SSD strictly for data ?

mrjones

mrjones

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 24, 2009
Messages
161
I have a 60g Solid2 and was thinking about getting a 128g Kingston V series strictly for data, I also have a 30g Vertex I was thinking about selling or even possibly using it as a boot drive and the other ssd's as data (kinda pushing it ?).

I have a 2tb platter drive and some others which I'm seriously thinking about taking them out of my rig so I don't have to listen to them spin up and down all the time ,cant leave em awake all the time,right ? if they are not being used and my OS is on the ssd.

Really loving the silence of the ssd.
 
In one of my machines I have a 120GB Vertex for a boot drive, and a 120GB data Vertex for data. For media archives and such those all sit on a server. I won't have spindle drives in any machine I sit at anymore.
 
pjkenned said:
In one of my machines I have a 120GB Vertex for a boot drive, and a 120GB data Vertex for data. For media archives and such those all sit on a server. I won't have spindle drives in any machine I sit at anymore.
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+1 for this solution. If you're willing to put out big bucks for SSDs to use as storage, you're better off sticking with a 60/80GB SSD for your OS and that's it. Build a cheap little file server and stick your data drives in it.

You can build it for 250-300 very easily without the cost of drives! Just toss it in a closet somewhere :)
 
Thanks for the input, I've never messed around with any server type stuff, have to look into that.
 
If you want just data on it i suggest used jmicron based drives - they have high sequential writes/reads and low IOPS doesn't matter.
 
MetricGnome said:
http://freenas.org - It's incredibly simple!
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There's a big difference in local SSD storage speed v. network attached storage. Network storage is fine for large multi-GB/TB sequential reads/ writes, but for small reads/ writes and such, local SSDs are much better.

BTW mrjones, if you want to play around with NAS stuff, just use virtualbox. Much easier to do that than to build a machine and figure it out later. Your X58 platform can handle a VM easily. Just remember local performance will be much better than network performance.
 
pjkenned said:
In one of my machines I have a 120GB Vertex for a boot drive, and a 120GB data Vertex for data. For media archives and such those all sit on a server. I won't have spindle drives in any machine I sit at anymore.
Click to expand...

make sure you've got the latest 1.50 firmware on those Vertex's to take advantage of the internal garbage collection they do now. I never paid much attention to my Vertex 30Gb, it was at firmware 1.30 since I bought it, and performance was abysmal when I finally benched it after about 6 months of use. After I applied firmware 1.50 and let it idle at the BIOS for an hour, was like brand new again.
 
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Yea, I did that about 48 hours after it came out. I actually killed a 120GB Vertex with v1.5 firmware like a lot of people :) But while it was alive (and regularly corrupting data) it was FAST!!! I forgot lesson 1 in SSD's... let new firmware updates sit for a week or two before you apply them.
 
My ssd'd still have the same firmware they were shipped with and so far no problems that I can see.
My Vertex30 has 1.4 and the Solid2 has 1.5.
 
Do you need your data drives to be that fast? You need your winamp play list to populate faster or something?!

I have my OS, apps & some large files used regularly (like outlook) on the SSD. Then keep your data on a HDD and back up the important stuff from the SSD to the HDD, regularly. (outlook, etc)

IMO, its not worth $2-3/Gb for a data drive. The cost/benefit doesn't really make sense, unlike an OS/apps drive.

Its not going to increase your experience that much if at all. You can alway do what I do.... if you are working on some big files... keep it on your desktop which you should have stored on your C: (ssd) drive. until done, then file it away or back it up on the large spindle drive. So you can access it fast if needed, but then file it away on the slightly slower standard HDD.
 
How noisy are your drives (or silent is your case) that you can hear the drives spinning up and down? I haven't been able to hear a hard drive over my system noise floor in 5 years.
 
IMO it is a waste for 99% of users.

If you get good quiet disk drives you will not be able to hear them over your CPU fan and the cost/gb is MUCH MUCH MUCH better.
 
I have two 640GB WD Blacks, both in 5.25" harddrive silencer enclosures.

My system is super quiet, all of the 120mm fans are set to low speed controlled via BIOS, and they never spin up. The only thing that ever makes noise in my case is the videocard if I'm gaming the fan on it starts to become noticeable and gradually louder.
 
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