Intel SSD 80GB wow this thing is fast

[V8toytruck]

Just dropped this into my i7 920 build, holy smokes this thing is quick. 1.5-2 seconds to open Photoshop CS4 64bit.

Pros
Silent
Speed
Size (not that it matters in the Antec 1200 case)

Cons
Only have 25gb left after OS + Adobe Creative Suite CS4
Price (even with a huge EE discount)

[JDay]

Just dropped this into my i7 920 build, holy smokes this thing is quick. 1.5-2 seconds to open Photoshop CS4 64bit.

Pros
Silent
Speed
Size (not that it matters in the Antec 1200 case)

Cons
Only have 25gb left after OS + Adobe Creative Suite CS4
Price (even with a huge EE discount)

They also die faster than a regular hard drive since you can only write to each area so many times.

[Blackhawk556]

just curious but what OS are you running?

I hope it's either OSX or 7

if you don't mind me asking how much was it? or can you provide a link to where you got it

thanks

[Mute]

Yes they are fast. Absolutely worth it. Every computer I've ever used, the biggest bottleneck had always been the hard drive. As for the longevity issue. Sure, they're not quite as durable as your traditional hard drive but for a majority of users, it's no longer enough of an issue to worry about. It should last long enough for you to most likely need a new computer before you need to replace the drive.

[glock_this]

I wouldn't even touch an 80gb drive - pa lease - no matter how fast it is and I make a living on a computer

80gb is anemic and because of that, you have to store files off that main drive, and then your back to a bottleneck given the 2ndairy drive holding your files

[smird]

here's a fun little video

[glock_this]

can you say CHA CHING

but the real bummer to that vid is that they are on a peecee what a waste

hella fast though...

[Digital_Boy]

They also die faster than a regular hard drive since you can only write to each area so many times.

Wrong. MTBF for an SSD is equal to or greater than an spindle based drive. Long before the gates on the SSD get wonky, you'll have replaced it with something that's 5X the capacity for 1/4 the price you paid for your first one.

Personally, I can't wait until they're cheap enough to build RAID arrays out of for NAS boxes.

[Digital_Boy]

I wouldn't even touch an 80gb drive - pa lease - no matter how fast it is and I make a living on a computer

80gb is anemic and because of that, you have to store files off that main drive, and then your back to a bottleneck given the 2ndairy drive holding your files

If you've got that many files, why the hell aren't you using a NAS? It's much simpler and easier to keep them on a networked storage box and not have all that crud cluttering up your workstation disk drive.

[glock_this]

self employed, so costs and amount of room in office and such dictate certain setup constraints. If I am going to spend the coin on a file server, I would rather spend that same money on say a tricked out portable and that way, I can clone my main system over and have a backup that can kick in if my main dies AND a portable all in 1 purchase. So, I would rather spend money on more utility than a stand alone single use item.

A NAS setup would be nice, but not feasible in my current setup.

[Digital_Boy]

I'm fond of the Promise NS-4300N. Nice, easy, simple to setup, supports NFS and SMB, gig ethernet, and can support up to 2TB drives for a grand total of 8TB in striped mode, or 6TB in RAID5. You can pick them up for $300 if you catch them on sale at Fry's, so figure $700 or so for one populated with 1.5TB drives (since 2TB's are still $$$), and you've got 4.5TB of RAID5 redundant space to play with.

Drobos are nice too, but they lack built in ethernet ports, which really kills it for me. They're strength is the hardware automatically adjusts the volume size on the fly to accomodate adding or removing drives.

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?product_id=177

[JDay]

Sure, they're not quite as durable as your traditional hard drive but for a majority of users, it's no longer enough of an issue to worry about. It should last long enough for you to most likely need a new computer before you need to replace the drive.

At current prices its not cost effective to get a new one when you upgrade your computer. That 80gb Intel SSD is $299. You can replace your motherboard, CPU and get some more ram for that price. Another $50 and you can get a notebook.

[JDay]

If you've got that many files, why the hell aren't you using a NAS? It's much simpler and easier to keep them on a networked storage box and not have all that crud cluttering up your workstation disk drive.

His point is that 80gb wont hold your OS and all your apps if you actually use your computer for work. Forget about storing your documents on there. SSDs are cool for the wow factor but they arent ready to replace standard drives yet.

[JDay]

Wrong. MTBF for an SSD is equal to or greater than an spindle based drive. Long before the gates on the SSD get wonky, you'll have replaced it with something that's 5X the capacity for 1/4 the price you paid for your first one.

Personally, I can't wait until they're cheap enough to build RAID arrays out of for NAS boxes.

http://www.wdc.com/WDProducts/SSD/whitepapers/en/SiliconDrive_SiSMART.pdf

Solid State Drives
SiliconDrives do not have moving parts because they are solid state storage solutions, so many of the parameters monitored by the SMART function for HDDs are not applicable. Solid state drives are preferred in environmentally robust and high-duty cycle applications because they do not mechanically wear out, but there is still a concern about them wearing out when exceeding the endurance specification. In much the same way a rechargeable battery loses its charge after several cycles, nonvolatile solid state storage components can lose their ability to retain data after tens of thousands of write/erase cycles. This is usually specified by component vendors as endurance. When a block loses its ability to retain data or when data errors occur that cannot be corrected by the drive's ECC algorithm, the block is swapped with one from an available spare pool. When the spare blocks are exhausted and another error occurs, the solid state drive reaches critical failure and needs to be replaced.

Want to guess how fast the swap file performs several tens of thousands of read/write cycles?

[stormy_clothing]