Does anybody still use mechanical hard drives?

I am different, I work full time on ebay and Amazon. I'm home all of the time and I dont have cable. I do have Netflix but not all shows or movies are on there.

Some people need more than 1tb drive for movies. I have 3 1tb drives in my laptop and their mostly full. I only download movies-shows in HD versions. Or some people really do have that many games and who wants to wait a full day to download Rome 2 at 16-20gb(?).

 

750GB of games on my desktop. 2TB of movies and TV shows. It adds up in a hurry.

 

You got to be kidding going that route is where my mid-tower is used for storage and retrieval of my movies and data and it acts as my NAS as well. I have 9 - 3tb HDD in it and it stores most if not everything I download and with my network any laptop in the network can access it. And the last one is down to 1.5tb already.......soon I have to decide and add one more 3 or 4 tb platter to keep enough free space..

Not really in this day and age it doesn't take alot of time to fill up a drive some video here and there and movies here and there and those drives will fill up quicker then you think. I might add one more drive either a 3tb or 4tb platter for my next expansion but I will have to use a full tower to do this. But my mid-tower is my mine computer still as it holds everything from my work to family things and video and movies and related documents. So it doesn't just sit empty collecting dust my mid-tower is still the work horse.

 

thts overkill - the most ssd you would need would be 512gb..beyond that is just gravy.

 

How about this thing, btw? Will it allow me to use two different msata SSDs without raid? Are such devices compatible with optibays?

 

Raid is something most users never used though and if you are Raid I would use the second bay drive as storage for your data/file and the primary drive for your O/S and installed running program. So should the primary go you just have to reinstall or replace the drive but your data/file is protected from the loss or damage. Raid is wasting good money after bad only if you doing server or hosting would you use such setup would require more drives to protect data/file on separate system.

 

I know what is RAID. I was not familiar with the JBOD abbreviation. So the answer to my question is yes.

 

I use a 256GB SSD on my laptop and an external 2TB USB 3.0 drive for all big, "static" content. I've had the SSD for one year and a half and it was quite pricey relative to the price of the laptop, but the difference it makes it's truly astonishing, there's no way I'd be going back to a mechanical drive for the operating system and applications.

 

I think the best bang for the buck out there is what I opted to do on my AW18.... RAID0 with SSD Cache drive... I'm as fast on this thing as I am on the MBP with pure SSD and more than double the storage for less cost.

 

It's called an external drive or NAS or server.... I have 18TB storage, and just pull in whatever I want whenever I want. At local gigabit LAN it's 120MB/sec or even over internet I can stream pretty much anything with my upload speed at about 15MB/sec. I can appreciate a desire to carry every movie and game you own locally, but it's really not necessary nor that effective. I have a single 4TB drive for storing all my Steam and Origin and GOG.com games on it. I just pull off there whatever I need/want.

 

Best bang for the buck; we can arguably agree to that statement.

But over 3 times more likely to crash irrevocably too.

 

Look at my signature.. both desktop and laptop run 240GB Intel 520 SSD's, and they are without a doubt more responsive than mechanical drives (including Velociraptors). SSD's are best used as a primary o/s drive imho. I use a second Intel SSD on my desktop for games, which significantly speeds up load times rather than improving active gameplay itself. I do still use WD Caviar Black mech drives for storage/data/media/backups on my desktop though, and I see no real need to have an SSD for that.

 

For laptops, I would still do a SSD as a primary (OS) drive and I would keep a HDD just for storage and other random junk purposes. However, like most people here, I would no longer use a HDD as an OS drive.

 

I do but as external storage now. Can't really stand the noise of mechanical hard drives.

 

Noise? The two I have in my 18 are dead silent.

 

With HGST, noise is a thing of the past. Even so, agree on SSD as OS drive.

For the most performance, from a video editing configuration, a second SSD is suggested as a scratch disc and for maximum performance a third for the hashcash. Although only an SSD is recommended for the OS, the additional SSDs make for a much more enjoyable and efficient editing experience.

I recently externalized my OD and replaced it with a 1TB HDD for maximum disc space and high efficiency stroage. Only a RAID HDD and SATA 6 interface all around would be better. For now this set up is good enough to edit anything this side of 4k.

 

And why isn't anyone discussing hybrid as an option vs OS drive and storage drive. True hybrid has the speed of SSD 50% of the time with the cost of mechanical.

 

A theoretical concept that never quite made it to reality. One day soon...perhaps?

 

Not at all.. Seagate Hybrids have been around for a few years now..

 

I posted about them a few pages back; I recently replaced a 320GB 7200RPM in a ThinkPad with a Seagate 500GB hybrid HDD (SSHD as they call it). Very good results for not much more money than a standard hard drive - the computer is almost SSD-like in starting up and opening programs.

 

My AW18 is setup that way... two 7200RPM 768GB Drives in RAID0 with a 80GB SSD cache drive... I'm quite sure it's almost as fast as my pure SSD setup in my MacbookPro.... but unlike the pure SSD setup, I don't have to worry if it starts to get too full.. there's hardly any performance hit until you're all but full.


My boot time in windows8 is practically nothing... maybe 3-5 seconds. Best part, since It's not being used ONLY as a windows boot disk, the smart cache also puts often used apps in there too... such as Steam, Google Chrome, Outlook, Word, etc...

 

I can notice a difference in noise if I start my laptop with the hard drive present versus with the hard drive disconnected. Granted, it's not a loud enough to be bothersome as it is, and if the fans are on high it won't be noticeable. But I didn't realize how much of the background noise the hard drive was until I tried starting the laptop without one. This is with a 2008 or 2009 Hitachi drive; newer ones may be quieter.

GamerPC, are you sure that's a cold boot and not the Windows 8 pseudo-turned-off-hibernate-ish state? I forget what the proper term for it is, obviously, but as I understand it Windows 8 doesn't by default completely shut down when you tell it to turn off. Instead it assumes a state not unlike Hibernation in XP and 7, but with some optimizations to improve resume time. Even with a fast SSD, 3-5 seconds seems almost impossibly fast for a cold boot. Maybe if you had nothing installed on it, a fresh install, and no security software running. But even then it would be impressive. Granted, Windows 3.11 can start in no time flat when installed to a modern mechanical hard drive and paired with a Core 2 Duo, so with sufficiently powerful hardware, maybe it's possible. But I'm skeptical. *

Steam does start much faster on an SSD than from a hard drive. I still keep all my Steam games on my hard drive, but I moved Steam itself to the SSD, and it makes a big difference. I also put my most-commonly-used programs, like Notepad++ and Opera 12, on my SSD, although the effect is much less drastic than with Steam.

* - Windows 3.11 tested on the laptop in my sig a few years back. Conclusion: You can't beat it for blazing-fast performance and responsiveness, after you get past the DOS HIMEM.SYS check, at least. But it's rather lacking in support for features such as the Internet and USB. Decided reluctantly to go back to Vista instead of sticking with 3.11.

 

Full blown cold bootup... dead silent... But keep in mind, my RAID0 768's are also working with an 80GB SSD as a cache drive, and I'm quite certain most of windows boot up is now cached by the smart system that decides what to cache and what not to.

 

hmmm...you sure you just can't hear them over the fans in your system?

 

I will never buy another machine with a mechanical hard drive again! The last one crapped out after only a year and a half of use! I'll keep my speedy 500GB SSD on my Y2P, thank you very much.

 

Have fun with your large collection of files. Or should i say, kiss your wallet goodbye.

 

And how is either a concern of yours?

 

A $500GB SSD is $300 these days. LINK Maybe $300 is a lot of money to put into your Lenovo, but it's not that much to put into a high end Clevo, MSI, or Alienware.

Let him spend his money the way he pleases.

 

You can get a good quality 240GB Intel 530 series SSD for $179.99 at Newegg right now [ link].. that's a damn good deal for a quality SSD..
Sustained Sequential Read - Up to 540MBps
Sustained Sequential Write - Up to 490MBps
4KB Random Read - Up to 41,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write - Up to 49,000 IOPS

 

What do you guys think about the Crucial M500's? They're slower than the 840 Evo's (though cheaper), but IDK, I'd rather have MLC over TLC. People claim it's not an issue, but unless you queue all those little writes rather than rewriting entire sectors, you end up with effectively more writes than you'd think.

 

I would go for the crucial M500s if they are significantly cheaper, since you won't feel any performance differenecs. However Invest in the Evo's if they are only 10 or 20 bucks apart since it will probably last longer

 

I would think most people would be on the look out for a bigger drive before either wears out.

I've got mechanical drives in all my PCs since they offer better bang for the buck for storage where speed is not as critical.

 

Well, I actually got the 500GB upgrade pretty much at no cost from the 250GB SSD, because my new machine had a touchpad issue(250GB version), so since that model was not available, they sent me the higher end model with the higher capacity hard drive( same ram and processor).

 

Certain ThinkPads would outlast the internal mechanical drive.

 

My college thinkpad ran fine until the backlight for the screen gave up.


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I have a thinkpad, and the answer is yes. My X220 tablet had a verzion WWAN card that I dumped and put a Crucial M4 mSATA ssd in its place and I'm typing off it right now. Granted the bios whitelist is unlocked (I don't know if it makes a difference for the unauthorized mini pci card or not), but the SATA controller is there.

 

I was deciding between the same drives, but ended up going with the M500 purely for the lower price. It benchmarks slower than the 840 Evo, but the difference really isn't noticeable in normal use. I'd rather keep money in my pocket.

 

Theres definetley a difference if you open up large enough files or write to other files. If not the only thing it probally hnoticly helps is the boot time

 

i wanted a w701ds but can't find any oh well

probably not, if it ever does last longer it'll be the SLC in the evo. evo uses TLC flash.

 

I currently have a 64GB SSD as my primary and a 500GB 7200RPM drive in my secondary. Thinking of replacing the latter with a 250GB Samsung 840. I mainly use the machine for games - but considering the massive file sizes of recent titles (40GB), I'm a little concerned that the upgrade might not be worth it.

What do you guys think?

 

I think it may be a good idea, but check out the link below for choosing the best SSD for gaming.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...nce-consistency-test-overall-performance.html

 

Oh and yet another example of why mechanical hard drives are fail, my dad's 4 year old Dell Studio 1558 (not the greatest laptop ever made but whatever) mechanical drive just went kaput after just 4 years. It has never moved off his desk, he uses it 1-2 hours a day maybe everyday. He surfs the web, watches Youtube, checks email, word processing the norm, no insane usage patterns. Such little usage and the spinner went kaput, time to get a small SSD and be done with it.

 

Tsunade_Hime,

Nah, that is not a good example! What can you say about the SSD's then? What will your storage requirements be met with then (when the SSD inevitably fails)?

Out of the billions of HDD's that have been produced, it doesn't matter that a few go kaput every once in a while - that's what backups are for.

 

I had one of those for my last machine. It wasn't the sturdiest thing, and a little prone to overheating, but a good machine. When my spinner went, I replaced it was an SSD and never looked back. That SSD came with me to my current machine.


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I've yet to have an SSD just die of "old" age. 2 premature deaths was caused by a electrical short. I care about reliability, and speed. HDDs naturally slow down over time, the read head/motor wear out eventually. And my dad does have his stuff backed up, it's not an issue of lost data, but just a pain in the rear. If I put an SSD into his laptop when it was new, we wouldn't be having this issue now.

 

I'm laughing at whoever said SSD's don't fail, i've had em fail as much as hard drives, you just gotta back up that's all.

 

If they give you time to do so, that is...

 

Raid 1.

Also you can do other things while your computer is backing up.

 

How many hard drives or SSD's *DO* you have fail?

With the dozens of hard drives and SSD's both mobile and desktop, not counting WD Green Desktop drives (avoid at all costs), I've had maybe 5 or 6 fail in the last 30 years. Two SSD's failed because of the controller and were swiftly replaced with brand new ones, but those were several years ago during their infancy when they didn't have any history to build off of. But yes, absolutely back up regardless of what storage medium you use.

 

Not every machine supports RAID.

I've seen a SSD freeze the machine into total unresponsiveness to the point where hard shutdown was the only option.

On re-boot, the drive was no longer seen. Gone for good. Taking roughly 12 hours of my wife's project into a black hole...