Hard disks again : can you help ? It’s about SSD disks !
(7 votes, average: 3.29 out of 5)
Loading...Hello everyone, I’m resuming the discussion about hard disks I started yesterday.
It’s an official help request, please, if you’re competent in this matter, your help will be appreciated 
To summarize : my system hard disk has started (old SATA barracuda) his dying dance, and I’m searching for a replacement. An SSD replacement 
Explanations and questions follow, You’re allowed to skip this if you’re just after the porn anyway, but PLEASE, please, if you have some competence on this subject (I have close to none), I’ll be VERY grateful if you can help ! :o
As a system disk, I do NOT care about the disk size in gigabytes as long as it can accomodate windows Seven (I don’t see why I should reinstall XP ^^) and the usual programs. 2.5″ and 3.5″ can fit in my tower. My max budget would be around 140 €, 190 US$. I’m not an Uber-geek, my purpose is to plug the disk and forget about it for as long as possible. My typical usage : office, picture editing (photoshop, gimp), internet, internet flash games, internet streaming music, video playing (not creating), and very old games not using resources or space.
I have very clear requirements, the most important coming first, the less important coming last :
– reliability and lifetime
– performance
– silence
In this regard, the reply is simple : SSD disks. Yes, but which ones ?
From what I read, with a growing price each time (“good” implying both reliability and performance), there are :
the lame SSD disks,
the good SSD disks (Vertec with Sandforce)
the very good SSD disks (Intel and Crucial with C300)
I am NOT after an expensive 0.5% performance gain between one SSD disk and another (comparing to my old dying barracuda disk anyway…), I’m after quality and reliability.
In the end, this would be all about chosing between Intel SSD disks and Crucial C300 SSD disks.
The Crucial c300, 64 GB would be around 130-135 € in my country. Just my budget.
The Intel X-25-V, 40 GB would be around 105 €. BUT : I doubt 40 GB is enough for Windows Seven with a few programs (the largest being Photoshop). This is a problem, since all larger Intel disks are TOO expensive for my budget.
At this point, if you’re competent, please, can you answer three questions ?:
– am I even correct, not mistaken, with the information I gathered so far ? 
– would you have a recommendation between Intel and Crucial C300 ?
– 40 GB with Intel, honestly, that’s NOT enough for Windows Seven + usual programs (I have a non-gamer profile, non-video creation either), right ?
Thank you VERY much if you can share your knoweledge and help, and suggestions ! ^_^
well win7 goes 16-20 GB soo, can you work with 20 gb.
I always install big Games like WoW on a 2. HD, , wich is currently the way to go, i would say, with SSDs.
avoid the v they are intended for netbooks mainly meaning slow . and as i said before due to possibilities of people selling older models with same tag an ssd has absolutely the need to have the TRIM function . otherwise you get a very slow disk after a few weeks of erasing and changing data on it . so id say take the c300 . if you use vista you will need a program thats normally no problem to get for the trim function ,in 7 its already built in.
I too recommend the C300.
only to give an idea V= read spead 170 mb/s write speed 35 M= 250 and 80 meams v is not faster than a good HD
after rereading my first post and the very poor grammar on it , yes i know the V has also the trim function
so i only gave a suggestion between speed , size and price go for the C300 .
Just be sure to check the specifications of the SSD you wish to buy. For instance, a SSD that uses NAND flash memory can retain memory without any power, but have a limited lifespan, measured in program/erase cycles(p/e cycles) of around 1'000'000 cycles for MLCs and 4'000'000 to 5'000'000 cycles for SLCs. This can be significantly enhanced by a wear process called wear leveling, but a SSD that uses wear leveling cannot be defragmented.
I have both Intel and OCZ SSD drives, as well as the Toshiba SSD (a re-labeled drive I’m sure) that came in my Qosmio X505-860. I have found that 40GB is a bit of a pinch, BUT, if you are smart about a few things you can not only extend the life of the drive but also save yourself some major space.
1) No swap file. Or put it on another drive.
2) No search indexing on the drive, and put the temp files for other drives on another drive.
3) Move temp directories to another drive (change the Environment Variables under Advanced Settings in System Properties)
So, some see this as an annoyance, and others see it as a reason why SSDs aren’t worth the price. But if you tweak it correctly, an SSD can provide some awesome speeds to your machine. Remember to read up on other general suggestions. Trim doesn’t work on RAID0 volumes, otherwise I’d suggest using 2x40GB C300 drives. The results are phenomenal, but the loss of cleanup can hamper performance significantly over time. (Something I don’t have to deal with on my OCZ drives..)
So, if you do a few things to optimize the drive, then 40GB can be enough. You can also save more space by doing a manual image over to another drive instead of depending on Windows Restore. This is smart to do regardless of technology on your system drive…as having an OS image makes rebuilds a snap should something go wrong…
i have a 30GB with win 7 on it, but the drive is strictly OS + drivers, and some tiny 3rd party software. i also have a separate regular drive for games and major apps, and another drive for downloads.
under NO CIRCUMSTANCES DEFRAG IT!, also check if whichever SSD u get supports trim (win 7 feature that optimizes space and read/writes) defragging SSDs tend to wear out the drive quicker.
No offense, but yuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe a 64 or 40 GB Hard Drive was great in the year 1999 but we're at the end of 2010, get real.
I would barely hold the OS. Are you planning on buying a separate Hard Drive for storing data?
There are plenty of HD with more than 1.5 TB of many different brand names, known and unknown, that are very fast and silent and cost less than $100 US Dollars, take your pick. Like I said before, attach an HD cooler to your HD and it'll double it's life, no need to buy those super expensive brands that have little to no space. I wish you the best in your hunt.
1. He only need a long-lasting disk for OS and some low-resource activities (with that much space and adequate RAM you're good to go)
2. Seeing how Oliver have THIS large hentai collection, I'd assume he have a special disk for data storage.
If you see from a plain sight though, yeah "upgrading" from 400GB to 64GB is kind of… indecent.
"reliability and lifetime are the most important, therefore I'll buy an SSD"
WTF!?!??!
Try enterprise class 7200rpm SATA drives. They're more reliable than hgh end desktop drives, have the same or better performance, and for less than the cost of an SSD you can buy a couple and do RAID mirroring (or buy several and do RAID5). If you're too paranoid, buy them from different places so as not to get drives from the same lot (if you get a faulty drive, the ones that came out of the factory at the same time are likely to fail similary)
I apologize if you're already set on buying an SSD and this post just bothers
I don't have much ideas, but I would recommend that you read the following blog post: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/revisiti…
I'm an American, so I'm having to do a little conversion for the exact prices, but I have a roomie who just two days ago constructed a new computer with all kinds of bells and whistles. I'm not completely tech-illiterate, but he makes me look like a "special child" when it comes to these things.
So when I say that an Solid State Drive isn't really necessary unless you're taking this computer of yours into god knows what kind of environments and jostling it about something fierce, you don't really need one. It's only real advantage over the standard electromechanical Hard Disk Drive is that it's tougher and retrieves information much the same way as a Flash drive, thus requiring far less maintenance. In fact, as of 2010, most SSDs use NAND-based flash memory, which retains memory even without power. SSDs using volatile random-access memory (RAM) also exist for situations which require even faster access, but do not necessarily need data persistence after power loss, or use batteries to back up the data after power is removed. However, you're limited to 64GB and a little more than that if you spend more money. Whereas, if you go with a traditional HDD, you can get far more storage space, and just as fast data retrieval, with great reliability.
Take this jem I looked up, for instance: http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/i…
That HDD has a total of 2TB, is equivalent to 4p per Gigabyte, has a buffer size of 64MB and a lot more details that make it a good buy.
It more than meets your requirements in the order that you listed them, even.
It's reliable and has a 3 year warranty in case it gets less reliable over time.
It has a good drive transfer rate, and operates at about 7200 rpm, so you won't find yourself waiting forever for your data.
And it's quiet. Quite quiet, really.
And if you want to spend a little bit more and get less total Hard Drive space, but get a slight increase in other areas of performance, you can get this one: http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/i…
That one is equivalent to 6p per Gigabyte, but has a cache of 32MB, though it has better overall performance ratings.
In the end, it's your call. If you're concerned with random power outages, tough environments (for whatever reason), etc… I'd suggest just not taking the computer you'd have the HDD in into odd places, and having it plugged into a nice ($30 or so is fine) surge protector (save the receipt, that's how you collect on the warranty those things offer if the surge protector doesn't protect your hardware) or if you want to spend at least $60 or up to $120, get a UPS. A surge protector is good enough, though, if you don't have regular power problems.
I don't know if this has been helpful or not, but I hope it has.
Ack. It occurs to me that I said in the third to last paragraph that "if you want to spend a little bit more", but I meant to say "a bit less" The second link I provided is about 20€ or so cheaper than the first HDD I suggested.
Hello, J'ai cru comprendre que monsieur H-rules parlais français?
Je travaille chez un grossiste informatique, pas en tant que technicien donc la partie technique je ne pourrais pas t'aider, néanmoins en tant que commercial j'ai vu pas mal de solutions passer dans le catalogue.
Le SSD est un nouveau produit, c'est très délicat de dire quel SSD est meilleur, pour connaître les perfs d'un SSD il faut regarder sa vitesse d'écriture et de lecture, pour un budget de 150TTC je ne pense pas que tu trouveras une bête de course. Perso je n'ai jamais testé le SSD mais un disque dur traditionnel quand il meurt tu as des symptômes, le SSD par contre je pense aucun moyen de savoir.
Il y a effectivement des disque de classe entreprise qui sont plus robustes, une solution mais je pense, pas facile à trouver sur le marché grand public et surement plus couteux qu'un disque lambda à voir.
Mais il existe également des solutions logiciels, tout ce qui est backup, Norton Ghost ou autre Acronis Backup & Recovery et aussi le RAID http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_%28informatique%29 dans ton cas 2 disques de petite capa en RAID-1.
J'ai 3 constructeurs de DD sur mon catalogue, Seagate, Samsung et Western Digital, les stats SAV montrent (du moins ds mon entreprise) que WD a le moins de pannes parmis les trois et Samsung étant le pire (ou le meilleur) en terme de retour SAV.
Dernier point en ce qui me concerne je tourne avec un vieux WD 500Go depuis je pense 5 bonnes années sans trop de peine et 24/24 pour le moment il tiens, à côté j'ai 3 x 1To Black pour le stockage comme ça ça décharge le disque système.
As some people already stated. SSD are not deadly required, but taking into account your preferences… I would say that a SSD has (physically speaking) a better lifetime due to having no movable parts and generates less heat (because it uses less power), though the size is a crippling factor
But for ur wallet's sake, I would have you consider on a Western Digital HDD (Raptor/ Velociraptor or a Caviar Black) mounted with an aftermarket cooler. which should keep your temps low (increasing lifetime) and u get 7-10k RPM (performance).
I dont wanna go tecno-geek here,but u should also check ur pc case for airflow. bad airflow may be affecting ur HDDs lifetime on the long run.
I strongly prefer intel C300 because of price to performance ratio, also because its crucial who is in the business of solid state technology, intel is not. The X25 series was a great drive when it was released, but its a bit dated and the drive isn't any better than many of the newer offerings.
I don't know what the guy above is saying but I saw raid mentioned. I'd strongly avoid doing raid for anything unless its done right. Reliable raid array requires true hardware controllers, and a fast array requires expensive hardware controllers (Adeptec 5405 would be my suggestion).
Buy an OCZ Revo drive it has speeds up to 500MB/s read and write but its a PCI slot drive so u need a free PCI slot if u dont know what that is its the same slot u stick ur graphics card into. thats the best drive for price on the market and u can get the 120GB version it should retail around 350ish US 400ish CAD
Any SSD based on either the idilinx controller, the intel controller, or the samsung controller will work nicely for your needs. I would avoid the revodrive because it doesn’t support TRIM. I have an intel x25-m 80GB SSD myself: these are supposedly very reliable, and while mine failed, I was able to get a replacement **cross-shipped** to me with minimal effort/cost.
If you want detailed advice from people who are truly experts, make a thread on the http:// http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/index.php PC forums
Any SSD based on either the idilinx controller, the intel controller, or the samsung controller will work nicely for your needs. I would avoid the revodrive because it doesn't support TRIM (which means it will slow down greatly after you use it for a while. I have an intel x25-m 80GB SSD myself: these are supposedly very reliable, and while mine failed, I was able to get a replacement [u]cross-shipped[/u] to me with minimal effort/cost.
40GB should be enough for win7 [20GB] and apps [the rest – slightly less than 20GB because of the conversion from binary GB to decimal GB]
also, you might want to look into getting a Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM drive- cheaper than an SSD for the capacity, reliable, and faster than any 7.2K rpm drive
To get an expert recommendation, though, you should post in these forums http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=3…
You say you want a disk with a long lifespan? Then SSD is not going to be your solution for your long term needs:-( SSD uses flash technology to store information, this makes it very fast and allows it to talk with the computers hardware alot faster. BUT since this is based on flash tech it also inherits a flaw with flash. Everytime a block or sector of data is begin overwritten that block or sector DEGARDES and loses performence. Now there are ways to prolong the lifespan of an SSD but ultimatly it is going to have a shorter lifespan then a traditional drive.
I don't recomend having an OS on your SSD for everytime you start your computer the drive overwrites a few blocks of data but I must admit that having a fast booting OS is tempting but since it won't last in the long run it will only make it a temporary luxury.
It is true what Mr N is saying about an SSD beign physicly robust for it can take alot of external punishment before failing. Never the less it has a shorter life span none the less.
With all that said I recomend a traditional harddrive to solve your long term needs. You mentioned that your computer skills were kinda….lacking, even more reason to get a regular harddrive.
If you intend to run Windows from an SSD you will have to realign it to use it. If you get a problem with that you would be in quite a bind.
A regular drive dosn't need to be realigned to work with Windows.
Hope that helps and good luck with your harddrive.
With kind regards doctor_kakan.
I wonder why people are still trying to convince you to go with a HDD…
Anyways, Kingston has the best price to performance ratio. 64 GB will be more than enough for your OS as well as programs you use often (like Adobe Photoshop and MS Office and whatnot). The Windows pagefile (virtual memory) will use the most number of write cycles, but you can configure Windows to put the pagefile on a different HDD. Lifespan problem solved.
Kingston does memory.
$124.99 USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N…
Bon, vu que j'ai acheté mon ocz vertex 60go il y a plus d'un an, je conseillerais pas de modèles, je suis plus a jour
par contre peut dire que mon win 7 après presque un an d'utilisation, toute la suite d'adobe et un tas de logiciels que je pourrais désinstaller (mais pas les jeux) occupe maintenant juste un peut moins de 40go.
donc 40go suffiraient, mais avec 60 tu t'offre le confort de pas avoir a surveiller l'espace
juste, l'idéal est d'avoir un disque qui supporte le trim et une forme de garbage cleaner (le disque s'auto-nettoie quand il est au repos) c'est le cas des vertex.
le deuxième option réduit en théorie un peu la durée de vie, mais comme (a moins que ça aie changé récemment) il n'y a aucune façon d'être sûr a 100% que le trim est bien fonctionnel sous 7…
Hello,
J'ai vu ta demande, tu as actuellement le C300 de Crucial avec controlleur Marvell, mieux qu'un X25 M intel.
– 64 Go à 355 Mo/sec lecture et 75 Mo/sec lecture
– 128 Go à 355/140 Mo/sec
– 256 Go à 355/215 Mo/sec
Ensuite, tu as les Agility 2 de OCZ avec controlleur sandforce SF-1200
– 60 Go jusqu'au 240 Go : 275 Mo/sec lecture et 265 Mo/sec lecture
– 480 Go à 250/240 Mo/sec
Donc tu as le choix niveau prix / perfs lecture ou écriture, ensuite reste à savoir la taille, prends un 60 Go, ça te laissera de la marge au cas ou.
Hésite pas à me recontacter si tu as besoin.
Ok, i dont speak french ,,, but i guess i know what hes going for. Its true that lower capacity ssds with the marvell controller suffer from the lack of write speed through the limited number of NANDS. BUT the writes are more important than the reads and 75MBs is comparable with a good HDD. But dont forget the unreliability of the Sandforce Controller when it comes to Reads. Really bad for heavly packed files like MP3s and Pictures which are on its own compressed so the controller cant do its "Magic compressing" very good and drops the Read speeds to HDD standards, resulting in a slowish system.
The Marvell chip (C300 Series) is reliable in performance. ´hes like a triathlete, he can do everything, the sandforce is just a hurdle racer ;O
And about dying blocks within the NANDS, there is some memory left for compensation, so at least the next 10 years should work without loosing any capacity which results also in nearly no performance lose.
C300 FTW!!! Go for it.
PS: I recommend the 128GB version ^^
PPS: Sorry that im not able to reply in french, never had it and will never learn it XD
yop,
pour faire simple, voila un test qui rentre tout à fait dans tes critères
"Huit SSD à moins de 150 € en test chez HFR" http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/59562-ssd-onyx-…
Sinon, pour un budget un poil superieur, tu as le SSD Intel Postville qui n'a plus rien à prouver ( http://www.materiel.net/ctl/SSD/59542-X25_M_80_Go…
Salut,
Je sais pas ou tu comptais acheter ton disque mais j’ai trouvé un vertex 2 de 60 Go à 140 euros sur materiel.net…
Le SSD le plus intéressant à 140€ est sans conteste le Crucial RealSSD C300, avec une capacité de 64 Go, une rapidité excellente, un matériel très récent (c'est important pour les SSD) et c'est l'un des moins chers à 64Go dans cette gamme de performances.
Lien: http://www.materiel.net/ctl/SSD/58967-RealSSD_C30…
The short and simple answer would be:
SSD are still too expensive.
Thus they are useless for file storage, which is what you’d probably be using them for mostly.
However, you could get a 64 GB one (which range around 100-150e) that you could use as your dedicated startup disk. This will greatly! increase your PC bootup times.
Beyond that, don’t bother with getting any of the really big and expensive ones for file storage.
2.5 TB regular hard disks are way cheaper and awesome for file storage.
J'ai une tour avec 4To en SATA2 et un bon matos à coté.
En changeant de tour tu peux faire plus d'économie qu'avec un SSD car c'est vraiment du matos pour pur GEEK mais entre le The Crucial c300 et The Intel X-25-V c'est Crucial qui gagne : il a plus de niveau technologique.
Je propose pour ma part quelque chose entre les 2 : Corsair Nova Series V64 – SSD 64 Go 64 Mo 2.5" Serial ATA II : taille du meilleur avec une techno plus performante. http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00097039.html
En tout cas 64Go cache 64Mo et SATA 2 ou 3 pour :
– reliability and lifetime ( SATA 2 ou 3)
– performance (cache 64Mo)
– silence (Vibrations en fonctionnement et vibrations hors fonctionnement : voir site du constructeur)
Bonne chance
Hello
Franchement je te conseille l'Intel Postville 2 de 80 Go (le grand frère de celui que tu as donné). Je l'ai acheté et même s'il coute un peu cher, il est juste parfait !
Btw for those worried about write endurance, I would refer to this article, http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.h… although write endurance is a factor, with todays endurances, his calculation at the end shows that's not really anything to worry about. since at CONSTANT non-stop rewriting of the drive, it would still take 51 years for the drive to die. (based on an endurance of 2mil, where most drives are between 1-5mil, so even at 1mil, that's 25.5 years)
You know a good value might be to check out the Momentus XT. It's a hybrid drive, so it has both the SSD portion and the Traditional Platters. There is a video on their site: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops…. which does a comparison between 4 drives. Newegg has the 500GB on sale for $100 which ends tonight: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N….
For some reason this post would not post through….
You know a good value might be to check out the Momentus XT. It's a hybrid drive, so it has both the SSD portion and the Traditional Platters. There is a video on their ste which does a comparison between 4 drives. Newegg has the 500GB on sale for $100 which ends tonight.
For some reason this post would not post through….
Ok, the link from Kenny`Mac doesn’t work, but it’s really so easy:
34nm intel flash has around 10k write cycles and Intel specifies a write amplification of around 1.1 for desktop useage with their controller (other modern controllers shouldn’t be much worse and SF based drives should’ve a wa < 1).
Even if we use only half of the resulting number that's still several hundreds TBs of writes.
The Intel drive is getting long in the tooth, but have the advantage of being the most tested drive out there and therefore the most reliable.
Both SF (Vertex2) and Micron (C300) based drives will be faster though.
I am currently running this SSD with Win7 and its flawless: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N…
There are newer SSD with higher writes but since its a system disk, the reads are the critical part.
Hello.
From my point of view, SSD are good for laptops and netbooks.
1. SSD is more shock resistant than classic hdd, has lower heat production and lower power consumption.
2. Laptops and netbooks are hard to upgrade, so they have limited lifespan. So have SSD.
And about what SSD to chose… both have their plus and minus. And both will probably do their job well. So choose whatever you prefer. It's your PC after all.
http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/153084/HDD_SOLID_STAT…
280mbs Read, 270 mbs write, and pretty cheap as well. The best choise, I think.
~190 bucks, 60gb.
I think the people that claim enterprise 7200rpm drives have the same or better performance as SSD's are on drugs. Are you guys even in the IT field?
Do you even read benchmarks on the internet before making such a claim? Do you have screenshots of any tests done by yourself proving this fact?
Stop giving Oliva false information that you have no idea on. It is most likely true that enterprise drives will last longer than SSD's, but to claim that they are the same performance as SSD hdd's is quite a funny claim to make.
Oliva did state that his needs is speed, not storage.
Oliva: What you need to decide is whether you think speed comes first over reliability. I'm sure that the enterprise drives do last longer but in my field i.e storage engineer at a university, yes we deal with heaps of types of storage. SAS, SSD, SATA, SCSI blahblahblahblah you name it, we use it. We've had heaps of enterprise drives fail as much as SSD's so just because Seagate claims a failrate of 0.4% in the lifetime of 5yrs with the enterprise drives don't mean anything.
If you really some speed SSD's are the way to go. We have about roughly 500gb of SSD's here constantly crunching small files 24/7 for most of the year for the past 4yrs and they are totally fine. These are Intel X-2 i believe and guess what? they are still crunching small files without any errors.
We did however had hiccups out of the box but after firmware updates they were fine.
Do not believe anyone that tells you that SSD's will die within 5yrs etc because that kind of advice is regarding to the early stages of SSD technology and it's improved greatly over the past 5yrs or so.
If you want absolute reliability then get one of those enterprise drives but be aware, we've had them fail in less than a year. Alot of factors come into play when it comes to normal moving part hard drives. Things such as temperature, humidity, ventilation. All of these factors play a part on howlong these hard drives will last. SSD's don't suffer as much with those factors as they use less power, so they won't be as hot for starters. It is a common fact that any electronic circuit that runs cooler will last longer.
Something for you to think about.
i was only talking about the V version of the intels who are lame point i dont need to show my it credentials and if you really read his post he wants more the reliability than the full power and so if you are so great you should know the MTBF of the intel ssd is as high than the enterprise drives namely 1.2 mil hours and now stop giving oliver the female version of his name .
The majority of modern/recent SSDs are just about even par in terms of everyday performance; simply switching from an HDD to SSD will net the average consumer a vast increase in perceived productivity. Unless you work with programs that frequently and constantly access the disk all the time (e.g. video editing); you are not likely to gain much from the "ultra" high performance SSD (controllers).
To support Windows 7 and programs, 64GB or more is ideal. Anything less and you'll be concerned about installing too many programs and having to move data files to another disk/media. Note that Windows 7 generates paging/swap and hibernation files (pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys) in accordance to how much memory is in the system by default: the more RAM/memory you have, the larger these files become, unless you turn these features off. As an example, if you have 8GB of RAM expect to lose roughy 14GB to these files (8GB for swap; 6GB for hibernation); expect to lose 1.75x the amount of your installed RAM on the SSD. The rest of Windows 7 will run about 15GB for a fresh install.
In short, just make sure to get an(y) SSD that was released recently and you should be fine; between the two choices you gave, the Crucial C300 is the answer due to capacity. The performance of the C300 may actually even be overkill for your usage needs, so you might widen your scope to include other brands and maybe score better in terms of price per GB. You're most likely going to notice the lack of capacity before you fret about any performance shortcomings (especially since you're moving from HDD to SSD). In the tech circles, no one is really complaining about the performance of the average SSD, but everyone is complaining about the price per GB.
install HD Sentinel
it’s free and a useful tool to monitor the health of all your HD
they also show the degree of your HDs, so if it goes beyond 50 Celsius, you WILL know
if the HD is failing, you WILL know beforehand
reliability, reliability, reliability
Whatever hard disk, HDD or SSD, you get it will still mean that all your eggs are in one basket (one disk).
A couple of people have mentioned using 2 disks in a RAID array.
As I understand it (and I'm not very techy) to put it simply, 2 disks in a RAID array mean that everything done on one disk is mirrored on the other disk at the same time. If one disk goes, then you simply plug in another disk and the good disk copies everything to the new disk and life goes on in a few minutes.
The requirements are that the disks must be the same size and your motherboard must have the facility. Any pc in the last 5 years should have it (check your documents or the BIOS).
Hopefully someone more techy than me can confirm all this (without being too technical
)
As for hard disk, just make sure it has a good cache size.
Thanks for all your hard work.
Thats called RAID 1 mode and it is as you say except the same size. nowadays as long as the new one is at least the same size if its bigger you loose space but still better than loosing the data . and use the mainboard raid not a software version . for those confounding software version with driver for windows no its not the same . software version is a program simulating a raid (tested it once lost all data in 3 days from a raid 1 firunately i didnt delete the data on my old disk) and the driver is only because windows needs a driver for everything .main difference is you can repair a hardware raid in the bootup without having to load windows or any other os
only problem you need to disks , they will be slower and you need the space for them. dont ever never use a raid 0 on disks with valuable data they are murphys law attracting . they will always fail one day and then you can cry after your data unless you want to spand 900 euro for the repair service with the risk seeing the site we are they ll report you for dubious images on you disk. and no not every main board has hardware raid.
oh and it takes a few hours for the rebuild not minutes but you can work because it is done in the background
Thanks for that
– So mirroring = RAID1 (Wikipedia is quite helpful on this)
– The disks need not be the same size but the excess capacity if one disc is larger will be ignored and unusable.
– but the data is mirrored and as you said "firunately i didnt delete the data on my old disk" so the data is safer – i.e. data duplicated is safer than data on its own.
– use the Motherboard RAID and not software emulation
– The speed loss is around 3% I believe
– "it takes a few hours for the rebuild not minutes but you can work because it is done in the background "
Looks good to me – for "reliability and lifetime" [prime requirements]
A couple of 320-500 Gb should do it – old proven technology – cheap and cheerful
Regards
I'll reiterate my earlier post, and say go with the Crucial C300 – over any RAID solution – since this is likely your main working system.
First RAID doesn't decrease the probability of a single drive failure; it only mitigates the loss caused by a such failure. Consequently, it does not mean any single drive will receive improved reliability or lifetime by using it in a RAID configuration. Essentially, you're just buying more disks to preserve data with RAID. Since you stated your use case was OS and programs (and not data storage), this isn't crucial; you only want some drive that isn't likely to die on you.
For this purpose, SSDs are fine, as most SSDs come with 3 year warranties. Additionally, SSDs provide vastly improved performance of simply loading (lots of) applications, like Photoshop. The following video shows how fast a SSD will load many programs right at startup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FloAm4fFC8. Consequently, you will see a rise in actual productivity by using an SSD for you main system drive.
If you want to backup your collection; however, I would recommend some type of RAID solution. If a drive fails, you will be able to recover with your collection, but you will need to replace the dead drive ASAP. RAID only works if the array of drives is is redundant, which stands for the "R" in RAID. The enterprise class HDDs are designed to be used under high load cases, such as servers and databases, so they are useful in RAID; nonetheless, RAID doesn't require enterprise class drives. Enterprise drives are meant to decrease the number of times one would have to swap out a dead drive in RAID.
Back to the SSD discussion: the "V" in the Intel X-25V is supposed to stand for "value." This model was introduced to spur the consumer to get their feet wet with SSDs and serve as an entry-level SSD. Since SSD technology improved since its release, prices have become more competitive and the X-25V now represents less of a value. Incidentally, the Crucial C300 is one of these competitive drives. As I mentioned earlier, it's capacity is its main drawpoint with Windows 7.
If you can somehow manage to wait a little longer (around a couple months); Intel plans to release a new generation of its SSDs ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/16/intel_lyn… ) which will drive the prices of the now current SSDs lower. If you absolutely need something now, go with the Crucial C300.
Here is a link to Newegg.com and their SSD section. You might be able to find something there that might hit your fancy. I am not a total computer geek, but I know enough to be dangerous. I would say you would need at least a 64 gig drive to put on Windows 7 and the other programs you want. I know you have budgeted around $190, but you might have to go a little over it if you want what you are looking for. But with Newegg.com, and I only put their web site in cause I have used it and have had good success with them, I think you can get a happy medium between price and functionality.
when I get home tonight I will share with you the music you wanted… I will have to upload it to rapidshit or whatever for you unless you want to email me and i'll email it to you. I know you can see my email on the site since you are the owner but I will put it up here anyways. [email protected]
cheers
12am Est Time USA