SSD's: worth it?

Traak · 2011-10-02, 08:51 AM

I am wondering, for those of you who have upgraded to a Solid State Drive, is it worth it?

Do virus scans run screamingly fast? Does it boot drastically faster?

Do you spend less time staring at the hard disk access notification LED on your computer?

What do you believe is the best balance of speed, size, and cost?

Planning for a monster tower computer, or a smoov laptop, so I want to know. No computer I have had has had its speed increased by the hard drives, LOL.

Crator · 2011-10-02, 09:17 AM

Have you ever used regular IDE drives then switch to a RAID setup? The speed difference is most notable. I've not messed around with SSDs yet but they do provide a major speed difference. I've read about some other folks use of it here, in regards to cost effectiveness. You should put all the programs you run that require that speed boost on the drive but try to separate your other data onto slower drives, to save money.

Traak · 2011-10-02, 09:32 AM

Yeah, I liked the speed boost I got from a RAID 0 setup with 2 drives.

I was actually thinking of slaving a bunch of disk drives together and running them on a separate, battery-backed-up RAID card in RAID 5 or something for speed and data integrity, and then having a couple solid-state drives in RAID 0 for phenomenal speed.

I haven't found anything I do to a computer that speeds it up as much as removing hard drive bottlenecks.

Six SSD's in RAID 10 would be a beautiful thing. Two sets of three RAID 0 drives. Woot!

Traak · 2011-10-02, 09:39 AM

Further, I was wondering if a few SCSI drives on a RAID card would offload enough from the CPU to be Really Worth It.

SCSI devices are faster, I have heard, and kind of do some basic thinking on their own, so they are less demanding on the CPU, freeing it to do stuff only the CPU can do.

I wonder if A SCSI RAID card, with some Serial Attached SCSI drives would result in an amazing speed boost.

Crator · 2011-10-02, 11:11 AM

You're not too far off about SCSI vs. SATA RAID: http://www.thinkmate.com/Storage/SATAvsSCSIvsSAS

Hamma · 2011-10-02, 11:44 AM

Moved your threads to Tech

Pennybags · 2011-10-02, 12:11 PM

I can't recall anything that has improved daily computing over a single generation of hardware more than my SSD has. All the small lock-ups and slowdowns that aggravate you slightly in everything you do are gone. It's an infinitely more pleasant experience, and it's easily worth the cost.

Goku · 2011-10-02, 01:42 PM

The SSD I have made everything feel much more responsive from opening programs to loading game maps. I would just go for a 120GB - 240GB SSD as that should be plenty for most users out there. Raid has nice numbers, but it cannot touch a SSD is random access times that is important for opening up programs.

Traak · 2011-10-02, 01:52 PM

So it looks like the most cost-effective solution per unit of speed is the SSD, compared to SATA or SAS, because the speed is so much greater on the important things for the gamer, random reads, than spinning platter hard drives can match in a cost-effective manner.

Thanks for the article link.

DviddLeff · 2011-10-20, 11:27 AM

I'm looking at getting a new set up for PS2 (and Skyrim) and was wondering the same thing.

So SSD is the way to go, at least for storage of Windows and your main games?

Does it make Windows boot faster?

Crator · 2011-10-20, 12:42 PM

Yes, it does! Makes everything faster that you run on it.

Rbstr · 2011-10-20, 09:05 PM

If it comes between getting and SSD and getting decent a cpu or video card, not worth it.

The SSD only helps when you need to load things from the disk...so sure, your game's loading screens are shorter...but those are a tiny fraction of most play time.

How much time is spend booting up your computer compared to using it?
Most of my non-game computer usage is internet, none of that thrashes a hard disk.

In the end: if it fits in your budget without sacrificing other parts, do it. Otherwise it's the least critical upgrade.
If you're buying a 560 instead of a 570 for an SSD...I'd say you're doing it wrong, as an example. A 570 instead of a 580, sure.

(this all applies to raid, when you're not doing data redundancy, too)

Quovatis · 2011-10-24, 01:02 PM

I elected to go the RAID route instead of SSD. I have 2 1TB HDDs in RAID 0 with a 2 TB drive as backup. The reason I chose this setup is that I rarely turn off my computer (usually just put it to sleep instead). Thus I never realize the most significant boost from a SSD (boot-up time). The RAID setup I have is fine with me for now. Programs still load fairly quickly, and I don't have to worry about managing where I load programs. Once you load a map in a game, you see no benefit from the SSD. So for now, it's not worth it to me.

However, I'm seriously looking at OCZ's new "Octane" line of SSDs. The specs are very good and the prices are better than anything on the market today, so I might get one soon. Waiting on the reviews first.

Goku · 2011-10-24, 01:09 PM

Indeed the OCZ new line does look interesting especially due to using the Inidinix controller instead of the SF based one. Hopefully that will resolve the issues that has plagued their SSDs. The pricing is pretty damn nice too if it comes to the market as such.