I finally bought a SSD

[Red Squirrel]

The only machine I really boot up a lot is my HTPC, so figured I'd put it on that. Though I'm also debating on if I should put it in my main workstation, as stuff will still be faster in general, it's not just booting up that's faster. The HTPC was easier as it means less downtime.

The system is ready to use within 30 seconds after pressing the power button, and really the part that takes long is the POST. It's an older machine so the post process just lags and lags, then it tries to figure out the resolution to use etc... so that part takes long. Once it hits the hard drive, it's like less than 10 seconds and I have XBMC open and ready to use. No lag at all whatsoever. It's incredible. I eventually want to build a better machine for my HTPC, so it will be even faster then. Basically, I'm treating it like an appliance. I turn it on when I need it, and turn it off when I'm done.

The shutdown is like 3 seconds. A lot of this has to do with the OS (Linux) but the SSD has improved the speeds slightly and the overall responsiveness of XBMC, like going through the menus and such. I mostly just got it because I just wanted to finally try one out. It was a good deal too, a bit over 100 bucks for a 60GB OCZ. I might get another later down the line for my workstation. I don't actually store data on either machine so they are great candidates for a SSD. All the data is on my server's raid array. I'm even debating on getting a SSD for the server's OS drive. Idealy, from now on any machine I build will have a SSD for OS and a raid of HDD's for data (if it's a server). SSDs have been coming down in price pretty fast too.

 

[Forceman]

How often do you reboot/power on? Put the SSD on the computer you use the most - boot-up time is nothing compared to the massively improved random access time the SSD will bring to your main machine.

 

[Turtle Man]

Thanks for this thread. Helps me understand SSDs more and more. You say 30 sec boot time from power. How long did it take prior to the SSD?

 

[jwcalla]

Yeah I got one and then all of a sudden that turned into four.

 

[ob1]

Thanks for this thread. Helps me understand SSDs more and more. You say 30 sec boot time from power. How long did it take prior to the SSD?

Well for me, prior to the SSD it was nearly 90 seconds for a completely useable desktop in win7, and after the SSD install its like 30 seconds including post to a desktop where I can open and run applications. Before the SSD you could click on things like email and browser and such, but it would take several seconds to get into those simple small programs unless I let the system boot until there was no disk activity. Now when I put in my password and the desktop is visible, I can run applications and they start right up.