Downgrade SSD --> 7200rpm HDD. ZzzZZzzZzzZZz

My applications also open as i click them and i have a typical HDD

I have them always opened and typically hibernate
I use too heavy applications to have all of them opened but i keep the most common opened, plus browser and a spreadsheet. So i only have to restart them when i make a general restart which is usually once a week or more, since i notice a small decrease in performance along the way.
For some people that don't need heavy applications they can have their 4 applications always opened for a month or a year if they only do office, some image editing, mail, browser and hibernate

With increasing RAM we will not close applications unless we need all the performance.

So my advice for those with HDD. Don't close applications unless you need the performance juice.

 

I can only be sorry for your bad experience.
I've been a laptop user for nearly 8 years now, have had a few laptops of my own plus nobody knows how many company machines. I have dropped laptops from more than a meter hight that had no HDD protection and they broke smashing on the floor - the HDD was still in perfect order.

I had my external 2.5" HDD drive drop on the floor from about a meter while spinning, it hit the floor and jumped while still on the cord. At this moment I was walking by and accidentally kicked it giving it a nice acceleration towards the wall (while still on the cord and spinning!) where it smashed and the casing broke apart!! This HDD is now, 2 years later, still in use and in perfect order with 0 S.M.A.R.T. failures! I'm using it almost every day.

So I'm sorry, I honestly have absolutely no clue about what you are talking about neither what HDDs you have used in the past. Fact is - I certainly used at least 20 different HDDs in the past 10 years - I have NEVER had a failed HDD. The only problem I've had was a 4 years old Fujitsu HDD which started making clicking noises.

So if this is what it takes for you to support your purchase - consider mechanical HDDs very fragile!

But reality is something very different.

HDDs certainly break just like every other piece of electronics, including SSDs. But please give a call 4 years..., no wait - even 2 years from now and tell me how your SSD is doing and how fast it's working and we will compare it to my <100 bucks mechanical HDD.

Even closed applications will start instantaneously if enough RAM is present - superfetch, cache, etc
I rarely run into situations where I see my HDD is really slowing me down. And I'm just not ready to pay 5 times the price of a 7200 RPM HDD to reduce this latencies with just a few miliseconds or a second. I found adding RAM is a great improvement that is definitely worth every cent for the price it has. SSD? - Sure - whenever they become cheaper and more reliable in the long-term meaning of the word.

 

An SSD is not about faster boot times. You are correct, that people do not reboot often enough to make an SSD worthwhile for just faster boot times.

An SSD is not about load times of single applications. Any drive (SSD, hybrid, or 7200rpm HDD) can load a single application well.

The benefit of an SSD is that your system doesn't slow down when you're doing multiple things at once. All of the videos that I heavily promote involve doing multiple things at once? Booting Windows 7 + Loading 27 applications. Booting Windows 7 and loading 3 MSOffice Apps + Chrome.

You are never sitting there with a slow system, because the mechanical HDD is thrashing around, trying to catch up. With an SSD, you click a mouse, and your computer *works*. Instantly. No slowdown, no lag, no thrashing HDD. Click a button, and your computer does what it is supposed to.

This matters during multitasking. Try copying a lot of files to/from your hard drive (several GB worth, both large and small files). Then do ANYTHING else with your computer, like launching an application. It will be slow, because your mechanical HDD is already thrashing around, maxed out, trying to keep up.

Every single part in the computer you use has gone through improvements over the past 20 years that have yielded several orders of magnitudes (several 10x's) of increased performance. Except the mechanical HDD. Over the past 20 years, mechanical HDDs have gone through only about half an order of magnitude of increased performance (only about 5x improvement).

You may not think that SSDs are worth it, because they are too expensive. Fair enough. Everyone has different sensitivity to price. But I think that you're looking at SSDs the wrong way. They are not about boot times or single application load times. They are about multitasking. And multitasking is an area where a mechanical HDD just can't keep up.

You've mentioned this more than once. I think you're misunderstanding about how "SSD wearing out" works.

The whole fear of an SSD wearing out is that NAND flash memory has a limited number of write cycles. When people found out about this, there was this fear about how SSDs would wear out, and that the SSD you bought would one day become a useless non-functioning paperweight, etc.

SSD manufacturers know of the problem with NAND flash memory having limited write lifecycles. This is why they do something called overprovisioning and wear leveling. They have algorithms to distribute the data writes across the SSD evenly, so that you aren't constantly writing to the same NAND flash cell.

SSD manufacturers also started giving estimated lifetimes of their SSDs, so that their partners (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc) could be confident that they can put SSDs in the systems that they sell, and that their customers would not be making angry phone calls 2 years later about dead storage drives. Intel is the most commonly quoted SSD manufacturer in this space, where they claim that their SSDs can handle 20GB/day of writes for 5 continuous years.

And even when an SSD does reach the end of its write lifecycle, it doesn't die. It simply refuses to write... all of your data is still safe in read-only mode.

This whole fear that you constantly keep mentioning about SSD lifecycles is like Y2K... it is a big fear that everyone had, but there is absolutely no real-world evidence to support that it is actually a problem.

(1) Can you name a single instance from anywhere, either in-person or on the internet, where someone has an SSD that has used all of its available writes and is now in read-only mode?

(2) Intel claims that their consumer drives (not enterprise) can sustain 20GB/day of writes. How many consumers (not enterprise users) do you know write 20GB/day?

(3) Intel claims that their consumer drives can last 5 years. How many drives do you own that are 5 years old? None. People don't keep drives for 5 years. They replace their drives within 5 years because of capacity, performance, or defect within 5 years.

... just as a friendly request, please stop using car analogies. You have strengths in many areas, but car analogies are not one of them. I have yet to find a post where someone has found your car analogies useful.

 

I'm sorry, what did you just say!? :

I didn't know we have 2 kent1146 in this forum. Or did you mean cars are your specialty only

A friendly advise - speak for you only. I don't think anyone here authorized you to be writing about "someone" and "everyone". Speak about yourself only.

So Ferrari instead of Toyota for the city.... hmmm... very useful indeed. Ok, I'll leave that to you

Leaving the thread - have some actual work to do with my "slow" mechanical HDD, while you enjoy your SSD boosted speeds while clicking around in the forum

As for many many many other things - HDD vs SSD is a matter of personal choice and has many factors needed to be considered.

 

you click around in the forum just as we do. but we're faster at it, that means we can work in parallel


actually, this is a pro-hdd argument.. damn work

 

So the smaller the ssd, the faster it "wears out"?

 

It was meant as constructive criticism. I was simply reflecting some comments that I have seen posted by others 1, 2 that your analogies can be confusing.

I'm sorry to hear that you don't take my comments as constructive feedback.

I would, however, be interested to hear your reply to the other points that I raised in my post, beyond the one point about car-analogies that you singled out.

 

who cares about your luck? hdds can die from physical events, ssds can't. it's a simple "possible/impossible" thing. i prefer to have something that's impossible to kill.

and statistics about dead hdds show that i'm not the only one who's interested in this.

 

@gracy123

I think you have the city driving analogy backward. SSD is ONLY about 2x faster than HDD on sequential access but more like 100x when doing rapid small read/write(zip around city and congested roads).

 

indeed. same reason my next car will be an electro car. great in city driving, better than an ordinary car on highway driving, but the capacity and cost are both a problem oh, and silent, no vibrations..

it's really just like an ssd. (i plan on tesla model s, just in case)

 

Yes, because it will cause more writes of the same cells due to the smaller size of the SSD.

Also, SSD's aren't all about transfer speeds despite that's about all they market. There are lots of other positive attributes:

- super fast access times (typically <0.1ms compared with 4-10ms of typical hard drives.
- no spin up time, so you can sleep your SSD and have it power on nearly instantaneously as well.
- low power consumption for most SSD's. Most are 0.1 to 0.5W idle compared with 2.5-3.0W of an HDD. Gives extended battery life with lighter laptops.
- little heat
- no noise (well except for the odd electronic squeal some people are sensitive to)
- no moving parts for improved durability

SSD's aren't just a fast hard drive.

 

^ this is not true. You said it twice already so I decided to step in.

about ~20 years ago, as I remember, I had a 20MB 5.25" HDD (Seagate) that had ~300Kb/s transfer rates on my 16-bit computer that ran at 8MHz. My friend had a 10MB HDD that ran much slower, so mine was literary superior. Todays HDDs are over 100MB/s ... so much faster.

- anyways, me is sitting and laughing at you all arguing on this subject (HDD vs SDD), knowing that it applies differently to people based on what they do with the computer. I can pop up arguments that are pro and con regarding SDDs, as well as I can pop those regarding HDDs ..

cheers.

 

holy crap, I found it ... My first HDD was Seagate ST-225

 

wow that thing must weigh like 5lb..how much would you sell it for?

 

Do not look at the throughput. Look at the access time or latency. ST225 has a access time of about 65ms comparing with today's 10ms. That is about 6x-7x.

How much faster is today's CPU/RAM comparing with then ? in the range of 300x.

SSD if used like a tape, it would be like what gracy123 said, kind of waste of money.

 

Hey Kent1146 great post and thanks for the video. I pretty much have the same spec as your dell xps and just wondering what type of services did you disable at startup? I am tryng to cut down on my boot up and been getting about 32 second to desktop.

 

and by now i have an access time of 0.065ms.. so a factor 1000, same as the read speed over 20 years evolved (and that one is now after 2-3 years a factor 5 grown, tendency exponential.. when's sata4 comming? )

 

I disabled:

• Disk Defragmenter
• nVidia Driver Helper Service
• Tablet PC Components
• Windows Search
• Windows Defender

Everything else on my particular list of Services are either required for my applications / Windows to operate the way I want, or do not start automatically on PC boot.

 

windows search should not be disabled, tablet components doesn't gain you anything. disk defrag is auto-disabled (but still there if you plug in a hdd). defender is still around? oh, and, die, nvidia, die!!

 

Well, he asked what I disable on my Dell XPS M1330. And that's the stuff I disable.

To each his own.

 

no, not to each it's own. stuff that harms the experience should not be disabled just out of habit and "i know better". it's a feature you should learn to use instead of disabling it and saying "i know how to tweak my system".

turn it on, wait till it's indexed, then notice that it uses zero system resources, but gives you the ability to instantly go trough thousands to millions of your files not just with their names, but with their content, too. it's like google for your own stuff.

but sure, to each his own. still, it's a bad habit that i try to get everyone to stop doing, just like a lot of other tweaks that should not be applied as they a) never where more than a myth or b) where good once, and nowaday useless or even harmfull for the system experience. this one is harmful, your search gets massively slower once you disabled it.

 

We're really debating about the value of Windows Search here. I think we agree that the other 4 components add little to no value for an SSD system (Disk Defragmenter, nVidia Driver Helper Service, Tablet PC Components, Windows Defender).

I understand what you're saying... do not universally recommend that Windows Search be disabled. Yes, I agree. I get it. Windows Search should not be universally disabled across the board for all users, becuase it brings some value and utility to the table.

But just because it's there and useful to some people, doesn't mean that it should be universally accepted and used by everyone either. It is your statement of " it's a feature you should learn to use instead of disabling it" that I have issue with.

Personally, I don't use Windows Search, because I don't search for stuff on my computer. I am a person who organizes things by a structured folder / location hierarchy. I can find my own content using my method better than running a search, and sifting through the (unstructured) search results. I can launch my applications through either a keyboard shortcut, or a shortcut pinned to the Taskbar.

My method works for me. And it's worked for me long before Windows Search came along. I'm not claiming that it works for everyone. Windows Search has high value to some people. It has little value to me. So why try and force it upon me?

 

I agree with Kent. I wouldn't advise everyone to disable it, but I always do as well, due to the fact I take the simple step of knowing where all my files are in the first place.

 

well, no, kent, i don't agree with disk defragmenter, tablet pc, and i'm not sure about windows defender, as i don't have it here (MSE replaces it, and is on).

why? both disk defragmenter and tablet pc do NO harm to your system in any way. disabling it will NEVER be a benefit. it'll just mean the moment you could benefit from it, you have to remember to enable it. which is stupid.

about search: i know where my files are perfectly well. but navigating to them is never as fast as just press [win] and typing a keyword that lists it. it's a matter of learning how to do stuff fast. once you got that, you will never talk about "i know where my files are". that doesn't mean a thing. what you care is "can i get to my files fast". and with windows search, you can get to them faster than ever.

 

that is assuming you know the keyword

different people have different 'indexing' method in the brain. I am more like kent where I need to browse(i.e. follow the path) to the stuff I want rather than remember all the keywords of my stuff.

Though I leave the indexing on as it doesn't show its presence(it terms of slowing me down) anyway.

 

Indeed, the usefulness of indexed searches depends on each individual's usage patterns. I use indexed Start Menu searches to launch programs, I browse around for most file-manipulation tasks, and I use non-indexed Windows Search for the few occasions where I either misplaced something or don't know where it is in the first place.

The problem with indexed searches is that I use my laptop as a terminal - almost everything I access from my laptop is either not in a default indexed location (like rundll32.exe) or is on my desktop or file server (mapped as network drives), so I'd have to index my entire SSD, all external HDDs, and all network drives, which would make the index gigantic.

 

I used to have a very good organization of my files like that. One thing that really bugs me to this day though, is that MS in their infinite wisdom, decided to move files to the TOP of the list and folders at the bottom, with no way to change it without using "classic" start menu and lose a lot of functionality that way. How hard can it be to add an option to "sort folders first"?

 

I still see the folders on the top of the list but yes their folder display order can be frustrating at times. not sure what you mean by 'classic' start menu though.

 

Nevermind, it was Vista that had the option to switch to 'classic' start menu, which mimicked XP. You have to download a third party app to get it to work in Windows 7 now it seems or you go full bore Windows XP theme.