SSD's; The Myth Exposed.

My Supertalent 128gb Illidinex drive is much faster than my 150gb Velociraptor in real world apps. Don't know what this other ebooster shiz you use is, but if its something like Ready boost I could see how that could help.

Be interesting for you to run pcmark vantage, the HDD test specifically. My SSD dominates my raptor in this, as well as attos and crystalmark also give the lead to my SSD.

My situation it takes 12.5 seconds to load windows (not bios boot, from when the windows logo starts) on my SSD versus 20 seconds on the raptor.

 

Same for me. This thread is a conspiracy against ssds. My lap is so much faster since i have my ssd.

It takes 20 seconds for me to get a usable desktop from when the window logo starts with my poor Crucial indilinx M225 64GB. It's far better than the 70 seconds stated by the OP...So yeah someone is wrong on the internet and it's not dave.

 

People people. A conspiracy requires more than one person to collaborate. To put it correctly, it looks more like a conspiracy against Tilleroftheearth.

This is how I know all the hater have started to gather here.

I still don't see the point of testing in ideal situations. The whole point of testing is to see results in less than ideal situations. No one tests a device driver as if everything is working perfecting. Device driver testing requires you to unplug the device in mid operation. Send it bad data. Mix good data in with the garbage. The whole point of testing is not to find flaws. Otherwise it is propaganda.

 

surfasb.. let it be...

he made tests, several times, stating how ssds suck and fail to life up the hype. which is wrong, as they do life up their hype for a LOT of people worldwide.

so i started to question his ways, he started to defend his position, i started to explain his wrongs, he explained my wrongs, etc..

this was an ordinary discussion, that went on trough the big ssd thread, and some others, peaking in this own special thread.

and i don't agree at all about your behaviour. we don't test in ideal situations. but we test them, too, and see if they work the same way. they don't, for tiller => HE MADE SOMETHING WRONG.

because if tons of people get a certain gain, and one doesn't, then it's obviously HIS fault, not? and the forum here then tries to help to fix it. including me. i'm not always nice while trying to help, yes. but only if one pisses me off by stating again and again that i'm wrong with what i know. that's like saying "led lights can't illuminate rooms" and i say, yes, they can, i SIT RIGHT NOW IN MY ROOM only lit by led lights.

 

anyways, Tilleroftheearth, good luck next time. hope to finally get a "now i see the light" type of post.. you deserve it after so much trial and error. i never invested much work into ssds. i plugged them in, and used them. if they fail to deliver, i dropped them out again. so far, the mtrons and intels are still in, and the samsung now for secondary usage, after getting dropped out of main usage.

which is how it should be. hope it to be that way for you next time finally. you deserve it.

 

This coming from a guy who is targeting something 3 pages back

He made it work for his situations. Seriously, to call that wrong is well, wrong.

You know, when the Big Bang Theory was first proposed, these exact same criticisms were hurled at it.......

 

TilleroftheEarth and DavePerman, I think you two guys have a disagreement because you have different goals. You simply define your needs differently, so you get different results.

Tiller defines value to him as what he calls productivity, meaning the amount of work done in a day. He has explained elsewhere on this forum that he spends his days opening RAW picture files in the “80MB-200MB range” and editing them. He defines productivity as whether he can edit more picture files in a day. He is not at all concerned about the "snappiness" of the computer.

In search of a productivity increase, Tiller has purchased a 8 GB RAM setup ($290 for 2x4GB at current prices), and eBoostr ($40 for the full version). He has decided that for his work these are a worthwhile investment while spending $250 for Intel G2 is not. To each his own.

In contrast, many others (make that most others, uh, make that 99.9%) define a performance boost as the "snappiness" of a computer. I've reported in other threads that all my programs and operations work faster. Of particular note has been vastly increased search speed in Microsoft Outlook and more accurate and faster speech recognition in Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I cannot precisely quantify how much this increases the amount of work I get done each day, but it sure makes the computer more enjoyable to use. For that I am willing to pay $250 for an Intel G2. I would never go back to an HDD for a main drive. I’m waiting for some enterprising journalist to test a three-year old laptop with an SSD against a brand-new version of the same laptop with an HDD to see which one feels faster. My money is on the old laptop.

I really don't see the point in you two arguing about it. If the readers of this thread edit photo files all day and have the same preferences and goals as TilleroftheEarth, then spend the $$$ for RAM and eBoostr. If not, then don't. It's really not worth getting upset about.

 

But but but....

He's WRONG!!!!!


Seriously, AMEN to that.

 

Barrok,

I don't care about benchmarks. I really, really don't care about benchmarks. Especially when they won't point out things like which drive will actually increasing your (computer) output for the day.

My desktop, still running Vista x64 with 4 Raptors (not in RAID) still had more 'snap' than the 80% filled 64GB Torqx - both with 8GB of RAM. Everywhere you read, they state 'an SSD has more oomph than even two RAID0 Raptors'. Sorry, but that is simply hype on a fully configured SSD (vs. a plain O/S install). My non-raided VRaptor easily took the 'snappiness' factor overall - although the way any MS Office popped open it may seem that the SSD would rule the whole world (one day, but not now, not yet).

Either way, I hope you use your computer for more than reboots and benchmarks.

Kallogan,

I guess people misread everything on the 'net. The SSD blew the Scorpio Blue away for bootup times. My stated times were 42sec to the desktop and an additional 18 seconds to a 'usable' state with the SSD; 70secs total.

The Scorpio, although taking a full 50 seconds longer to be at the same 'usable' state is still respectable; remember this was not an identical install; double the programs (in GB's) installed in addition to my hardware software monitor calibration software to fully load - including VMWare and XPMode too on the Scorpio (which, if you didn't know, install additional drivers and processes at startup).

 

Tiller isn't wrong based upon his goals and tests. OTOH, this guy does also edits photo files all day with his computer and has different test results:

From http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=433589&page=7

 

T61Dumb,

Just want to clarify that 'snappiness' is important to me and I would be willing to pay for that snappiness if everything else was equal. But, with the Torqx SSD I tried it is far from equal (compared to my Scorpio Blue).

Just the fact that a simple extract of a small file gave the drive the fits (for almost a minute!) when it is only two days old is enough of a 'warning' light for me to drop it.

I did get a chance to try eBoostr with an SSD as I had asked someone on the forums here long ago, and just as it should, it did increase the performance of 'even' the SSD. Where it most impressed me is that it once again stopped the audio from stuttering during my RAW image file conversion test.

Although I enjoy and even pursue the 'snap' factor in my computers, I do not allow it to lead me to believe that the computer is faster at outputting work - at least in my specialized case. However, when I make a purchase decision, I want to know fairly certain what I'm purchasing.

In this case and at this point in time, I need a (real) productivity boost, not simply an empty assurance that if programs and/or the O/S load faster, they are.

 

i would give you my intel G2 for a week with no charge in order to make you see how a real fast SSD works , but i dont live where you live.
i am begging you guys , just give him/her a free intel G2 try. it would be more effective than wasting your time by writing so much.

or INTEL should give a discount for him/her ?

 

@davepermen, just let tiller do his work--sheesh, if enough people believe him maybe these ridiculous prices for SSD's will come down!

 

Should of made a sarcasm sign.


Connect that comment with my earlier posts.

I'm with you on this one.

For example, I was thinking about dishing out some money for Dragon's NaturalSpeak cause it could provide me with some substantial productivity boosts.

 

Hey guys, to maximize my productivity I avoid getting in pointless arguments on the internet. Really gets the work done.

 

So, I guess you want to be non productive too for awhile, huh?

But seriously, this may seem non productive to you, but as I'm waiting for the previous weeks shoots to be processed/converted etc. on my desktop machine, I am organizing and reflecting on my SSD experience so that it may help others, like it has me.

(Saved myself not only not buying 'good enough' SSD's to put in my notebook and my desktop - but also the time and frustration of tearing down a few working systems to discover what I did; SSD's are not 'here' yet.

 

sgilmore62 - that would be awesome for all of us, huh?

surfasb - just want to point out to T61Dumb that not only did I pay over $400 for the 8GB of RAM, but I also haven't purchased eBoostr (yet) either.

However, on the RAM side, when I use up to 4 image converter programs, PS CS4 and my email, accounting program and Safari with multiple tabs/windows open and can switch between them as effortlessly as on my desktop - no matter where in the world I am, then that was a wise investment. Even if it cost double, (and I had the 'spare' money, of course) it would still be an investment that would pay itself off in a timely manner. Why? Because I'm more productive with it.

Hope one day I can say that with an SSD, but even fred2028 seems to agree with my views that compared to a current HD, SSD's are not all they're cracked up to be.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5549877&postcount=20

Edit: mesarmath, thanks for the thought! But as for Intel, they are worldwide right?

 

I generally agree, SSD's are young and I won't be investing in one until they become larger, cheaper and quicker.

 

My one man experience that I know is the truth to me.

I have six computers that I use daily and one SSD (G.Skill Falcon 128GB, Indilinx based). They are my real-life computers I apply the same optimization methodology to all of them. Boot time quoted are to usable, i.e. hard disk stopped spinning, all the programs in system tray loaded.

(1) On my XP laptop, boot time dropped from 10 mins to usable to 1:30 min to usable. I cloned the disks so the configs were as identical as could be.

(2) On my SSD laptop, once the computer is boot up the snappiness is in same ball park between SSD and HDD. But since I often do multiple reboots a day on that laptop, the performance gain is very appreciated. And yes, to me fast boot equals direct productivity gain.

(3) When I run multiple programs that uses the hard drive simultaneously, in my case Lotus Notes + winzip + file copy (okay I manufactured this scernerio. I don't do this every day), SSD is proven to be a lot more responsive than HDD and finish the jobs a lot quicker. With HDD same tasks would take very long to finish and you are much better off running them sequentially than simultaneously, to avoid drive head hunting.

(4) I have a W7 dual boot on the same laptop. That takes less than one minute to boot.

(3) Why did I mention I have 6 computers? On the 5 that don't have SSD, I get great difference on boot time, line divider is firmly on the O/S.

(4) I have a Dell D430 with 120GB zif hard drive. When it was on Vista, it took 5mins to boot. Once I did fresh install of W7 that drops to 2 mins.

(5) I have a Dell Insiron E1405 with Vista that, even it has nothing but Internet browsers on it, takes 5 mins+ to boot

(6) I have a near new Apple Macbook Pro 13 with Vista on bootcamp, that takes 3+ mins to boot

(7) I have a Dell SXPS13 with W7, it takes roughly a minute to boot.

(8) I have a Dell XPS420 Desktop with Vista that used to take 7mins+ to boot. I did an IN-PLACE-UPGRADE of W7 and boot time drops to 2min+. I was stunned by how much faster it boots. I keep hearing in-place-upgrade is crap but it's absolutely not true in this case. I saved heaps of time by not having to reinstall every thing.

(9) Snappiness after boot between W7 and Vista are in the same ballpark.

My conclusions:

(1) Gain from SSD depends muchly on how fast your computer boots today and how often you reboot. Most of your gain will come from there

(2) If you have already optimised your O/S to death and it boots quickly, it's probably not worthwhile to go SDD. What tiller said about snappiness is the same once program loaded the first time is true, even without eboost or readyboost etc. Good old system cache alone with do that.

(3) If you use Vista today, and you like your computer to boot fast, W7 upgrade is a more worthy investment than SSD

(4) At this point in time, I would only use SSD when I am forced to use XP/Vista, or have a need to do many reboots a day, or have a need to run multiple programs with large disk I/O simultaneously. Otherwise W7 + Large HDD = win.

Last words.. I actually find myself agreeing with both tiller and dave quite a bit, and so am amused by how the topic goes around in circles so much.

 

Nice. I'm glad the thread finally became civilized. I should of joined the discussion much much earlier.

 

eyclai,

Thank you for your input!

I have also done an in-place upgrade of Win 7 too, but on an SSD (for a client) and I thought the new O/S just 'loved' the SSD more than the old O/S did!

I have to agree with your point #3 above - not only for faster boot up, but generally a more pleasing computing experience (until Win 8).

LOL at your last words... hahahaha

 

if I wanted to I could play freezbie with my thinkpad, Whiles it's one and play some music... and guess what? it won't break! that's why SSD is awesome, for those that can be hard on there computers.

 

No doubt, it gives a whole new meaning to 'my SSD makes my computer fly'!

 

:laugh:

This is great!

 

I won't criticize you choosing your preferences based upon your experiences.

I do have a bone to pick as you try to extrapolate your very unusual situation to the other 99% of computer users, or extrapolate your use of one model of SSD to all of them. You have made your (very limited) point. Don't you think it's about time to move on? Oh, wait, I think I can feel another 20 posts coming our way...

 

bah.. logic is uttelry unimportant to you, right?

some having gains, one having none. does that invalidate the chance for the some to have no gains? which is what he implied. and that is wrong, obviously. if you can't understand that, then i don't know.. maybe.. think?

that's all..

other than that, daytime shift is fun

 

just use the integrated speak detection of vista/win7. works great.

 

don't tell that to surfaceb, or he starts to randomly bash you for understanding the issue.

 

they are. you just might not have any use for them. doesn't make them less cracked up to be. and that *tadaah* is my point.

a) you just fail to make use of their gains
or
b) you made something wrong in your setup, failing the gains to show up
or
c) most likely a bit of both


and that does not make an ssd less awesome. it just makes it useless TO YOU.

there are a lot of things in this world that are awesome, but useless for me. that doesn't mean i go out and say "well, looks like that stuff sucks after all, as i can't use it". that's just wrong on any level.

i personally don't like jazzy music. should i now go out and say jazz sucks and has no purpose, everyone who likes it has to be wrong, it's just crap music? no? why not? because that's what you did with ssds.

 

What? How did I do that?

I asked a question, I got the tools to answer it (by myself) and I posted my experience so that others don't have to do the same.

No, don't think I need twenty posts to say I don't understand where that came from?

 

how you did that? by stating at random places (where ever there was something about ssds) that yes, ssds, aren't that hip, they failed you, must be normal.

 

Edit button FTL.

Has anyone asked where is this thread headed and why? If you are trying to offer a counterpoint to his findings, well present your own. Otherwise this thread is just a place to bump your post counts.

 

sadly, in this forum, it's a lot of extra work to colllect all into one post. and then, replying to those monolytic posts starts to get into a big chaos.

 

davepermen,

I see you've started again. Okay.

a) I think I've shown that they don't offer me any gains to make use of. Read the first post.

b) Nothing is wrong in my setup, if you think there is, ask and I shall provide any info you need to make that judgement based on fact, not wishes.

Liking Jazz music or not is not an objective goal as is my search for improving my productivity. I can say I hate Jazz and still sleep at night. Why? Because it's (only) my opinion.

With the information I've provided, you haven't pointed out a single error that I've made during my testing, nor have you faulted my logic for the conclusion I came to based on those tests.

That is my point.

Again, I'm not taking anything away from you by not seeing SSD's potential for me - why do you keep attacking as if I was?

 

Multi Quote FTL.

 

Originally Posted by T61Dumb:
I won't criticize you choosing your preferences based upon your experiences.

I do have a bone to pick as you try to extrapolate your very unusual situation to the other 99% of computer users, or extrapolate your use of one model of SSD to all of them. You have made your (very limited) point. Don't you think it's about time to move on? Oh, wait, I think I can feel another 20 posts coming our way...

There's no need for you to be confused. Let's roll the tape:

We can start by the title of the thread you chose.

Then you said "here is my conclusion: eBoostr does offer comparable performance to an SSD."

Then you said "The times 'saved' by using an SSD or eBoostr is only for the first launch of the program, afterwards the speed is the same no matter what HD you are using (thanks to SuperFetch & 8GB of RAM)."

Yep, I think that supports my comment.

Here's my conclusion: you are either a troll or a shill for eBoostr.

 

Actually your count is 24 posts in this thread alone.

 

Well throw your logic out the window.

If you need anything clarified - just ask, it works better than insulting others.

But, I'll still humor you.

With the SSD, I saved 1 minute opening and closing 48 programs compared to doing that with the Scorpio and eBoostr. My point is that that one minute saved is only for the first time after a reboot - because of the 8GB of RAM and SuperFetch. Now, do you get it?

To me, one minute saved over opening and closing 48 programs is comparable - I really don't care your opinion on this as this is the test that I was able to run with the limited capacity of the SSD I have available in my area.

As to the title of this thread - sorry but what would you like me to change it to? (If I can/am allowed)?

 

What? I'm not allowed to respond now?

 

well, first, with the information you provied, you showed that your ssd doesn't work as expected (see the unrar thing that just shouldn't happen) this should have been a warning sign that all your other test might be based on a subquality ssd, and thus, invalid.

and how you triggered our reply-gallore?

with such statements:

more or less nullifying our experiences. but it's an interpretation thing. what triggered it for me, was the 'we'.

this conclusion is just wrong. it just shows that your test is 100% non-related to the disks performance. latency is very high over usb, and bandwith much lower. so, in essense, all you've proven is that your test shows NOTHING about ssds. yet, your conclusion shows otherwise.


you made similar wrong conclusions in other threads before that topic.

 

Oh where oh where is this thread going......

 

well, you're offtopic, surfasb. don't know where YOU want the thread to go. instead of just attacking me all the time. wich is not really cool at all

 

davepermen,

up until the 'unrar' thing happened I really thought I was keeping the drive. The 'unrar' thing is what convinced me that this particular SSD is 'garbage' for my use.

I'll also apologize for using the 'royal' we as opposed to the literal 'we' - I am not speaking for others here - just myself.

Just because you can say the conclusion is wrong doesn't make it so.

I'll try again: the Scorpio Blue, with eBoostr - a mechanical HD, is one minute faster than this SSD. When I had used part of the 8GB or my RAM for more cache for eBoostr, the time dropped again by another minute compared to the Scorpio (ie. it is now 2 minutes faster than the SSD).

Now, what really makes the SSD 'bad' is the fact that this is a clean install (hours...) compared to a 3 or 4 month old install on the Scorpio that included much more programs installed and uninstalled over the course of those months.

So, you say that the USB attached Scorpio proved that the 'test' is not disk related - yet it had to read 7GB of data and write about 500MB. My proof that the SSD is slower than the Scorpio is stated above.

 

Oh boy. This is coming from a guy who's first reply on this thread had nothing to do with the methodology or the data of the test, but rather responded that the whole point of the thread was

"You just want to look cool....."

Seriously man. Save your energy for Tilleroftheearth.

Reading through this thread the first time was sort of shocking at first. I thought, my goodness this level of fanboyism is only reserved for the Apple forum. What are we going to call the SSD fanboys? The white elephants??

 

well, yes, it makes the conclusion wrong:

if something is unrelated of disk speed, then it's not a good test to show disk speed.

how can that be wrong? please explain.

some task shows to work just as fast with a 30MB/s bandwidth than with a possibly close to 200MB/s bandwith. that just shows it never goes above those 30MB/s bandwidth. no? .. yes..

 

Yes, it doesn't seem to go above the 30MB/s bandwidth of USB - except when the SSD is not in the system.

 

well, okay. you got a point. problem is, i replied like that because this thread was a continuation of a long discussion, piking in this. which i stated.
i trued to explain you the 'rush start', which was, for people entering in here, obviously, quite chaotic and offtopic. it wasn't for tiller as far as i can see. it looks like we're both fine with our disagreement. just you aren't.

i'm not a fanboy of ssds, i'm a fanboy of 'not getting to wrong conclusions'. and i try to stay true to that, but it's hard, even for me. then again, yeah, i really like ssds. so far, they delivered what they should, even while my expectations where high. why should i not like them, then?

 

well, besides that the ssd shows some very bad behaviour like in the rar case, which might get triggered by the adobe software (it was from adobe, right?) somehow, too, and resulting in the 1minute loss, it is a 4% difference, which is about nothing. still interesting to see that difference to be consistent. something that would need a lot of work and access to your hw directly to find out, why it happens. but not worth the effort, obviously.


edit: it might be that the adobe software has some random temp scratchfile that gets filled with lots of random writes. and your ssd has shown to fail utterly at that (see unrarring). that might happen to result in the 1minute difference. wanted to add that bit of detail.

 

This should be a forum to share idea and observation, not jacking people's character for not conforming.

But it looks like I'm fighting a losing fight.

 

Thanks tilleroftheearth for the post, I was thinking of upgrading to SSD but now I don't think the price I may have to pay is worth the increase in performance.