Just ordered a sager np8170, some questions on hard drives

Here are my spec:
CPU: 2760qm
GPU: 6990m
Memory: 12G 1600
Hard drive: 750G Sata3 7200rpm


I was intended to get the 500G drive. Before the laptop arrives, i was going to purchase a Intel 320 120G SSD(MLC) from a local reseller. After doing some research, I find that SSD have a really short life span. The larger it is the longer it last. People claim the 120G drives can last around 4 years under intensive use. My friend had an ocz 128G ssd.(MLC) He lost 7% after 2.4months of operating hours. The 320 120g have 37k writes, but i use the main drive really intensively. I usually have all my files in it. Then store it onto a different drive after dealing with it. Many people attempt to preserve write by setting their computer to write files onto different drives. They backup their computer constantly to prevent sudden breakdown. It scared me and backed off to a larger HDD. How are you guys with SSDs? Should I still go pick one up?

If I go for a dual HDD without doing those RAID, will processing speed decrease?

 

SSD's are as unreliable as they may have been years ago. Anecdotal evidence may not be the best, but I've had a 64GB SSD in my desktop for two years now that's still going strong. That said, if you have rather a lot of writes to your drive, I'd suggest looking into enterprise grade drives that use SLC memory specifically. It's more expensive, but more reliable for server type or heavy workstation loads.

I don't think SSD's are any less reliable than HDD's as I've seen the latter fail just as often (even more so when you run them in RAID, as you now have two points of failure rather than one).

Even some of the slower SSD's will still be quite a bit faster than 2 HDD's in RAID. SSD's are pushing 500Mb/s in read speeds, which even RAID will never really touch.

 

I have a 120gb ssd as my main and 750gb hdd as my secondary drive.

all my stuff are installed on the ssd but most if not all my files are stored on my hdd, so far still ay 100% (bought it end of November last year) and my lappy is being used as my gaming machine and work machine as well.

at this rate I'll be replacing my laptop and SSD before it would even wear out.

of course it would still depend on how you'd use your SSD, if for example I moved one of my VMwares that does about 50gb writes every time it's shutdown/paused then I'm pretty sure my SSD would wear out faster so it would still depend on how you would manage your files.

 

get momentus xt 750gb its $195 on amazon. end of discussion!

 

Thanks for the advice guys

I think writes are based on the number of times writing into the hard drive rather then file size nor file amount. SLC SSDs are too expensive. However, I will give it a try on a SSD since i never owned one. The Corsair Force 3 Series 180GB 2.5IN SATA3 is what i will be getting.

 

Performance gain of a fast SSD on daily basis tasks is really huge and no HDD or hybrid (i.e. momentus xt) can match SSD performance.

I have similar setup as Geekz and strongly recommend to have SSD for your windows and applications that you run frequently (e.g. office, games you play regularly) and keep the HDD for data storage and backups.

HDD has a better life span, but it is more vulnerable to shock. For both HDD and SSD you need a good regular backup plan.

If you will pick SSD, you might like to consider Crucial M4 and Samsung 830; they are very reliable, have excellent reputation and much cheaper than Intel.

 

yep and the vmware i was talking about does the 50gb writes every time it's paused or shutdown, that's like copying over 50gb worth of data every time

also the crucial m4 and samsung sata III ssd are faster than the intel 510, the resellers here though recommends the intel 510 for reliability.

 

Here's my 1.5 year old SSD status:

http://i.imgur.com/UM7qJ.png


5,623 hours powered on + 24,512GB of data written = 4+ GB written every hour