SS disk drive or not?

coolagarry

I find Bob Rankins advise is usually pretty sensible (although american based) take a look at what he says about SSD's
http://askbobrankin.com/upgrade_your_hard_drive_to_ssd.html?awt_l=8_R_N&awt_m=JAy6y4lhN8P6SL

moonrakerz

Fifer 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 ...

Not quite sure how much of the improvement that you will undoubtedly see, will be down to the HD.

A fresh install of any OS will produce better results
Replacing Vista with W7 will produce better results
SSD in place of an HDD will produce better results

If we don't hear from you we'll know that it didn't go too well..........:D

Wookey

SSD's aren't only faster but use less electric, generate less heat and have zero noise. Boot times are faster, virus scans are faster, intensive loading programs such as games are faster. The pros for installing an SSD to me far outweigh the cost, hopefully prices will continue to drop on them so that machines with 2+ SSD in them start to become more and more common.

Fifer

moonrakerz wrote: »

If we don't hear from you we'll know that it didn't go too well..........:D

Didn't get very far. PC wouldn't boot from the W7 DVD. Need to investigate why, but a minor but time consuming domestic crisis has intervened. (Boot from CD is set as first boot option in BIOS, so it isn't that).

Millionaire

SSD's all the way.. Prices are coming down, they have recently come under £1 a gig.

DWatts

Wookey wrote: »

SSD's aren't only faster but use less electric, generate less heat and have zero noise. Boot times are faster, virus scans are faster, intensive loading programs such as games are faster.

While all of that is true - it's not like typical hard drives use much power, generate much heat, or are very loud (mine are practically silent, and I have 3 totally 3.5TB). The only real power and heat from a computer is the CPU and GPU, and the noise is from the fans - so the SSD won't make a blind bit of difference.

The speed is really the only benefit with SSD's - and I suppose if you find application load times of a few seconds that bad they're worth it. But you have to weigh that against the price and the massive limitations in size.

Personally, even though I deal with applications that can take about 20s to load each time (and crash often), I know that an SSD would only reduce that to about 10s; I don't see the reason in paying about £60 more for less space just to save that 10s. It would take me a day of work to pay the difference, and it would take me years to actually see a net benefit (i.e. reduced load times vs the hours of work I lost paying for them.) And by that time I'll have a new computer anyway, and a new generation of SSD's will be released.

They're fun gadgets, but really not worth it right now.

Fifer

Fifer wrote: »

Didn't get very far. PC wouldn't boot from the W7 DVD. Need to investigate why, but a minor but time consuming domestic crisis has intervened. (Boot from CD is set as first boot option in BIOS, so it isn't that).

Managed to get the DVD to boot by changing the SATA ports used by each device (physically by switching cables) and have fresh installed W7 of the SSD - but it won't boot from it. Dell Inspiron 530 - might see if the BIOS needs updated ...

23n1th

Fifer wrote: »

Managed to get the DVD to boot by changing the SATA ports used by each device (physically by switching cables) and have fresh installed W7 of the SSD - but it won't boot from it. Dell Inspiron 530 - might see if the BIOS needs updated ...

SSDs are a little picky, they need to be in the first sata port and I believe you need to enable ACHI in the bios.

TheSaint_2

If you have the cash for an SSD go for it Personally I am waiting for the 500Gb drives to come down to around £100 (rather than over £1K!!) before I take the plunge. The boot time is significantly reduced, but if you have a well set up box with enough ram windows 7 Superfetch should (in theory) cache all the apps you use a lot, so you won't see a massive change in performance.

But if you are a gamer, then yes you will get a huge boost as superfetch will not cache entire binaries for huge MMO's or just huge games in general unless you have gb's and gb's of ram

You might want to consider getting a small SSD to boot from and then store you big programs on a hard disk, that way you get windows running as fast as possible at least.

By the way - don't bother throwing more than 4gb at a 32bit win7 as it won't use it. You need 64bit or do a kernel hack on the 32bit. Check the system info screen (right click computer on the start menu, properties). It will say installed memory - and in brackets the amount that is useable (on 32 bit).

DWatts

jull wrote: »

Are they only produced in 2.5 inch sizes for laptops?

Pretty much, yes. You could get a caddy to boost it to 3.5" for a few quid.