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what do you think of SSD's ?


techristian

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I see now that they are getting reasonable and approaching the point of usefulness. A local Detroit area store is selling Samsung 128 gb SSDs for approx $120.

 

My experiences with SD cards have been mixed. I have had a few that needed total reformatting before they could be brought back to life. Others became totally unreadable.

 

I have never had an SSD though before. Are they plagued with the same fragmentation plague? We know that they are quieter. How hot do they get and what about power consumption compared to conventional spinning disks?

 

Keep in mind that I recently bought a 2 TB spinning drive for only $60, but I'm sure that SSD technology may become more appealing in a recording studio with space restraints, where they need to have the computer close to a mcrophone, but then they still may have the fan noise.

 

Dan

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Can't answer all your questions - but here's my experience:

 

The computer I'm typing on has, for the OS hard drive (data resides elsewhere,) an OCZ 120GB SSD that is about 3 years old. When I first bought this SDD and installed it, I was stunned at the speed increase - reminded me of going from a 286 to a Pentium eons ago.

 

So it's been reliable and quiet, and this computer hardly ever gets above 105 degrees fahrenheit. But it's a big ol' cheesy gamer's case with big fans and huge vents.

 

I don't think this SSD runs as fast as it did early on. I originally bought it for the music computer in order to make sure that PC could handle the huge data streams for sampled pianos and such - which it did with ease. Now I use this SSD for this business computer and a bit of gaming.

 

No, this OCZ SSD is not to be de-fragged according to the instructions that came with it and also according to all the web chatter, including reliable guides like Tomshardware.com and such. Maybe that's why it seems less speedy than before. Well, I bet it's still faster than a Velociraptor drive, and infinitely quieter.

 

I paid about $350 USD three years ago for this drive - and I still think it would be worth it even in today's market. But the SSDs have come way down in price, so I don't think I'll ever go without one now - at least until some other new way of storing data comes along that is yet faster.

 

nat whilk ii

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I've been testing SSD drives in 3 computers and am about to install one in my music laptop.

 

My first experience with SSD is with my MacBook Air. I've had the Air for over a year and experience no problems. To be honest I don't use it that much. The nice thing with that computer besides the low weight is the low heat it puts out. A true "laptop" computer.

 

I set up a workplace desktop with a 512GB SSD as the primary drive. I do a lot of intensive Access queries and noticed a nice speed increase. I'll see how long it holds up. If I had it to do over I would put the SSD as a secondary data drive. Boot time does not interest me as much as the speed increase when crunching data.

 

I swapped a workplace laptop drive from a Seagate 750GB 7200rpm to a Crucial M4 512GB SSD. I went with the Crucial M4 because of the customer reviews. I get an occasional lock up on boot but no other problems. What is really strange is it seems to be just a bit thicker than the Seagate that I took out. The access door on the bottom of my notebook does not lock into place with this drive installed.

 

I just got another Crucial M4 in and am putting it in as a secondary drive in my music laptop. I think this setup will be the best balance for me. The boot drive will be 750GB 7200 RPM and will hold OS, all programs and all sound files. The SSD will hold all sound files and will be the streaming drive. With all sound files also being stored on the primary drive I have instant backup if a problem occurs.

 

So that's where I'm at after a few months of testing. Back to regular HD for boot and OS, SSD for streaming, duplicate everything on the SSD drive on the main drive just in case the SSD crashes.

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So, in other words, you think it makes a great SYSTEM or BOOT partition. Ok I forgot about the speed aspect.


They tell you NOT to defrag this??? Isn't that the same as deleting a file and replacing it with another larger/smaller file?


Dan

 

 

Well, I should clarify. Using the 120GB SSD for music meant that I booted off it and ran the OS off it, plus Sonar and one or two sample sets. The rest of the music stuff had to go onto a 1TB secondary drive. But if the SSD was 1TB, I would have just used it, no question. I'm not nervous about its reliability, it's just small at 120GB. For business, 'tho - 120GB is enough for everything, OS and data and programs and scanned images, etc. Can't beat it.

 

Yeah, I don't know the techinical reason for the "don't defrag" the SSD stipulation. I can only guess there's just something different about the root file structure, or maybe the sheer speed of the SSD is too much for the generic defragging routine that comes with Windows. But if I recall correctly, the danger in defragging is not just that it can mess up your data, but that it can render the SSD into a coaster. So I'm not inclined to experiment...

 

nat whilk ii

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Platter drives need to read linearly to be efficient. Fragmented files scattered across different areas increase the time it takes to read. An SSD drive does not have to read linearly to be time efficient. The defragmenting process causes a lot of read-write across the entire drive and that can shorten the life of an SSD.

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Platter drives need to read linearly to be efficient. Fragmented files scattered across different areas increase the time it takes to read. An SSD drive does not have to read linearly to be time efficient. The defragmenting process causes a lot of read-write across the entire drive and that can shorten the life of an SSD.

 

 

This is correct. Defragging causes too many writes for no purpose.

 

Terry D.

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This is correct. Defragging causes too many writes for no purpose.


Terry D.

 

 

SSDs have internal wear leveling -- defraging serves no purpose other than to waste write cycles and potentially add to bad block management overhead, and random access is quick unlike spinning media (classic hard drives) which want to co-locate data in adjacent regions toward the head moves for optimal placement.

 

I put a 120g Intel SSD on my PC as the primary OS drive (and some programs such as cubase), and I have my samples on a 7200 rpm 1tb secondary drive. The

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So, in other words, you think it makes a great SYSTEM or BOOT partition. Ok I forgot about the speed aspect.


They tell you NOT to defrag this??? Isn't that the same as deleting a file and replacing it with another larger/smaller file?


Dan

 

 

SS drives use NAND Flash technology, which is only good for 1 million writes to each location. (They wear out.) So traditional defragging, with it's repetitive writes, would significantly shorten their useful life.

 

However, if you copied all the files to a regular drive, deleted everything from the SSD, then copied it back, it would amount to only 2 writes per address (not counting updating the directory areas).

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SS drives use NAND Flash technology, which is only good for 1 million writes to each location. (They wear out.) So traditional defragging, with it's repetitive writes, would significantly shorten their useful life.

 

 

So how does this compare with the old MTBF standard?? I had some conventional drives for over 10 years that never died, their only fault ,that they were getting too small for an ever changing world. I finally threw out some of them last year that were under 3 gb.

 

Dan

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SS drives use NAND Flash technology, which is only good for 1 million writes to each location. (They wear out.) So traditional defragging, with it's repetitive writes, would significantly shorten their useful life.


However, if you copied all the files to a regular drive, deleted everything from the SSD, then copied it back, it would amount to only 2 writes per address (not counting updating the directory areas).

 

 

Actually, it's the erases which wear things out, and the industry seems to have moved from 1 million erase cycles to 100,000. That being said, multiple writes on SSDs to the same block, will end up causing a copy and an erase of that block, so in effect writes causes erases causes bad blocks. Bad blocks are expected on SSD and are managed internally -- not visible to the end user. I used to work on NOR flash devices and some early NAND flash chips, but that was a while ago and I'm quite forgetful of certain details.

 

Basically, leave it alone and don't worry about defragging.

 

As for expected lifespan compared to conventional drives? Not sure.

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I had some conventional drives for over 10 years that never died, their only fault ,that they were getting too small for an ever changing world. I finally threw out some of them last year that were under 3 gb.

 

 

too small a sample - I've had mag drives go in a month, I've had mag drives, last a year, I've had mag drives last a decade. But I also have thumbs that have been going for years (same thing there..a lot of them are small and I use them now to give out files and don't expect they will come back) -- It just doesn't mean that much

 

Also with the thumb drives, it might not be the medium so much as how they are getting used, I noticed you talked about reformatting them to get them back up, that could have more to do with FS errors

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what do you think of SSD's ?

Dan

 

 

I generally think they should be avoided. I've never had any even though I've never used a condom in my life... it's not natural. Just use good judgment, and yeah you need to have some discernment. And I strongly recommend meaningful lasting relationships rather that one-night stands. It

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Do not buy OCZ. They are cheap for a reason. The brands with the highest reliability are Samsung and Intel. They trade off not being the absolute fastest for reliability. This is relative, since all SSD's are fast compared to a disk drive. Some of the Intel units have a five year warranty. Make sure the drive has the latest firmware before you use it. Back up everything to multiple drives and locations!

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I generally think they should be avoided. I've never had any even though I've never used a condom in my life... it's not natural. Just use good judgment, and yeah you need to have some discernment. And I strongly recommend meaningful lasting relationships rather that one-night stands. It

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I bought my first one - a Samsung 128GB - just a couple weeks ago for my first PC built in over 7 years. Seems to work great so far, though in hindsight I regret not buying a larger size drive since I didn't expect Win 7 64-bit to take up THAT much space on the drive!

 

So far so good. I heard somewhere that (ironically, in light of recent events), Apple uses Samsung-made SSDs on their Mac Book Airs.

 

I think within 10 years, conventional hard drives will be obsolete and will only exist for archival applications.

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