HDD Vs SSD

So SSD runs around 3 times faster than HDD with 7200 RPM. Does it really matter when you are gaming?? Also, if it doesnt matter in gaming, there where does it really matter?? Trying to configure my P150HM but just cant decided whether SSD is going to worth it or not

 

loading time. and no clicking sounds.

if you dont care about those then dont waste your money.

 

Think of it as the first time you surfed the web on broadband... would you even take dialup for FREE now?

 

After seeing it in action personally, you really have to examine what kinda games / programs you're using.

Yeah, the computer boots 10 seconds faster, yeah google chrome kicks off instantly instead of in 2 seconds... but this isn't the important stuff to me.

If you're playing a game where you often see "LOADING...." as you move between levels, areas, whatever... you're probably going to love the SSD.

If you're playing a game where it loads up once, and you play for long time without additional loads, or your ability to play is contingent upon other people completing to load up (online gaming)... not so much.

For me, I want to see the prices come down just a bit more, and some resolution & confidence in the latest 22xx whatever series SandForce controllers. Then I'll bite.

 

i saw on tiger direct a 240gb agility 2 for 289, which is a smoking deal, but its only sata 2, so im just gonna RAMDISK for now.

 

That's not a fair comparison at all.

Realistic use would go something like this: net 2 second advantage when opening Chrome. However, when actually surfing the web, going from tab to tab, you're not going to notice it at all.

Likewise, when you open iTunes, you'll notice a difference. When you actually go about playing music, the advantage kind of disappears.

And how often do you really reboot your computer? If you're like me, probably once a week at most. Shouldn't ever be more than once or twice a day.

 

I think getting a SSD from your primary drive is the most noticeable upgrade you can do. Windows boots much faster, programs much faster, anything read/write is alot faster. You'll get much more of a noticeable increase in overall computer performance compared to upgrading the CPU, RAM, GPU etc (unless going from a low end GPU)

But to directly answer your question about gaming performance and how much difference it makes in game will be basically none. Your game will start faster and maps will load quicker but how the game performs really depends on your graphics card.

If your main goal is to get the best gaming performance go with the best GPU you can get. If you want the best overall upgrade go with an SSD.

 

I see this question getting asked over and over. It is hard to explain how you will notice it over a HDD, but like said it is loading times, booting times, total silence and such, but I think you have to experience it yourself to understand.

I will never ever go back to HDD since I feel a dramatic difference over the HDD.

 

from what i understand its like having no downtime, it instantly starts programs. also a question, is it possible to do raid on the p150hm, using the hard drive caddy?

 

No, there is no RAID support on the P150HM, only on the P170HM and up. Also, even if there was, RAID with SSD's is currently inadvisable because they don't support garbage collection in RAID (TRIM). This will slow the drives over time.

 

well i was thinking more for hdd's but thats unfortunate as it would provide near ssd performance, with more storage.

 

HDDs in RAID is nowhere near newest gen SSDs

 

One thing I like about SSDs is that they don't have mechanical parts. So I don't need to worry about losing data because I accidentally dropped my laptop or something. Furthermore, SSDs generate a lot less heat than HDDs.

 

yes i meant sata 2 ssds.

 

And don't forget that SSD's consume way less power than mechanical HDD's.

No moving parts also means more stability when moving or anything.

I can accept going down on RAM or dropping my CPU,

but two things I can't accept are low-end GPUs and mechanical HDDs.

 

The amount of power saving is marginal at best, especially on high end machines. You're talking a few watts difference on a machine where the GPU alone can pull 75-100w.

This article is a bit old, so things have improved a little, but it's still relevant

The SSD Power Consumption Hoax : Flash SSDs Don?t Improve Your Notebook Battery Runtime ? they Reduce It

In a small, ultraportable laptop, that few watts would make a bigger difference though, you're right.

 

Can't wait for your RamDisk results! You are writing a report, right?

 

you will join me or die! you must learn the dark side of the force! yes when i get back next week im going to order the 2 4gb sticks, only 25 each, and then ill load up bfbc2 into it and see how long it takes to load in single player.

edit: lol your my malibal twin!

 

After 3 months my vertex 2 suddenly had a defect. Nothing to recover! Via RMA got a new one, but all datas were gone. I know a lot of others had this problem. So, don´t think you should not worry about it. In case of a defect, you can´t recover anything. I use now normal HDD´s.

 

RAMdisk is the fastest of all.

SSD cannot rival RAMdisk, it's just that you have to load everything into Ramdisk everytime you restart your computer, and if your computer crashes or anything, there goes whatever you put in the RAMdisk.

 

same issue with the ram disk, im afraid, if the power gets disconnected you lose it all.

 

RAMdisk is nowhere as stable as SSD....

Stabilitywise, the two cannot even be compared.

 

actually i bet ssds fail more than ram. it would be intersting if there was program that could use symbolic links and a RAMdisk to make any hdd hybrid.

 

I didn't mean in terms of failing.

I meant that RAMdisks are unstable because you can lose what you have on your RAMdisk for so many reasons.

Maybe for one or two games, but using it as a real 'disk' is a very risky idea.

 

lol of course it is but thats the fun of it, using things for what they aren't meant for and getting results. of course its not perfect, nothing ever is!

 

RAMdisk made of 10GB 1600MHz RAM

 

My point was not about defects. I was emphasizing that there are no mechanical parts, therefore the drive is more resilient against mechanical/physical shock. I think its important to point that out because laptops are portable and meant to be carried around for most.

Once I've dropped a 2.5" external HDD accidentally from slightly above waist height, and that drive was done. Sure I could have sent it somewhere to get the data recovered, but that would cost me an arm and a leg. SSDs would not even feel a thing being dropped from that height.

As for the Vertex 2, I've read many bad reviews of drive failures and heard from friends who had theirs fail as well within months. It's not like HDDs cannot suffer from defects as well. Popular examples are drives like the Hitachi "DeathStars" and the Seagate 7200.11 drives had unusually high failure rates. There are various other models of SSDs from different manufacturers that do not have large quantity of defective products, likewise for HDDs.

 

If you dropped any consumer laptop (sagers included) from about 4 feet into solid concrete, it's going to do quite a number on your laptop, and voiding any non-accidental warranty you have on it. The SSD probably wouldn't feel it, but the rest of the laptop would.

Or are you saying in the odd chance you have an internal drive separate from the computer itself, dropped from above waist height, that's where the advantage comes from?

I don't think these tests really show SSD's advantage. Also, some Sandforce drives are gas guzzlers. Anyway, the biggest advantage from the SSDs themselves is the GREATLY reduced latency during every day use. Random write/reads usually result in what users perceive as "hangs", which is what makes the entire laptop feel "slow". Sequential read/writes can be improved by RAIDing drives together, but ultimately that's an immaterial statistic to an average user. The "snappy feel" is the main reason SSD is used.

If anyone's buying an SSD with the intent of dropping it multiple times, they need to find better things to invest on... such as NOT booze. Increase battery life is negligible as well.

Noise/vibration is a minor factor though to the OCD population.

 

Accidents happen. I am not saying we should be careless with our laptops and/or drop them intentionally.

And yes, I know performance is the primary reason for getting a SSD(unless military, and environment specific). I am merely pointing out additional advantages.

 

SSD's are great and if done right will last for a while, they have far less heat and load up programs faster. that being said there is one thing i have not seen anyone mention about ssd's and that is write/erase cycles all SSD's have alimited number of write cycles, NAND Flash has 10k rewd/write cycles. this means the SSD has a finite life, although if you are an average user it will be quite a while, but with heavy use it could go fast.

Now there is some problems with the controllers, i have an x25 80G SSD in my desktop that i have had for over a year with no problems. but there can always be a problem with any IC. i do recomend if you get an ssd try the intel x25 ones, in not so sure about the 510 series yet.

 

There was a study already where they tested SSDs of all kinds (hard drives, flash drives, etc) already to see what their actual read/write limits were. Turns out they're a lot higher than people would think. They did multiple read/write cycles over and over, just wrote/deleted/wrote/deleted data over and over. They couldn't force the drives into non-functional states. They said in actuality, the drives wouldn't fail anytime soon, even with a lot of heavy usage, and predicted the actual read/write limitations in the high millions. I wish I had the link to show you, but it was quite a while ago I saw it, and I no longer that the bookmarks from back then. Maybe if you google it you'd see.

Also, my old HP, if I tapped the laptop above the bay where the hard drive was kept with moderate force, it would instantly shut down the machine. My Sager? I only know how to force a shut down by holding down the power button. Once, my bag strap burst and my lappy fell from about 4 feet high onto solid concrete. Just like you said. I'd have to point out the slight "bruise" to the exterior to you. You underestimate the build quality of Clevos (though by no means should you buy one and test this). Just saying, it probably won't do too much if an accident occurs. And my machine is somewhere around 16 pounds laptop + power brick.

 

I keep on hearing that SSD's run cooler but is there any evidence of this rather than a logical assumption?

Another thing that SSD's really make a difference in is when you have to do a lot of software installs. Not only does everything install quicker, you also get less frustration from all of the required reboots.

Time is precious and this is what it comes down to in the end. SSD's allow you to be more productive, spend less time waiting for your computer to do something and having more time to actually use your computer, play games or run software.

 

SSD's will have a varying W/E cycles just like any other ic out there. dont get me wrong i hope every SSD i buy will get 10 or more years out of it. but i also will never say that just because one or even 5-10 SSD's get more that all of them will. but from that i would infer that any die from that same mfr/lot has a high probability to be as durable. you never know what one die lot to another will be like.
now that being said really an ssd is the way to go and i hope that soon the prices will drop as it would be great to have a 500G SSD in my desktop.

 

I think the Hybrid drives are the way to go once they have more than a 4GB SSD area.

 

i think that if someone could make a way to use a normal hard drive in conjunction with a small ssd like 40-80gb and make it like the hybrid drive, that it would be really good, or use a ram disk as the ssd part of the drive.

 

Got any good links on setting up a ram drive?

 

I have an SSD now, and after using it, the thought of going back to a normal HDD is horrible. SSDs are definitely the most important upgrade.

 

here this is the website

RAMDisk - Software - Server Memory Products & Services - Dataram

 

For anyone still worried about the supposed high failure rate of SSD's, there was a great article on it this week:

Investigation: Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive? : SSD Reliability: Is Your Data Really Safe?

It sounds like they don't fail any more than HDD's (actually, much less), but when you have a failure on an SSD it's usually the controller- and that means you have a catastrophic failure with no recovery. Whereas HDD's tend to fail slowly over time with bad sectors causing write errors, etc.

 

What really irked me about the findings is that OCZ is the most unreliable SSD manufacturer out there. Sadly the only SSDs that go on sale in my area are OCZ SSDs.

 

Thank you!

 

You mean like this:

Intel Mobile | Intel® Smart Response Technology
Introduction - Intel Smart Response Technology - SRT | [H]ard|OCP

 

Intel Smart Response is very interesting. Check out the benchmarks they have here.