SS disk drive or not?

jull_2

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leemoss

I use an SSD (well 2 in RAID 0 but its a bit overkill). I'd seriously recommend one, booting Windows takes no time and apps open pretty much instantly. My machine is fairly high spec though.
As for Windows 8, its only developer release from playing with it yesterday, I wouldn't want to run it as my main OS.

mitchellbloke

I had to replace my Macbook HD and wanted an SSD but couldnt justify the cost. Have a look at the 'hybrid' disks (I have a seagate). About 1/3 the cost of an SSD and almost equivalent speeds.

DWatts

Only if you have to restart your computer a lot. The only significant gain of a SSD is boot time, but once you've booted up, the performance increase for most tasks is negligible.

(And for the price of an SSD you might as well put your computer in hibernate, in which case the 'boot time' will be a few seconds anyway)

leemoss

DWatts wrote: »

Only if you have to restart your computer a lot. The only significant gain of a SSD is boot time, but once you've booted up, the performance increase for most tasks is negligible.

That's not necessarily true, Tomshardware done a recent review showing the speed differences.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-hard-drive,2956.html

leemoss

jull wrote: »

Can you put a laptop drive into a desktop computer or are the connections different?

yeah, laptop SATA drives will connect in a PC , the majority of SSD drives use the laptop form factor.

googler

jull wrote: »

Can you put a laptop drive into a desktop computer or are the connections different?

You may need an adaptor bracket to fit the smaller drive into the larger drive bay

Even if the connections are different (if you have an IDE drive), adaptors are available

Look in Maplin for adaptors.

Fifer

jull wrote: »

I'm planning to replace my primary HD with an ssd tonight (a 96GB Kingston 100V+). Doing a fresh install of W7 on it to replace Vista at the same time. If it goes well and I get back on line, I'll let you know ...

DWatts

leemoss wrote: »

That's not necessarily true, Tomshardware done a recent review showing the speed differences.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-hard-drive,2956.html

The drives are definitely a lot faster at file operations. But unless you do a lot of moving files around, those speed gains won't notice all that much - programs might launch a bit quicker, but typically it is the CPU and RAM that hinders application launches.

I'm definitely not saying the speed gains aren't there, but they're generally not enough to justify the cost unless an application taking 10s to load instead of 3-5s is that annoying.

Hammyman

jull wrote: »

Windows 7 but I might download Windows 8 to see what it is like.

Please don't. It is a pre-BETA with lots of functionality missing and lots of bugs. It is for developers to see where MS is heading with the new OS so they can design their applications for it. It isn't for normal daily use.

23n1th

I added an SSD and the speed is brilliant, truly. Its a pain going back to my laptop and netbook now, so much so I'm considering buy SSDs for them (which could be considered a waste of money)