47 replies to this topic

[Romulus Stahl]

I ran 2 Raptors for close to 10 years as a Raid0 for my OS. One took a dive a few months ago and I moved on to an SSD for the OS. The SSD is significantly faster on booting up windows, I actually have to wait a bit for the Raid1 to be fully up and running before doing anything on the box. Bottom line, SSD is faster, uses less power and doesn't make a sound. Both the SSD and and HDD can fail (and Raptors do fail from time to time).

[Bloodshed Romance]

after monies are settled I may consider moving my OS to a SSD... just so I can have a personal experience with them...
i'll use my 1TB hard drive as a backup OS (JIC the SSD decides to go early) and just use it for storage..

[Odins Fist]

SSD beats an old or current platter drive hands down..
A few years ago I went with 7200 RPM 640gb 32 Mb cache drives when they were new, and I saved tons of money over Raptors back then, and I was never stuck waiting for a map to load (back then)..
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If you are considering SSD, you don't want to only put your OS on the SSD if you want blazing fast load times, just putting the OS on the SSD will give a 7.9 on your Windows Experience Index score for HD and boot mad quick, but that isn't going to give you the same as if you bought a bigger SSD and had your OS, "AND" the game or games on the SSD as well... SSD is expensive, but fast, they do have different maintenance as a SSD typically has a certain lifespan (writes) compared to an older Patter Drive, but a SSD is really fast.. Personally I wouldn't RAID a bunch of SSDs, not that you wouldn't see some sort of increase, but I don't think it would at that point be much of a factor due to price..
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If you have a system that can handle massive amounts of RAM on the motherboard, you could also setup what is in layman's terms a RAM drive (RAMDisk), that would on startup load up all th files needed to run a game, but that would be a nightmare on the wallet as well..
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Also check this out..!! I saw this a while back and was interested, but passed on the whole idea..
http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/

Edited by Odins Fist, 08 July 2012 - 05:12 PM.

[Roguewolf]

Several years ago the write failure component of SSD drives was a serious consideration. Now, they come with 3 year warranties, and have useful service lifetimes measured in tens of year.

The Corsair Force 240GB MLC SSD has been rated in independent testing to handle 40 years of common read/write tasks before common failure (common failure is seen as a failure of 40% or more of the storage sectors). Also, bare in mind that it is flash memory. If it does not die out of the box, then you are good for many years of reliable service and performance.

The nuts and bolts of it can be summed up nicely in 3 ways :

Performance lifetime on SSD Drives is now the same if not better then platter drives past the initial 3 month mark, and most SSD's carry 3 year warranties.

Most SSD Drives have read/write speeds considerably faster then even the Velociraptors can handle, and no moving parts. (They do produce more heat though, so ventilate accordingly.

SSD Drives are more expensive on a per drive per GB basis, so expect to pay a little more then for spinning drives, however they are now below $1 USD per GB.

For comparisons this is a middle of the road Corsair SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233268
This is a WD Velociraptor drive http://www.bestbuy.c...aptor&cp=1&lp=3

As you can see for a similar price, you get quite a bit larger of storage with the spinning raptor. However , the SSD has 3 to 4 times the information pipeline capability for read/writing.

Choice is yours, but an SSD will outperform a spinning drive with more reliability and less vibrations every time.

Edited by Roguewolf, 08 July 2012 - 04:59 PM.

[AdamantVallation]

Point: The read/write cycles for SSD's. Under "normal" use, an SSD should last around 15 years, since gamers are not normal, it will last less, probably 5 years or so, but if your a hardcore gamer, you will have built 2 or 3 new systems in those 5 years so who cares. If your not a "hardcore" gamer then it will probably last around 10, again in which case your MOBO will probably have taken a dump long before your SSD.

In the system I am using now, the original build had a pair of raptors, it ran very well, it had a windows rating of 6.6ish or so, with the HDD as the choke point. I got a early gen Crucial 256gb MLC SSD. I installed windows there, on first boot, I was confused as I never even saw the windows loading screen. I checked my windows rating. 7.6 now, with my (then) brand new 480GTXs as the new choke point, my data transfer rating was 7.9, and still is to this day, I've had this SSD for a few years now, and its still tearing things up.

In my opinion the SSD was the single biggest, quickest leap in computer performance for a single piece of hardware ever, and my first PC was a C64. The difference was night and day. It will affect everything you do, the fact that you can click on your web browser icon, and instead of seeing the little blue circle of doom, by the time you release your finger, your web browser is open and waiting for you (or waiting for your ISP most likley).

Edited by AdamantVallation, 08 July 2012 - 05:25 PM.

[buckaroo]

SSDs are nice enough. I use a 90GB Vertex 3 for OS/Apps and a platter HD for Steam games and data storage. MWO will probably go on the SSD (it's only about half full.)

Anandtech did a few read/write log tests, and basically figured that if you use your computer for normal office work and gaming, eight hours a day, an SSD will last like 20 years. This was for older SSDs though - newer ones have about half the write lifespan.

Intel uses Sandforce in their consumer-grade drives. There's not much wrong with the controller. Early firmware was questionable, and OCZ had a lot of failures with their Vertex 2 line because they rushed bad firmware to market. They did that, though, because the Sandforce controller demolished pretty much everything else in terms of performance at the time, and is still up there. They were going for the gold and shot themselves in the foot on the way there, basically.

Crucial and Samsung drives, whether they use a Sandforce controller or something else - are probably a safer long term bet though - OCZ has proven they're willing to cut corners, and it'll take a couple generations of decent products to convince the buying public otherwise. (They seem to be competing pretty aggressively on price instead...)

One thing you folks with "old reliable" 7200 rpm HDs might consider is a "new reliable" 7200 rpm HD. I had a pair of 120GB 7200 rpm drives in RAID-0 for several years. They were tops back when - faster (and cheaper) than a single Raptor 10k. I replaced them a couple months ago with a single 7200 rpm laptop HD (Seagate Momentus 7200.4) that is faster in every benchmark. Just going to a newer single platter drive with a nice big cache (my old drives had 8MB caches, iirc. That was a lot at the time...) will probably give you a noticeable boost in speed.

The old 3.5"-ers were getting noisy, too. It was time. (Incidentally, not only are the new SSD/HDD SILENT compared to the old HDDs, but they use about 80% less electricity, to boot.)

Windows 7 will let you use an HD and a <64GB SSD as a cache. (I don't remember the specifics, but I think you need a newer Intel chipset for it to work, although this may have changed.) It continually makes sure that the most frequently accessed data is always on the SSD. That would probably be the best of both worlds, considering the price premium on 10k rpm drives. A $50 SSD and a $100 1TB drive will be competitive is many respects with a $300 Raptor. Much faster for reading frequently-accessed data. (Although that won't show in most benchmarks because the benchmark data set is randomly generated.) Doesn't speed up writes though.

The primary advantage of cache SSD + HDD over boot SSD + HDD is that it's transparent and easier to grok. (A lot of installers seem to assume C:\Users\Username\My Documets instead of just ~\My Documents, so I end up with stuff spread onto both drives and occasionally have to manually clean up.)

http://www.tomshardw...ing,2938-7.html

This is what I'm talking about. Note the game level loading benchmarks. Those are last-gen SSDs though.

Edited by buckaroo, 08 July 2012 - 05:52 PM.

[Adm Awesome]

I don't know why you need either, put the money somewhere better, I'm running a 2 TB 7200 rpm HDD and it works just fine. I'm waiting until they perfect the SSD, and they become much cheaper and much more widely available. It shouldn't be too long either, hell maybe I'll even get some really cheap deals this years black friday

[Scilya]

i have an OZC SSD (NEVER had a problem stop bashing ozc for no reason)
and i have 2x300gb raptors in raid 0

there nice

to be 100% honest your never realy gonna notice improvement unless your trnasfering large files, it may save you a fiew secconds in loading game levels ect but unless you just want the e-peen there is no reason why a 7200 rpm drive wont do

[Kaemon]

A word of caution about RAIDing SSDs, you lose the TRIM feature when you do that (they're working on getting it towork - http://www.tomshardw...RAID,14048.html)

TRIM cleans up blocks so the drive can use them beforehand, it's a nice thing to have (especially for non-sequential writes, which is where SSDs have the biggest performance issues).

I have a 60GB SSD just for OS (and MWO, once it launches) and a junk 7200 SATA (6GB/s) for everything else.

it's a bit tight on space already, but it's really a test drive to see if shelling out the bucks for the 128/256GB SSDs are worth it.

It is significantly faster than any HDD I've used, long application read/writes it does start to slow down slightly, but as I'm testing it on other games, unless I play for like 6+ hours, I do not notice any performance penalties.

There is a drawback however, when I come out of hibernation mode, I frequently get a BSOD because the drive doesn't wake up correctly, and I have to restart (not a huge issue though, just set the comp to never hibernate).

Edited by Kaemon, 09 July 2012 - 06:32 AM.

[Catamount]

Adm Awesome, on 08 July 2012 - 11:45 PM, said:

I don't know why you need either, put the money somewhere better, I'm running a 2 TB 7200 rpm HDD and it works just fine. I'm waiting until they perfect the SSD, and they become much cheaper and much more widely available. It shouldn't be too long either, hell maybe I'll even get some really cheap deals this years black friday

Well, I mean, that line of argument just goes silly places

One doesn't need an SSD, anymore than one needs a screen capable of more than 1024x768, a GPU faster than something midrange from three generations ago, speakers that cost more than $3, and 768k internet. Are they nice to have? Very

You are probably right to wait until Black Friday for one at this point though, unless a good deal comes up in the meantime.

[buckaroo]

Scilya, on 09 July 2012 - 06:11 AM, said:

i have an OZC SSD (NEVER had a problem stop bashing ozc for no reason)

I never bash anybody for no reason. I am a very trusting soul. (And am running a Vertex 3 at this very moment.)

http://www.behardwar...ns-rates-5.html

But 9% return rate compared to <1% for Intel SSDs? OCZ was doing something wrong. I just hope they figured it out. (Intel did a LOT of reliability-oriented tweaking to the Sandforce firmware for their own drives - one can only hope some of the changes were shared with Sandforce and, by extension, Sandforce's other partners, like OCZ.)

[Endless Ike]

Do SSDs really last less time than normal HDDs?

HDDs fail too...if the average lifetime is 7 or 8 years for both, who really cares why they're failing.

buckaroo, on 09 July 2012 - 06:21 PM, said:

I never bash anybody for no reason. I am a very trusting soul. (And am running a Vertex 3 at this very moment.)

http://www.behardwar...ns-rates-5.html

But 9% return rate compared to <1% for Intel SSDs? OCZ was doing something wrong. I just hope they figured it out. (Intel did a LOT of reliability-oriented tweaking to the Sandforce firmware for their own drives - one can only hope some of the changes were shared with Sandforce and, by extension, Sandforce's other partners, like OCZ.)

Vertex 3 had some ****** firmware. I've been running on mine for about 6 months, but I knew enough to update the firmware before installing.

[buckaroo]

Endless Ike, on 09 July 2012 - 06:38 PM, said:

Vertex 3 had some ****** firmware. I've been running on mine for about 6 months, but I knew enough to update the firmware before installing.

That was the first thing I did too. I'm optimistic, not stupid.

Edited by buckaroo, 09 July 2012 - 06:42 PM.

[LordDread]

well im intending to run a 120gb ssd for the os and anything the "must" go on it, raptor for games, and a cpl of generics for everything else

couple things of note that ive been told by people that have constantly tested ssds, split the ssd and other drvies on different controllers when possible, and move ur temp and swap filing to a magnetic drive.

[HybridTheory]

Wow thanks everyone for plenty of interesting experiences with drives and opinions. I think I'll hold out for now with what I've got.
Don't think I clarified that I already have a Raptor HDD in my system... have had it for 2 years now and have had no problems at all. I'm not going to be upgrading anything anytime soon as money won't allow it and frankly, I think my system will run MWO fairly well as it is but I'm considering tweaking, maybe a bit of overclocking once I get an aftermarket heatsink for the CPU, and maybe... MAYBE going dual SLI or getting a new video card within the next 6 months. Cheers all you've been very helpful!

[TimberJon]

In my build, I use a 250gb Vertex3 as the OS drive. A 1TB HDD rounds out my data. Then I use AlwaysSync (free) to replicate everything on my desktop to my HDD in case the SSD crashes. It is infinately than backing up to an external because it is already connected to my system, I can boot into my duplicate copy of windows and whalah! all my data is there including programs. I just get the SSD working later on if I have any trouble.

I am selling a few 150gb Velociraptors if anyone wants them. $40 ea and enterprise grade. Great for a fast OS drive on budget. Probably still under warranty too since a few of them are the newer models with the 2.5" drive in the 3.5" chassis.

lemme know.

[Endless Ike]

"So how long is long? To help users estimate how long an SSD will last, SSD vendors such as OCZ have come up with formula: a drive's life span equals its capacity multiplied by its write endurance rating, divided by the average daily writes. For example, the 120GB Vertex 3 SSD has a write endurance rating of 3,000 cycles. If you write 50GB on the drive daily, the total number of days the drive will last before becoming unreliable is: (120 x 3,000)/50 = 7,200 days, which is about 20 years. If you write an average of 100GB a day, the drive would last about 10 years."

http://news.cnet.com...id-state-drive/

[LordDread]

well the corsair that im looking at has a 3 yr warranty + 2,000,000 hr mtbf ... so thats what .. 83,333 days which is 228 years give or take .. so yeah i'd say it will last a while even if its abused

[Red squirrel]

Bloodshed Romance, on 08 July 2012 - 10:32 AM, said:

well SSDs have a set amount of times that it can be WRITTEN to.. but it can be READ from for however long it needs...
Windows is about all that NEEDS to be on a SSD, games can be put on the Raptor...
IMO..
I haven't owned either but thats the best way I can think of..
i'm staying away from SSDs just because of the set amount of times they can be written to before they fail...

edit: I own a 7200 RPM drive from WD... I want a Raptor because you can get more space on 1 hard drive compared to SSD..

Sorry but I totally disagree with you.You are right that an SSD can only be written to a limited amount of times. But this is something that should not concern you at all. Because even if you use your gaming /office PC 24/7 it will work for 5-7 years. (How many HDDs did you use that long?)Because of this Intel gives a 5 year warranty on their new 520 SSDs.I guess this is especially for people like you (there are many) who still believe in this myth (can't blame you SSDs used to be crappy until recently).(Intel approximates the minimum lifetime to be 20GB per day for 5 years)http://www.intel.com...n.htmlCurrently the Samsung 830series 128GB SSD costs as much as a 256 GB raptor.and the 256GB Samsung830 as much as the 1TB raptor.(I recommend the Samsung830 SSD)Costly but the SSD is faster, silent and uses less electricity.However, I have to admit that it is much much easier to install a HDD drive.For an SSD you need to adjust BIOS settings, update windows and intel/amd drivers and disable several windows services in order for the SSD to perform on its maximum.It is also important to which SATA controller you connect the drive.Further if you decide to use an SSD put the OS AND the programs you want to run fast on the SSD. No point in installing games on the slower HDD.Put all other data on a nice large HDD.Finally I must admit, that if you already have a raptor HDD you should just keep it for now and get an SSD if you choose to replace it at some point.

[Bloodshed Romance]

when the price drops (or a good deal hits) I'll probably look into getting a SSD, but right now they're just to much for my liking, Crucial seems to be what company i'm leaning towards if i decide to get one.. and I really like their 512GB SSD.. but its also $400 (http://www.newegg.co...2GB+ssd&x=0&y=0) if one of those goes on sale and monies are right.. I will be seriouslly considering one.. but I haven't seen a sale on that big of a SSD yet so i'm not holding my breath majorly... I use a lot of space and play a lot of games.. if I do a SSD.. i'ma do it right so I can put all my games on it and use my 1TB as my movies and download drive..