faster and load much faster. Is this correct?

I guess it's worth waiting a few minutes longer to install a program if it's going to work a lot faster afterwards...

 

[RetiredChief]

Size - concur with toudoku, min size 50 -> 80 Gigs (64 Gig is a good entry point). Some of the newer, better SSDs are coming out with 50 gigs. Intels G2 80 gig use to be king of the hill, but has been surpased by newer models using the SF controller - BUT still a great SSD and since it is no longer king, it's price could drop.

You said you are a student, So I assume you are going to want to install programs (simular to) usoft office, maybe some photo editting program, and some video programs - these also take up some space, and benifit from being installed on the SSD.

Speed - Yes random 4 K read/writes and Seek times are the most important specs to look at. Sequential read/writes is for data/files that are "laid" next to each other - how often is that. Games, other than load times do not benifit much from an SSD, nor does internet use.

Watch out for some SSDs that have a great price. They may be "Yesteryears" left overs and do NOT support trim cmd. Case in point Dana Elect has a 80 Gig Intel (paid About $120 for it Did not take my own advice )product - They DO NOT tell you that it is the G1 version which does not support trim cmd. So make sure you look at reviews for the ones you are looking at.

My systems:
Intel 80 Gig G2 - I5-750 desktop
Patriot Torqx 128 gig - Toshibia A305 Laptop
Intel 80 Gig G1 - Toshibia A205 Loptop
WD blue 128 Gig - Alternate Drive (to Intel's 80 gig) for toshibia A205 Laptop

 

[foscooter]

^ +1 Agree w/RetiredChief! Especially on "bargain priced" SSDs. Yes, they'll be faster than any HDD you can get, but not as good a current models. TRIM support is very important, to keep the drive "self-optimized" as they do degrade over time, with multiple wirites and rewrites, but this is a whole other topic. TRIM is part of Windows 7, unsupported in any older MS OS, like XP.

My rig only uses 22+GB of my 80GB set up. If have Windows 7 Home Premium, Office 2007 Enterprise, Quicken 2010 Home & Business, Norton Security Suite (from Comcast), iTune 9.xx, and any added IE plug-ins, and software updates. All my libraries are on my data/media drive(s) (i.e. My Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos.), as well as my pagefile.sys, which is never used as I have 6GB of RAM.

As as to touched on, once the OS/Programs are installed, reads are where it's at! As installation is still super fast!

Great reply toudoku! Love that inserted image! I'll refer to it in the future.

 

[Jackofspades0]

I'm having trouble finding a wide range of SSDs over here... what do you guys think of this Kingston SSD? (if anyone knows anything about it)

http://www.computersonly.co.za/productdetail.aspx?sku=SNV125S264GB&categoryId=49688

If anyone is interested, here's my PC specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz
4 GB DDR3-1333
500 GB Seagate Barracuda
NVIDIA GTX 260
550W Cooler Master PSU

 

[foscooter]

Sorry, but that is an awful SSD. R/W of only 100/70! HDDs can beat that.

The Intel X25-M 80GB does r/w of 250/100MBps.

OCZ Vertex 2 do beat Intel, due to the "new" Sandforce Controllers. Kingston used to use a JMicron controller, and they were awful!

If you can find them:

OCZ Vertex 2
OCZ Agility 2
Intel X25-M

Those are the ones I've hear are good. Others have Crucial C300, but I know not of them.

Is this for a laptop or desktop? SATA II or IDE? By your info, I thinks its a modern desktop, with SATA II?

 

[Jackofspades0]

I had a look around, and those SSD's are insanely expensive! If I buy one here of course. I live in South-Africa and a SSD costs more than 2x as much! Intel X25-V 40 GB costs R1,700 over here and only $105 (that's R760) if you buy it from Newegg! I'm a bit worried about the 110V and 220V thing if I buy something from the US...

Those drives are too expensive for me if I buy them here. Importing products is not something I really want to do... too scared I end up with broken parts when it arrives.

Yes it is a desktop and SATA II.

 

[Jackofspades0]

Maybe it's a better idea to buy the Patriot 32 gig then? Here's a link to the SSD:

http://www.take2.co.za/electronics-patriot-32gb-sata2-ps-100-series-solid-state-drive-2-5-inch-6086749.html

The read speed is advertised as 210 MB/s and write speed 150 MB/s.

In a review of the SSD they tested the drive with CrystalDiskMark and found the following results (read speed first then write):

Seq 181.2 MB/ 39,98 MB/s
512K 108.6 MB/s 68,23 MB/s
4K 4.197 MB/s 2,437 MB/s

In the review it says Patriot promises to release a firmware update to help with the low write speeds, and that was 6 months ago. I also tested my HDD with the same tool to see how they compare:

Seq 107,3 MB/s 102 MB/s
512K 37,71 MB/s 63,50 MB/s
4K 0,472 MB/s 1,368 MB/s

The SSD seems to be faster expcept for the Seq Write speed. Maybe a firmware update fixed this. Do you guys think there will be a big performance increase?

 

[RetiredChief]

Do not be so concerned about the Sequential read and writes. The two most important points are the 4 K Random read/writes and the access time (0.1 to 0.2 mSec for SSD compared to 7.6 mSec for a 10K rpm HDD and approx 12 mSec for a 7200 rpm HDD.

On random 4 K, HDDs just break 1 compared to an avg of 4 to 40 for SSDs

Reason 4 k random more important - Most of you files will be under 16k and VERY rarely wil the "Next" file be found on the next sector. Sequential is important when working on very large files like jpeg, bit mapp, or video files. BUT these type files are almost always on a HDD - Not many can affort to but a 30 Gig Blu-ray video file on a SSD.

 

[Jackofspades0]

Thanks for that RetiredChief. Seems like the Firmware was updated for the PS-100 and the 4K write speed was increased to about 4,319 MB/s compared to the old 2,436 MB/s. So I guess the Patriot PS-100 is still one of the slower SSD's but still faster than my HDD.