Solid State Hard Drive Experience

[LoBlo]

Anyone here bought one of the new solid state hard drives? I'm curious to whether or not the speed increase and silent running is tangible.

If so please share your experience. Is it worth the cash?:hmmm:

[SUBMAN1]

Unless you buy the top end SS drives, and while they will be both silent and have almost no latency as compared to a normal drive, they are actually much slower throughput on average than a good mechanical drive.

One other myth surrounding SS drives is that they are lower power. Quite the opposite actually (unless they are dog slow of course). The faster their throughput, the higher the power requirements, easily eclipsing by a large margin the power draw of a 10K to 15K RPM SCSI drive.

The last myth is read and write cycles - a SS drive can only read and write so many times before you must throw it into the garbage for a new one. This number is usually around 1000 cycles, so you may never hit that, but there is the possibility to hit that.

I'll buy a SS drive when the price comes down and the power draw comes down. I do not need any extra heat generating devices in my case.

-S

[LoBlo]

Unless you buy the top end SS drives, and while they will be both silent and have almost no latency as compared to a normal drive, they are actually much slower throughput on average than a good mechanical drive.

That's curious. All the things I'm seeing show that they have faster read speeds (though can have slower write speeds).

http://www.3dgameman.com/content/view/14269/111/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrGW6vbfqH0
http://www.3dgameman.com/content/view/15505/45/

Anyone got any real-world first hand experience?

[SUBMAN1]

Yes, but at what power draw and price point? And what SSD size? Smaller SSD's are faster BTW.

Some Benches against a VRaptor:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/09/08/review_wd_velociraptor_hdd/page3.html

VRaptor is still faster. This is the WD 300GB model.

-S

[LoBlo]

So basically your saying that you haven't tried one youself.

Yes, but at what power draw and price point? And what SSD size? Smaller SSD's are faster BTW.
Some Benches against a VRaptor:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/09/08/review_wd_velociraptor_hdd/page3.html
VRaptor is still faster. This is the WD 300GB model.


Isn't that review a comparison of one of the top of the line HDD drives with only a average/low level SSD? It would be more useful to compare an equally top of the line SSD. Here's some more comparisions, but its hard to judge the 'tier' of the drives compared together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi4lASDDsJk
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptop-hard-drives/intel-x-25m-solid/4505-9997_7-33244343.html?tag=mncol;lst

Looks like it may come down to going to the local shops and seeing if anyone has a SSD setup to test.

[SUBMAN1]

I haven't, mainly due to the price point for the amount of storage you get. I'd love you hear your experiences when you do though.

BTW, I'm not trying to rain on your parade here. SSD's are getting better so it is only a matter of time before the speed and power draw are mastered.

-S