What SSD

[cheeseborger]

Hey forum, i was looking into getting a ssd and am not sure which one is best to get and also whether or not i should get 2 slower ones for cheap and raid them or get a single fast one and just be happy with that, i only really want a 64 gb drive as i cannot afford much more than $150 so if you guys can suggest either 1 good one for under 150 or 2 and a raid controller i would much appreciate it. Also if it would be better to wait it not like i know what im missing so i wouldn't mind waiting.
I would be willing to stretch my budget to $200 maybe $250 if the performance/storage increase is substantially worth it.

 

[adampower]

Tom's way ahead of you. Actually, he just put this out not long ago.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-ssd-price-per-gb-ssd-performance,2880.html

imho raid 0 is much less dramatic with ssd than with hdds and, therefore, not necessary for 99% of us. Even 'enthusiasts'. One ssd is MUCH faster and better than any spinner or combination of spinners. Two in a RAID 0 is MUCH + a little faster. Does that make sense to anybody but me?

 

[buzznut]

Hey forum, i was looking into getting a ssd and am not sure which one is best to get and also whether or not i should get 2 slower ones for cheap and raid them or get a single fast one and just be happy with that, i only really want a 64 gb drive as i cannot afford much more than $150 so if you guys can suggest either 1 good one for under 150 or 2 and a raid controller i would much appreciate it. Also if it would be better to wait it not like i know what im missing so i wouldn't mind waiting.
I would be willing to stretch my budget to $200 maybe $250 if the performance/storage increase is substantially worth it.

...And that is exactly what I would recommend for you. The smaller drives are quite a bit slower, the bigger drives are expensive. That makes them unattractive for storage, but great for boot drives. Right now the best bang for buck is the 128GB drives. They perform similar to the larger drives but have cost under $2 a gig. Which is what you want.

An example of a good 120GB SSD SATA III:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348

I've seen this one on sale for around $200. If this is too much for you, some of the 64GB drives are not too shabby.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233108

I also would steer you away from a raid setup. Trim won't work with SSD's in raid, so performance will go down with time. Also there's the extra work involved in raid. It just isn't worth it, plus 2 slower drives just doesn't make economical sense. Those are my thoughts.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Before you invest the dough, make sure you will get what you anticipate. I have the Vertex 3 SSD (550 Mbs) and the Seagate Baracuda XT HD (148 MB/s) ... both confirmed w/ ATTO Disk Benchmark

Boot time from SSD = 15.6 seconds
Boot Time from HD = 21.2 seconds

Loading my MMO from HD and SSD is 40 - 45 seconds either way.


5.6 seconds for $300 .... I wasn't expecting anything earth shattering but many peeps jumping into SSD's are ..... honestly, I'm not all that excited about it.

HD measurements done with SSD data cable unplugged

 

[cheeseborger]

hmm, thanks all i currently use a 1tb wd caviar black 64mb cache 7200rpm, would i see much performance gain or is it like JackNaylorPE said not worth it?

 

[cheeseborger]

Best answer selected by cheeseborger.

 

[daship]

Before you invest the dough, make sure you will get what you anticipate. I have the Vertex 3 SSD (550 Mbs) and the Seagate Baracuda XT HD (148 MB/s) ... both confirmed w/ ATTO Disk Benchmark

Boot time from SSD = 15.6 seconds
Boot Time from HD = 21.2 seconds

Loading my MMO from HD and SSD is 40 - 45 seconds either way.


5.6 seconds for $300 .... I wasn't expecting anything earth shattering but many peeps jumping into SSD's are ..... honestly, I'm not all that excited about it.

HD measurements done with SSD data cable unplugged

Well if your boot times and loading times are off that far, you have something wrong, and or your motherboard doesn't support the Sata 3 rated speeds of your drive. I have a plextor 128G and my boot time is under 9 seconds. And WoW loads in a few seconds.

 

[groberts101]

boot times are only part of the true picture as there are far too many variables at play to use that metric and expect any SSD to overcome background hardware and application initailization.

The biggest gains from SSD are the major boosts in multitasking due to much better random file performance. Try opening Photoshop while you have 5 browser tabs running with media streaming in and see what the HDD does. Now do the same on any SSD and watch things fly open and closed before you can barely blink.

 

[nofun]

Startup time depends on a lot of things, but I can attest that you will see an improvement. How much of an improvement depends primarily on:

- How much of your startup time is taken by loading BIOS and other hardware controllers. Hard drive speed does not impact these.

- What OS you are loading. Windows 7 does a good job of taking advantage of SSDs, while older versions are not as good. You will not see as good of an improvement if you are running Windows XP.

 

[buzznut]

hmm, thanks all i currently use a 1tb wd caviar black 64mb cache 7200rpm, would i see much performance gain or is it like JackNaylorPE said not worth it?

As mentioned above boot times are only one metric. Boot time can be affected by many things. I went from 1 minute to about 30 seconds, but I have a very modest drive right now.

Really, its about overall system responsiveness, and I and many other SSD owners can attest to what a difference it can make in everything you do on a PC. I for one have never sat at my desk while the hard dive light is blinking away and doing nothing because my system won't respond since I put an SSD boot drive in. My laptop still frustrates me, I was sitting around for several minutes today waiting for some processes to stop pinging my hard drive, all I wanted to do was listen to some music while house cleaning..

I also notice a very big difference in load times, especially in games. Browsers pop right up. Look, if you're buying a s#!7-hot system, why stick a boring old mechanical drive in there when you can ride in comfort in a shiny new SSD?