Solid State hard drives

Regarding SSD drives, their performance, and their cost effectiveness:

I just finished testing about 8 different varieties of drives across a multitude of controllers to see if it was worth upgrading for my desktop performance and laptop battery life.

The "intel" SSD drives are NOT high performance drives, first off. They're effective, and dependable, but not the high end of things.

If you're looking for pure speed, look at OCZ or Mushkin SSD drives, make sure the read/write ratings are 285/275 MB/s respectively. There are two varieties out currently, the ones at that kind of speed and the slower models (115/75 r/w MB/s). The "slower" models read faster than 10k drives (if only by a minimal margin) on average, but write significantly slower.

The real test, though, was testing the OCZ Vertex II 90 GB drive I picked up against a SCSI U320 15k drive. The SSD consistently outperformed the 15k drive in load speeds, and installation speeds.

The biggest gain for me, though, was actually in my laptop. I went from ~4-7 hours depending on usage to ~6-10 hours battery life. That's ridiculously huge. Admittedly the drive that was in there originally was a 7200 rpm chump-drive, nothing fancy, but mechanical drives consume lots more power during read, write, spin up and spin down, and even a touch more when completely idle.

The 90 GB drive I bought was $129.99 on sale. Newegg lists it currently at $184.99 for the 3.5" (desktop) and $189.99 for the 2.5" (laptop). Yes, that's not cheap. It's not ridiculous either. The three 500GB mechanical drives I have in my desktop are used for storage, while my operating system & games are loaded on the SSD. My laptop has a 320 GB external drive now for if/when I need stored materials, and I keep a standard dual-boot installation on the 60GB that's in the laptop and I have approximately 20GB to "spare" at any given time. That's not a boatload of empty space, but is fully enough for what I do with it, and the 320 allows me to do more extensive programming work.

For the record: most of my 'testing' was done on my current system.

Core i7 950
EVGA X58 SLIFTW3 mobo
6GB Corsair 1600 7-7-7 RAM
EVGA nVidia GeForce 470

The "standard" 7200 RPM drives that I had (originally in a 3 drive stripeset) took ~35 seconds to boot from afterPOST until desktop.

The 10k drive took ~27 seconds to boot from afterPOST until desktop.
The 15k scsi u320 (provided by an adaptec controller) drive took ~17 seconds to boot from afterPOST until desktop.


The SSD takes ~8 seconds to boot from afterPOST until desktop.

Interestingly, I run games both from the regular drives I have for storage, and when running the ones I run all the time from the SSD.

Load times for WoW, EQ2, CoD:MW2 are hugely different between drive load time and SSD load time. All of them are cut in half from starting the game to being IN the game, with consistently higher framerates while running the game (roughly 2-8 fps faster once IN game, depending on the game).

It is NOT some "minor" upgrade that'll save "one second" or "1/16th load times." It's not a cure-all either.

TL;DR version:

SSD is ridiculously fast in comparison to 10k or 15k mechanical drives, and not horribly expensive while offering other benefits in usage.

 

I actually came on here looking for a method for boosting wifi from inside a cab of a friend of mine who's a trucker but is technologically "average" in knowledge. Having been a Failure Analysis tester for a couple years as well as helping to develop upcoming technologies (back then), I'm rather meticulous about testing "hyped" hardware.

About 13-14 years ago, I got to test what I believe is the precursor to SSD drives, RAM drives. The server we were testing it in had no 'hard drive,' per se. Instead, it had a chassis that was roughly 3 5.25" drives tall internally and had 64 SDRAM slots, a battery, and a couple of control chips. We populated it with ECC 32 MB. The thing was light speed fast in comparison to the drives. We ran tests for days. I still go by the same methodology. Test, retest, verify results for both, and then judge. *grin*

I got to browsing a bit after that, and could not leave the post denigrating SSD drives alone. I can honestly say it was the absolute best money I spent on my newest system & my laptop, but I'm happy to share what knowledge I have.

As I see other things that peak my interest, I'll post. In the meantime, hope things go well.

 

Hey Rookie, ya purchased an SSD yet? Kinda curious as to how the install/swap goes if you end up doing this.

 

kinda like a raptor tooooo unstable for a bouncy truck id go ssd or 5400 rpm max.i use an ipad for nav its not bad at all

 

How about system boot up time, pretty quick comparatively?

Plenty of room to upgrade ram on the motherboard. Says up to 24 GB supported Good Lord LOL.

 

also if you upgrade to SSD before you spend the money on the drive make sure you get the right one that will fit your laptop. I had a Gateway and purchased a SSD for it to find it wouldnt fit so I put it in my Toshiba. The hard drive plugs in the older machines are diffrent from the newer ones.