SSDs are so expensive. anyone know of some links to sites other than egg that might have good deals? i want enough to run windows and program files on, so maybe 60-80GB. the cheapest 64GB drive on egg is a g skill for $140! alternatively, are there any fast and cheaper 2.5" HDDs around 60-80GB? or, would it help to have windows on a 16GB SSD and program files on a partition of a 1TB 7200rpm HDD or would that not be any better? i have a small form factor plan for a case that uses one 1TB or 1.5TB 3.5" HDD for storage and one 2.5" SSD or fast HDD for when i need speed.
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SSDs
- Thread starter ekuest
- Start date
Dangman
Ninja Editor SuperMod
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2005
- Messages
- 46,056
Hit up Slickdeals.net for the occasional SSD deal. If you want speed and an SSD, yes ~ $130 is the minimum. 16GB is a bit small for a Windows Vista or Windows 7 install, even with just the OS. The fast but cheapest 2.5" drive I know is this:
$90Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA Notebook Hard Drive
The next step is the Velociraptor drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296
Apparently one of the more cost effective but very fast SSD drives out there is the OCZ Vertex series:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393
I got this one:
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=FTM32GX25H
Super Talent 32GB SSD. It took me a while to figure out how to dump the Acronis image into the SSD but finally I was successful and I'm very happy with this little baby. Much faster than my 15K SCSI hard drive. I noticed great responsiveness. I still put the swap and temp files on an IDE hard drive to avoid fragmentation. Should I leave these files in the SSD?
I have 8GB of a booting partition and 22GB free space. I formatted it to the whole capacity of the drive 29.8GB.
Read: Min=106.8 MB/s max=121.8 MB/s Average=120.8 MB/s
Access Time 0.1ms
I couldn't test for Write. I imagine that must be less than reads.
Benefits:
1-) No noise
2-) No heat
3-) Super fast boots
4-) Internet Pages load super fast
5-) 0.1 ms Access time, way faster than any SCSI hard drive!
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=FTM32GX25H
Super Talent 32GB SSD. It took me a while to figure out how to dump the Acronis image into the SSD but finally I was successful and I'm very happy with this little baby. Much faster than my 15K SCSI hard drive. I noticed great responsiveness. I still put the swap and temp files on an IDE hard drive to avoid fragmentation. Should I leave these files in the SSD?
I have 8GB of a booting partition and 22GB free space. I formatted it to the whole capacity of the drive 29.8GB.
Read: Min=106.8 MB/s max=121.8 MB/s Average=120.8 MB/s
Access Time 0.1ms
I couldn't test for Write. I imagine that must be less than reads.
Benefits:
1-) No noise
2-) No heat
3-) Super fast boots
4-) Internet Pages load super fast
5-) 0.1 ms Access time, way faster than any SCSI hard drive!
ok thanks guys. so what do i want to put on an SSD anyway? program files? games? os? i dont even know what needs such fast read times, as my computer has always been more than limited by other components and i dont think ive ever noticed a problem with a drive not being fast enough.
bigdogchris
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2008
- Messages
- 19,116
Those WD and Seagate 640-750GB drives are so close to performance of raptors it's not really worth the extra cost you spend considering how much less space you have. Except for large file transnfers you wouldn't see any difference in day to day activities.
Use a SSD for the OS only (32GB is good enough $130.00). Put the windows swap file and windows temp file in another hard drive, ideally another SSD, a fast modern SCSI hard drive or at very least in a SATAII hard drive to avoid fragmentation or data congestion on your SSD boot hard drive.
Programs, games, utilities, backups, MP3s, photos, other data in a large SATAII hard drive like a 1.5TB Seagate hard drive.
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2006
- Messages
- 21,828
There's a lot of great info regarding SSDs in JakFrost's thread:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1399159
You'll want your OS and some apps on the SSD. ALL SSDs read fast, its the write speeds that make the difference between standard performance and instant responsiveness. The current bang for buck SSDs are the OCZ Vertex drives, since they offer the fastest write speeds under the MTRONs and Intels, yet cost much less.
Personally, I was underwhelmed by a single OCZ Vertex, but you also have to understand that I use the WD6400AAKS and VRaptor as my boot drives (in my two main systems), so I was already getting pretty fast performance in the storage category. 2 OCZ Vertex drives in RAID0... I'm waiting for my tax return.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1399159
You'll want your OS and some apps on the SSD. ALL SSDs read fast, its the write speeds that make the difference between standard performance and instant responsiveness. The current bang for buck SSDs are the OCZ Vertex drives, since they offer the fastest write speeds under the MTRONs and Intels, yet cost much less.
Personally, I was underwhelmed by a single OCZ Vertex, but you also have to understand that I use the WD6400AAKS and VRaptor as my boot drives (in my two main systems), so I was already getting pretty fast performance in the storage category. 2 OCZ Vertex drives in RAID0... I'm waiting for my tax return.