SSD Hard Drives

[Baby Tea]

So! I recently was shown the following video by my brother-in-law:
Now, one can't really deny how freaking badass that is, provided you watched the whole thing. Solid State HDDs are pretty expensive still, but the data transfer rate is CRAZY awesome, and the life of the drive is much higher, better for power, and much more resistant to bumps, falls, and vibrations.

So my question is either: Does anyone have a SSD drive and have noticed a difference? Or, after watching this video, would you be interested in a SSD drive. I know I am!
Discuss!

 

[Baby Tea]

Freaking awesome...
I knew they were quick, but not that damn quick!
Any idea if they will work on a PS3 as they're sata connections?

I'm assuming they would. The use of SATA is just the way the HDD 'talks' to the rest of the machine, so the fact that it's not a traditional drive isn't even known to the PS3.

But they arne't very big, and are very expensive. Which is why RAID is a better option for PCs. A 120 Gb SDD would be around $400-$500. That's a lot of monies.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Any idea if they will work on a PS3 as they're sata connections?

I imagine so, if PS3's accept 2.5" laptop SATA drives it should be fine.

The problem with them is that they write data slower than regular drives, if I recall correctly, even though they read insanely fast.

 

[manaman]

That is a massive array, and built for speed. Those drive are in my opinion only moderately faster then the fastest drives out there, and only useful if you really need them. A lot of the speed noticed in the computer in the video is due to other factors as well.

All said they are speedy drives, but you can get more speed then you need raiding raptors together.

 

[superbleeder12]

ssd's are pretty sweet. I saw a video of 6 drives in raid which allowed vista to boot in 5 seconds. sick!

 

[RetiarySword]

Thats intense! That guy rocks, the song is catchy, and I want that PC!

Hands up for nerd erections!!

*Hand Up!*

 

[cranstoun]

Wow, all though apparently they're not that good for smaller files sizes according to wiki :

"Slower write speeds: As erase blocks on flash-based SSDs generally are quite large (e.g. 0.5 - 1 megabyte)[20], they are far slower than conventional disks during small writes (the smaller, the worse) and can suffer from write fragmentation"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

 

[SilentHunter7]

I've been interested in Solid State Drives since they started coming out with USB pen drives. The only problem is that the price per gigabyte is absurd. Then again, so were HDDs way back in the day. Can't wait until mass production, and more efficient manufacturing processes bring the price down to something I can afford.

 

[superbleeder12]

Wow, all though apparently they're not that good for smaller files sizes according to wiki :

"Slower write speeds: As erase blocks on flash-based SSDs generally are quite large (e.g. 0.5 - 1 megabyte)[20], they are far slower than conventional disks during small writes (the smaller, the worse) and can suffer from write fragmentation"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

also, they're a forensic investiation goldmine. because of the way that blocks of data are erased, they are just freed up on the controller, the actual data isn't erased. So one would have 512kB-1mB of latent data on their hard drive.

 

[Baby Tea]

Wow, all though apparently they're not that good for smaller files sizes according to wiki :

"Slower write speeds: As erase blocks on flash-based SSDs generally are quite large (e.g. 0.5 - 1 megabyte)[20], they are far slower than conventional disks during small writes (the smaller, the worse) and can suffer from write fragmentation"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

Well SSDs as HDDs are certainly in their relative infancy, and I'm sure there are bugs and other such things to work out. But the potential is certainly there! They are making strides, and the prices are falling (Albeit slowly). I say give it 5 years and they'll be priced at what the traditional drives are now.

 

[SilentHunter7]

Wow, all though apparently they're not that good for smaller files sizes according to wiki :

"Slower write speeds: As erase blocks on flash-based SSDs generally are quite large (e.g. 0.5 - 1 megabyte)[20], they are far slower than conventional disks during small writes (the smaller, the worse) and can suffer from write fragmentation"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

also, they're a forensic investiation goldmine. because of the way that blocks of data are erased, they are just freed up on the controller, the actual data isn't erased. So one would have 512kB-1mB of latent data on their hard drive.

At least until they come out with EMP devices that can fit into a 3.5" drive slot.

 

[throwitinthetrash]

Puts my rig to shame.

*sigh*
Someday....

 

[spoot-smeg]

I think I might start crying I have seen heaven.
also my cousin has that case

 

[pffh]

Yup ssd's are awesome.

 

[neuromasser]

I've been interested in Solid State Drives since they started coming out with USB pen drives. The only problem is that the price per gigabyte is absurd. Then again, so were HDDs way back in the day. Can't wait until mass production, and more efficient manufacturing processes bring the price down to something I can afford.

I wanted to post exactly same thing. Thanks xD

 

[cleverlymadeup]

But they arne't very big, and are very expensive. Which is why RAID is a better option for PCs. A 120 Gb SDD would be around $400-$500. That's a lot of monies.

ummm i don't think you know what RAID is, RAID is only good for large amounts of data, ie servers. the thing is RAID or Random Array of Inexpensive Devices, is a way of mirroring data or making more than one drive appear as one. one of the coolest things you'll ever see is having to replace a RAID drive that has die and watch most of your data come back, well depending on the type of RAID you use

there are some bad things in the video, such as saying RAID speeds up the drive speeds, it doesn't RAID will only perform as fast as the slowest drive in the array, secondly the "fast" defrag would happen on ANY type of drive, defraging a brand new drive/install will always be fast as there haven't been a lot of writes and deletes. also a lot of it some of the things are ram dependent as well and not just hdd speed

 

[savandicus]

Lol i linked that video in another thread about an hour after this was made having not seen this thread here atall XD

Its a pretty old vid now btw, i imagine it wont be long before someone makes an even more immense computer.

 

[Stryc9]

*snip*

also, they're a forensic investiation goldmine. because of the way that blocks of data are erased, they are just freed up on the controller, the actual data isn't erased. So one would have 512kB-1mB of latent data on their hard drive.

At least until they come out with EMP devices that can fit into a 3.5" drive slot.

EMP my ass, I have a hammer, let's see them reconstruct the dust.

But they arne't very big, and are very expensive. Which is why RAID is a better option for PCs. A 120 Gb SDD would be around $400-$500. That's a lot of monies.

*snip* one of the coolest things you'll ever see is having to replace a RAID drive that has die and watch most of your data come back, well depending on the type of RAID you use *snip*

I've never used RAID but I understand the way it works. While what you describe may be cool, the coolest thing I've ever seen is Partition Magic fixing a bad block on my hard drive and having all my data come back.

 

[Zer_]

But they arne't very big, and are very expensive. Which is why RAID is a better option for PCs. A 120 Gb SDD would be around $400-$500. That's a lot of monies.

ummm i don't think you know what RAID is, RAID is only good for large amounts of data, ie servers. the thing is RAID or Random Array of Inexpensive Devices, is a way of mirroring data or making more than one drive appear as one. one of the coolest things you'll ever see is having to replace a RAID drive that has die and watch most of your data come back, well depending on the type of RAID you use

there are some bad things in the video, such as saying RAID speeds up the drive speeds, it doesn't RAID will only perform as fast as the slowest drive in the array, secondly the "fast" defrag would happen on ANY type of drive, defraging a brand new drive/install will always be fast as there haven't been a lot of writes and deletes. also a lot of it some of the things are ram dependent as well and not just hdd speed

Um no... RAID increases the speed at which a system can access a file (or several). Having different parts of the same file being saved on separate drives means that the system can actively use the bandwidth of multiple drives to load the same file as opposed to using a single drive. The actual read write speed for each drive does not increase though.

Also RAM speed had very little to do with the computer's performance in the video. The RAM they used was 800mhz. We have ram that goes at 1333mhz these days. With that many drives running under RAID though, the read/write speed of the drives is actually faster then the RAM, but for many SDD/HDD functions like copying and moving files, your system won't even touch the RAM.

If there's a slower drive in the RAID then that just means that accessing whatever parts of a file on that drive will be slightly slower, which yes it does affect the total access time.

Also for their Defrag, you'll notice you can actually see how many files the system defragged in the video. The tests were NOT done on a system that had just the OS, Office and a few files installed, there were other things (Steam being one of them) installed on it as well. I think I saw the number being at around 24,000 files (56.17GB).

 

[RapidCrash]

I've never used RAID but I understand the way it works. While what you describe may be cool, the coolest thing I've ever seen is Partition Magic fixing a bad block on my hard drive and having all my data come back.

Actually most of the time bad blocks are due to Meta-Data corruption. That renders the bad sectors to be "restored" because the meta-data entries for those blocks are simply fixed. If the actual blocks were modified or deleted, the data would be lost forever.