To SSD or not to SSD

[Laird Leporidae]

Use a SSD for your main C:\ drive for Win7x64. For 'storage' drives, (games, movies, music, etc.) use old platter discs. They're plenty fast enough.

 

Disable your page file (set it to 0mb, seriously) and watch it fly.

I've tried this, and got very odd results from windows, at the time I only had 8gb of RAM, have since upgraded.  How much RAM do you have installed?

[sorsharavenwing]

I haven't put SSDs in any of my production systems yet. But I do have them in a couple of test systems (all of which run Windows 7 Professional) and have gotten somewhat mixed results. In one of the systems everything runs beautifully. Boot time is incredible, applications launch lighting fast. It runs standard things like MS Office, various browsers, and is what I refer to as a low-end user build. I have a mid-range system that runs Photoshop and a couple of the other Adobe packages in addition to MS Office, browsers, as well as pretty standard low-impact programs that also does really well. But on two of the other test systems which are pretty high end there are some resource intensive custom software packages that just don't perform well enough for it to be worth the faster boot/access times. Also, if you've been unfortunate enough to be asked to try, attempting to retrieve data from a crashed SSD is more difficult than juggling while standing on your head.

 

One of the things you need to consider when deciding what type of drive you're going to get is the operating system you're using. If you're still running Windows Vista, don't bother. It doesn't have native support that allows it to take advantage of the SSD's performance enhancements. In fact, if you don't disable some of the features set to automatically run (defrag springs immediately to mind) it will degrade your SSD. Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 have built in SSD support that automatically kicks in when an SSD is detected. I have yet to find a Linux distro that automatically uses TRIM, but that's something that can be configured after the OS is installed pretty easily. I'm not an Apple tech or even an Apple user, so I have no idea whether or not the latest Mac OS supports SSDs natively or whether it automatically detects whether an SSD is installed.

 

What I have done is installed SSHDs (solid state hybrid drives) into my production systems (including my gaming system). These drives integrate NAND solid state flash memory with a "traditional" hard drive. So files that are frequently accessed or improve performance are loaded into flash and you get lighting fast boot, faster application launch, etc. But you also have the benefits of an old school traditional drive. For me, it's the best of both worlds.

 

And just putting this out there, because I recently had a client come in complaining of issues with an SSD being hideously, horribly, painfully, dog slow. NEVER run defrag on an SSD!!!! SSDs and flash memory have a finite life span. When you defrag a drive it does small write access functions repeatedly, which is what slowly but surely degrades the drive. Over time as your drive gets defragged again and again, it gets slower and slower. You'll also notice that as the drive ages it will also get slower and slower and slower as a result of normal use. There are things you can do to mitigate this, but it's pretty inevitable. I could go into all the boring technical details about why this happens, but I'll spare you all the agony.

 

If you have a spare SSD and the inclination to try, benchmark the drive and then fill it completely with data, erase all the data and benchmark it again. You'll find that the performance isn't what it was during the first benchmark. Now no one really ever does this in application, so it's not going to happen that quickly in a production environment. But it gives a pretty good indication of what happens with an SSD from regular wear and tear. So if anyone is like me and you're constantly rebuilding your Skyrim load out and adding and removing mods, beware the eventual consequences this will have on your SSD. This is the main reason I use hybrid drives rather than SSDs.

 

Sorry for the novel. I'm usually really quiet.

[Sunja44]

Don't use SSDs for cyber hoarding. Even a 1 TB Samsung Evo is nothing when it comes to storing music, video and photo data. Especially storing videos/movies in more than 480p will take space, a lot of space.

 

Use it as a boot drive and maybe for having stored some files (photos, NifSkope, photoshop files) which you are actually working with currently. For storage get a NAS (Synology NAS are pretty good ones, still relative cheap and ultra easy to install, the software packages and the ability to serve as a media server makes them the perfect choice for a hoarder, it's a total plug and play installation) or just a few (and much cheaper) normal 2-4 TB harddrives which are tested for long running RAID systems. 

[Rayblue]

Don't use SSDs for cyber hoarding. Even a 1 TB Samsung Evo is nothing when it comes to storing music, video and photo data.

 

Use it as a boot drive and maybe for having stored some files (photos, NifSkope, photoshop files) which you are actually working. For storage get a NAS or just a few (and much cheaper) normal 2-4 TB harddrives which are tested for long running RAID systems. 

 

Given the reality that SSDs are very difficult to recover files from in the event of an unexpected failure (necessitating very expensive professional recovery services, and there's only a number of such firms in the world), I insist that documents and whatever valuable have to be saved in traditional hard drives along with regular back-ups, and that only programs be installed in SSDs (and programs where speed is a consideration over space, and also where shock-proofing is required).

 

In other words, never dismiss regular hard drives.

[Sunja44]

 

Don't use SSDs for cyber hoarding. Even a 1 TB Samsung Evo is nothing when it comes to storing music, video and photo data.

 

Use it as a boot drive and maybe for having stored some files (photos, NifSkope, photoshop files) which you are actually working. For storage get a NAS or just a few (and much cheaper) normal 2-4 TB harddrives which are tested for long running RAID systems. 

 

Given the reality that SSDs are very difficult to recover files from in the event of an unexpected failure (necessitating very expensive professional recovery services, and there's only a number of such firms in the world), I insist that documents and whatever valuable have to be saved in traditional hard drives along with regular back-ups, and that only programs be installed in SSDs (and programs where speed is a consideration over space, and also where shock-proofing is required).

 

In other words, never dismiss regular hard drives.

 

 

You are absolutely right, not only video, music and photo data I upload to my NAS, I regularly do that for all my docs (especially save games) and for whole Skyrim and other modded game installations.

 

[Halstrom]

Cyber Hoarding is bad, you'll end up on an internet series "CyberHoarders - CPU's buried alive in Porn, LOLCat pics & Sims Clothing mods............"

[RitualClarity]

Halstom based on your statement I am in trouble.

 

3 x 4 tb drives, 1 x 2tb drive and 1 x 256 SSD in the machine.

5 x 2tb drives ( backups) 2x 1 tb drives ( also backup)  1x64gig ssd ( left over used as a portible drive storage. Very sturdy) 1 x 160 from an old laptop that now has a 256 Samsung SSD.

 

Had more. 4 died in the last 1 and a half. 2 x 2tb and 2 x 320 ( laptop ). They die I upgrade in size.

 

I need an intervention..

[Halstrom]

I'll bring over a big magnet for you probably have t use a hammer on the SSD though unless I can get an EMP grenade

[RitualClarity]

You sill will miss the backups... lol. Some aren't even here. ..

[lordofthedread]

I am working for such a data recovery company, 2tb drives and up are very fragile, 1TB 2.5 inches are breaking like thin glass, I personally trust many SSD better than low end regular HDD these days.

 

Just my 0.2 cents.

[Guest corespore]

SSD drives are becoming as cheap and long lasting as their HDD equivalents. They are order of magnitudes faster and silent, there really isn't much reason not to switch these days. Unless you already have a HDD installed and your trying to get the most out of it before you finally make the switch. 

[prideslayer]

SSD drives are becoming as cheap and long lasting as their HDD equivalents. They are order of magnitudes faster and silent, there really isn't much reason not to switch these days. Unless you already have a HDD installed and your trying to get the most out of it before you finally make the switch.

2TB HDDs are under $100, while 1TB SSDs are nearly $500 and 512G SSDs that are competitive on performance are about $300. The SSDs are faster, but not by "orders of magnitude".

 

All of the current performance SSDs are roughly the same at sustained read/write speads, about 500M/s on both. My primary raid volume, on a 4x 1GB RAID-10, writes at about 300M/s and reads at over 700M/s; it's more reliable overall (RAID), has twice the usable space, and cost the same as a 512G SSD.

 

I'm sure the SSDs are faster in random read/write but I haven't tested to know by how much. On a workstation/desktop most activity is "read up this entire file" or "write this stream to a file" which is entirely sequential anyway.

 

Now, a RAID of SSDs would be great, but that just costs too much.

[RitualClarity]

SSD drives are becoming as cheap and long lasting as their HDD equivalents. They are order of magnitudes faster and silent, there really isn't much reason not to switch these days. Unless you already have a HDD installed and your trying to get the most out of it before you finally make the switch. 

Samsung newest member of their SSD that they released has a 10 year warranty. ... 10 YEAR WARRANTY... yep. That is actually longer lasting than the HDD equivalents as most hard drives die between 3 and 5 years of heavy use. Yes it has yet to remained to be seen. However Samsung is a major company that in my opinion creates very reliable equipment that usually last well beyond the average of competitors.

 

They are as Pride stated not as cheap however... hopefully though that might change in the near future.. at least for those drives at 1tb or less.

 

I would do something like what pride did as well however I have had difficulty setting up any sort of raid configure and imaging. Now my storage requirements are more than I can fit in a normal computer using raid 10 ( with any reasonable cost). I will likely revisit this later when / ( or more specifically if) I create a server for my stuff. Then my storage requirements would be massively smaller and easier to manage. Maybe at that time I might build a raid 10 of 500g SSD..

[prideslayer]

The Samsung SSDs with the 10 year warranty also have a 150TBW (150TB written) limit -- whichever comes sooner, just worth pointing out. 500M/s is, give or take, the SATA 6Gb/s limit. No single SSD is going to get the sequential read values a good 4 disk RAID-10 can get, or the write speeds of a 6 disk RAID-10 or 4 disk RAID-0. Single SATA channel just isn't capable of it, until SATA express is more widespread.

 

Most enterprise HDD warranties are only 5 years, but no limit on data volume read or written.

 

Setting up the RAID is easy, just take it slow and follow the golden rule: don't "mess" with non-default settings like cache modes and stripe size without a good reason.

[Guest corespore]

The Samsung SSDs with the 10 year warranty also have a 150TBW (150TB written) limit -- whichever comes sooner, just worth pointing out. 500M/s is, give or take, the SATA 6Gb/s limit. No single SSD is going to get the sequential read values a good 4 disk RAID-10 can get, or the write speeds of a 6 disk RAID-10 or 4 disk RAID-0. Single SATA channel just isn't capable of it, until SATA express is more widespread.

 

Most enterprise HDD warranties are only 5 years, but no limit on data volume read or written.

 

Setting up the RAID is easy, just take it slow and follow the golden rule: don't "mess" with non-default settings like cache modes and stripe size without a good reason.

How may people actually raid though? Most people just want a single drive for their OS and perhaps an extra one for storage and\or games. 

[RitualClarity]

Several people I know use various raid solutions. Raid 1 , 0  and 5. Few however use 10 or 01 because it effectively halves the data storage capacity. I use to use both raid 1 and 0 in the past ( ordered with the unit) . Now I build and customize my stuff. ( larger learning curve) and I don't devote any time to learning about it.. lol.

 

Then again people I know and deal with in RL aren't the normal individuals...

 

Remember I am an alien..

 

 

[Guest corespore]

^

[prideslayer]

 

The Samsung SSDs with the 10 year warranty also have a 150TBW (150TB written) limit -- whichever comes sooner, just worth pointing out. 500M/s is, give or take, the SATA 6Gb/s limit. No single SSD is going to get the sequential read values a good 4 disk RAID-10 can get, or the write speeds of a 6 disk RAID-10 or 4 disk RAID-0. Single SATA channel just isn't capable of it, until SATA express is more widespread.

 

Most enterprise HDD warranties are only 5 years, but no limit on data volume read or written.

 

Setting up the RAID is easy, just take it slow and follow the golden rule: don't "mess" with non-default settings like cache modes and stripe size without a good reason.

How may people actually raid though? Most people just want a single drive for their OS and perhaps an extra one for storage and\or games.

 

A fair point, but if you're going to bring "most people" into this, most people:

 

- have a laptop and/or tablet, not a desktop.

- don't know the difference between an SSD and HDD to begin with and will buy whatever is cheapest.

- could care less about the performance even if they did know about it.

 

Gamers and other types who do care about that stuff and know the difference are better served by RAID IMHO. SSDs are fast, but that comes at a cost in reliability (vs RAID -- not vs single HDDs) and space.

[Guest corespore]

 

 

The Samsung SSDs with the 10 year warranty also have a 150TBW (150TB written) limit -- whichever comes sooner, just worth pointing out. 500M/s is, give or take, the SATA 6Gb/s limit. No single SSD is going to get the sequential read values a good 4 disk RAID-10 can get, or the write speeds of a 6 disk RAID-10 or 4 disk RAID-0. Single SATA channel just isn't capable of it, until SATA express is more widespread.

 

Most enterprise HDD warranties are only 5 years, but no limit on data volume read or written.

 

Setting up the RAID is easy, just take it slow and follow the golden rule: don't "mess" with non-default settings like cache modes and stripe size without a good reason.

How may people actually raid though? Most people just want a single drive for their OS and perhaps an extra one for storage and\or games.

 

A fair point, but if you're going to bring "most people" into this, most people:

 

- have a laptop and/or tablet, not a desktop.

- don't know the difference between an SSD and HDD to begin with and will buy whatever is cheapest.

- could care less about the performance even if they did know about it.

 

Gamers and other types who do care about that stuff and know the difference are better served by RAID IMHO. SSDs are fast, but that comes at a cost in reliability (vs RAID -- not vs single HDDs) and space.

 

LOL, OK you got me there "most people" was a bad choice of words. How about..... the majority of people who build their own systems. People who build their own rigs usually want performance without complication whereas RAID set-ups are generally the forte of PC enthusiasts who by then have a good idea of what equipment they are going to dedicate to their build. It's not one of those things that a person will simply stumble upon while building a rig, it requires some experience and forethought to pull off.

As for my claim of orders of magnitude faster i meant benchmark performance. Until SATA 3 becomes the new normal actual performance will continue to be hobbled by available hardware. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2048120/benchmarks-dont-lie-ssd-upgrades-deliver-huge-performance-gains.html However, I've bought a new MOBO in the low price range (Gigabyte G1 A88x) and it was a SATA 3 based board so it is already being implemented.

[RitualClarity]

Most newer mobos now have at least 2 Sata3 ports if not all of them are Sata 3. If you don't have at least 2 ports or 1/3rd of the ports as Sata 3.. don't get it. There are plenty of good boards that have Sata 3 ports on them. The standard is almost complete ( as in all ports on all mobos sold having sata 3. ) That will likely happen with the next chipset from Intel and then we will have 100% Sata3 ports from then on. We will be all up to date with the fastest hardware.. that is until.. sata 4 comes out..

[Rokabur]

 

 

If it was me I'd save the SSD money and spend elsewhere such as on more/better RAM since the only performance gains I've heard people say they get from SSD is boot up speed

 

 

Yes, but that's the point - with your PC, you can upgrade the components all you want, but there will be a point where one outdated part will drag everything else down. In a lot of cases, this is the HDD. You can have all that RAM and processor, but your PC will only be able to access that information as quickly as the HDD allows. Because the HDD has physical moving parts, it is limited by their capacity to move.

 

"Boot up speed" is an understatement. Programs that might have taken full minutes+ to open now take seconds, as if they were just another browser window. I used to wait ages for Photoshop to open, lamenting in anguish if I accidentally opened it. Now, it's no different than opening Windows Picture Viewer for me - boom, it's just there. You know those moments when you would leave the PC to restore from a restore point and made yourself a brew or caught some TV while it did its thing? Forget it, those moments are gone - in the time if took you to stand up, sit down in another chair and flick the TV on, the PC has already finished the restore and is now waiting on you.

 

It sounds to me like DoctaSax has looked at RAM already. If he hasn't, he should definitely invest in that, yes. But if he already HAS, then there is no reason not to get an SSD to make the PC better all-around.

 

 

I agree on the boot up speed. My last pc took atleast 4 minutes to turn on, enter my password and wait on the desktop screen for the startup programs to run. New pc on a 256GB SSD gets to the desktop in screen in around 30-40 seconds and after that all the startup programs are running in under 10 seconds.

 

 

[Azaira]

It used to take my last laptop about 2minutes for a full bootup with an HDD.

Current is 14 seconds for startup, and 6 seconds or less to log in and get everything loaded.

As for games, it used to take about 20x-40x longer to load up any game using an HDD rather than an SSD. Skyrim loads in 6 seconds with mods using SDD.

My current one uses a 256GB SSD with a 756GB HDD as storage space.

All in all, I would suggest a setup like mine. A main drive for games and applications, and a storage drive for miscellaneous data.

 

You can talk about RAIDS and speeds, but in just pure specs in a 1:1 ratio, an SSD will work faster and far reduces your wait time.

Most people never even touch raids, even if they know how. Its just not needed in most circumstances.

Though if you wanted to, you could put SSDs and HDDs into RAIDs and compare them (there are youtube video comparisons)

So thats pretty much a nil issue.

 

And the reliability of SSDs have vastly improved. I think my Samsung 830 has a 10 year warranty on it.

I remember finding a thread where they were doing writes on an 830 constantly (forget what its called) trying to wear it out.

Someone actually managed to write over 6 PetaByes onto his 830 before it wore out.

To put that into perspective, I've had my samsung 830 for little more than 16 months and I've barely written 10 TeraBytes on it and still 100%

(only 130 sections failed out of the trillions so far).

Even if you underrated by 10x, thats still 600 TeraBytes that you could write onto your SSD without it failing, and by my count, 60 years of use for me

By that time I would have replaced it with a 256 YottaByte Quantum drive or something xD

 

Anyways, SSD as your main drive, with HDD as your data drive is my recommendation.

Also, its best if you set your downloads to transfer directly onto your HDD so you dont't have to worry about transferring it manually to save SSD space.

Which would also avoid SSD writes if you're worried about it. (you don't with newer drives)

[prideslayer]

LOL, OK you got me there "most people" was a bad choice of words. How about..... the majority of people who build their own systems.

Well I guess we just know different people. Everyone I know that's built their own PC knows what RAID is, and if they're going to use it or not. Often the onboard raid controller model is a deciding factor for which MB to get.

 

Of course some of us are masochists and buy expensive dedicated controllers, because we know whatever is on the motherboard is going to be 'junk', or because our "lives" depend on our data.

 

As for my claim of orders of magnitude faster i meant benchmark performance.

Maybe it's nitpicking, but one order of magnitude = 10x faster. Two orders of magnitude = 100x faster. SSDs are not 10x, 100x, or 1000x faster than hdds at anything meaningful.

 

Twice as fast as a single HDD? Sure, but they also cost about four times as much per GB.

[RitualClarity]

 

LOL, OK you got me there "most people" was a bad choice of words. How about..... the majority of people who build their own systems.

Well I guess we just know different people. Everyone I know that's built their own PC knows what RAID is, and if they're going to use it or not. Often the onboard raid controller model is a deciding factor for which MB to get.

 

Of course some of us are masochists and buy expensive dedicated controllers, because we know whatever is on the motherboard is going to be 'junk', or because our "lives" depend on our data.

 

Or some of us had a nightmare that kept on going while using the built in raid controller and decided that they were better off with a dedicated controller..

 

Most of my "people" can and do know about raid and also take the controller into consideration if they decide they desire or might desire a raid config. Some are even aware of the current controller models on the mobos out today and which are better than others. I unfortunately am stuck with a 3-4 year old system and knowledge on that.. I dread having to research this in the future...

[Kuunkulta]

Speaking of RAIDs, does anyone know about Sabertooth 990FX mobo's RAID controller? Just wondering if it's any good with very large drives (3tb mainly) for RAID1. I've only had RAID arrays on smaller drives on dedicated boards (SCSI) before so I don't really know about the onboards' quality...

 

Oh and if anyone so much as hints about using Windows software RAID, I will strangle him