[Mustard3]

Anyone got any experience of these compared to a traditional hard disc drives?

I'm having a custom-build desktop made and suggested to the computer guy building it that we install an SSD due to its greater speed. He however didn't recommend his, suggesting they only last 1-2 years.

A bit of google research does suggest very good reliability if not quite up to a hard disc drive - and they do come with a 3 year warranty.

What's your experience?

[xenon]

I've used them just fine. Admittedly they're not three years old yet but only lasting 1 -2 years is nonsense.

[Josh1a1h]

SSD are meant to be awesome as they do not have any moving parts.

[rich1068]

Agree with xenon. And they are a really good bang for buck upgrade. I've run OCZ SSDs in my desktop (120GB) and laptop (60GB) since (looks it up) September 2009 with no issues. Not sure how things have changed in the meantime but set up and maintenance to keep them sharp used to be quite different to HDDs so worth looking into that. If you go for OCZ their support forum is excellent.

[Cyprio]

Haven't got an SSD but have only heard good reports about them.

Shame they're still a tad on the expensive side, but no doubt that will change given time.

[Dave_3]

Use a SSD as your boot drive for your OS. You don't need such a big drive. Windows 7 and up adjust to take advantage of SSDs (TRIM etc). Just get a lightning fast one.

Stick in a couple of big HDDs for data.

One of my workstations is configured like that. Nice and nippy.

Been watching the 512GB SSD kits fall in price for my laptops. Quite tempted by the Samsung kit that includes Norton Ghost and cables so you can easily backup and restore your existing HDD.

Comparison boot speeds really show the increase in speed. Here's an example video using the same laptop as I have.

D.

[2jzn54]

I have had an SSD for about 3 years now and love it. No moving parts.. haven't had any data loss issues as expected, and its incredibly quiet. I have a 1.5tb and 3.0 tb external for storage.

[xenon]

Originally Posted by Daily Three

its incredibly quiet.

Given that there are no moving parts it's not that incredible.

My Windows boots in seconds now and you can give a SQL server a massive boost by putting the tempdb on an SSD drive.

[Guvernator]

The first batch of SSD drives suffered some quite high failure rates and reliability issues but now we are on gen 3 stuff it's much much better. Just stick to decent branded stuff like Crucial or OZC and you should be good to go.

[Palmnuts]

Well, I don't know much about these things but I've just got a new Macbook Pro Retina which comes with a SSD as standard and it's noticeably faster than my previous one (which was hardly a snail itself).

It's under a month old so I can confirm they last this long but to add to the speed, it's also silent, it doesn't get hot and is markedly thinner and lighter (almost Macbook Air thin) although this may be more to do with the lack of a disc drive.

My only complaint is the cost and the result being I only got a 250gb version - and I'm about 80% full. Should have spent the extra and got the 512gb!

A quick note on the Macbook Retina if anyone is interested - the quality of the screen and picture is spectacular for most things, especially text and pictures. Website images however are another story as these can actually look WORSE! I'm sure there's a more technical explanation, but after some reading on it I have learnt the following:

- Retina uses four pixels in the space typically used for one

- Most website images use a 1:1 ratio which, on a Retina display, makes them look like a lower resolution image (I guess because it artificially blows up the 1 pixel 4 times to fill the space??....I told you I wasn't technical!)

It seems that until website developers upscale their images (not likely until more computers use this technology and that won't be anytime soon I guess?), my website browsing experience has gone backwards.

[fulcrum]

One of the best upgrades you can buy. Mine is 3 years old now and think about to fail but they relatively cheap as chips now days.

[rich1068]

Like others I use additional drives for storage etc. Anything important is either on an internal WD drive or an external WD My Book. They're also backed up on a mixture of Google, Apple and MS cloud services. 60GB is perfectly usable for an OS and other gubbins but my sweet spot is the 120GB drive in my desktop. Perfect for the OS and my (ahem) video work.

And never mind boot times, what about a full clean Windows install?! I think my record from formatting the drive to working desktop is about 14 minutes using a USB drive rather than CDs/DVDs and an SSD. A few years ago you'd have to set most of the day on one side.

[gavp]

256gb in the dell M6600 and 128gb in the M6400 we use at work.

Not one single hard disk problem with them.

Use 2nd bay with (currently) 750gb for work data etc

[briers]

I have a Samsung SSD in my MBA and it's going strong, only a year old but it transformed the speed of everything, so highly recommended.

I did read bits and pieces about reliability, can't remember what the problem is exactly but they are getting cheaper so probably not much more than £150 to replace and i take regular external time machine backups.

[chris330D]

Upgraded my PC with one of these and made a massive difference to both boot time and overall system speed. It loads apps so much quicker and is well worth doing. Some good deals out there as well.

[magic77]

Definelty SSD is the way to go for main OS and app drive huge boost however I would still stick to standard drive on SATA2 say 7200rpm drive with good cache as my data drive. If custom building then get two and mirror them. Then on top once built just image the SSd drive to ensure if it does fail roll back is easy. For the gains its great but I wouldn't use it as my only drive.

[Mustard3]

Thanks everyone for the info.

Seems SSD is the way to go. In a couple of years time I can imagine all computers having tis type of drive.

I believe you can run software that shows the life expectancy of the drive so you can be sure to replace it in good time if you have to.

Now thinking about replacing my VHS recorder with one of those new fangled DVD players!

[rich1068]

DVD? It'll never catch on.

[m@rk]

Pretty much the same from me as the others.

I have a few of the Crucial M4 drives in use and am delighted with them. I have one in a laptop and one as the boot drive in my home server.

In the laptop you get the double hit in that you get better battery life on top of better performance.

[Vaheed1]

SSD drives are excellent. quicker and allot more reliable.

[Surfatwork]

adding to the chorus - SSDs are the best upgrade you can put on a older computer and absly mandatory on a new PC for atleast the boot drive

[Bomber]

I've just installed a OCZ Vertex 4 in my 2009 Macbook Pro and all I can say is OMG , its the fastest thing I have ever used, I just cloned the original HDD and away I went.

I will be installing SSD's in all the machines I use now.