Ssd?

I often saw ppl asking for Hardware input on this part of the forum, so well here my questionning.

Im having an intel core i7, 3 gig triple channel, yada yada yada,
.. and 2 raptor 10k rpm, 75gig Mount in raid 1.

I went for raid 1 for non game related goal. Raid 1 is obviously not the best for game, since you write 2 times the same file on the HD (well 1 time per hd). That said, my raid 1 is now degraded, and running on only 1 disk, my attemp to rebuild the raid 1, failed 2 times on 2 new HD. Seing the issue was not to be fix with a rebuild, i moved on, thinking ill reinstall windows as soon as ill fin the time to do so.

I may found some time to reinstall now, but since the raid 1 issue, i not sure i want a raid 1 anymore, and willing to rely on daily backup etc.

And... I was thinking about buying an SSD 30 or 40gig, install windows on it, and have a 2nd HD for the data.

So those HDD , well those that does not cost 2k, ive seen some 30/40 gig for 200$, are they worht it, or a conventional disk, like my raptor 10k rpm, will do as good , more or less ?

I understand that some HDD are way speedy, but im not sure if 1 at 200$ is that good. Well i wish it is :P

Also, im still on win xp pro 32bit, i may go for win7 64 bit tho. Kinda want a 64 bit OS, but was keeping myself away from vista (and did no wanted to buy a new liscence for win xp pro 64 bit). Not sure the OS will change anythign to the IO speed, even tho, it could boost the overall experience.

For the OS, I'd definitely look to Win 7 64-bit.

A SSD drive should be quicker in bootup and such, so if you can find a decent one I'd sure consider it strongly. I find over 50 of them on NewEgg at $200 or under, several larger then 40 Gb.

kool, but the emphasis was on, is those at 200$ are as speedy as those at 2000$, ok i guess they a bit slower... but are they still worht the expense if you compare to an average standard HD ?

From the reviews I've seen, SSDs will generally always be faster at bootup and starting programs than a HD will be.

The price per Gb should continue to get better, but I think the price point now makes them worth considering. I'm probably going to be getting one for the system and game on a new system I'm planning.

If you're looking for the extra speed, it's probably worth the price at this point. If you're not as concerned with the extra speed, you can do fine with a regular HD, and get more storage for the money.

You might want to read this interview about SSDs. The more you know as a consumer the better off you are.

I dont really care for more storage myself, dunno what ppl do to fill 500 GO, these days, and they sell 1TG and 1,5TG.

Damn, i live with a 76Gig HD here and rarely lack space, if so i dump stuff on my usb drive.

So for me, a 40gig SSD + a whatever 2ndary hd would do. Might re use those raptor.

The real question im asking myself now, is, would i go for the upgrade or buy a new PC, period. But that is another story :P

Thx for the reply/info, btw

I have the Intel 80gig SSD and windows 7 64bit. Works great for CoV/CoH. Got my SSD off of Newegg for $219 (OEM so no fancy box or adapter kit 2.5->3.5).

Nice, and good point about the adapter, i was not thinking about that.
im Canadian tho, so 200$ for you is a little more for me.
i have seen the 40gig for like 150$ CAD

the 2000$ ones are usually pci express ssd and those are by far as fast as they get. But at this time I don't think its possible to boot from a pci express ssd. Atleast not in xp, maybe in windows 7.

I bought windows7 ultimate 64bit and an 80GB Intel SSD (G2) for $300CDN during a boxing day special.

The SSD was faster for booting than my 7200RPM HD but for CoH it wasn't *that* much faster. I wound up going back to the Hard Drive and using the SSD as the location for my swap file.

The SSD just didn't have that much space when you consider that my photo library is 36GB (25k photos) and Steam is sucking up 500MB to 10GB per game. I might switch the disk over to divide apps and data but I'm pretty settled in at the moment.

SSDs are expensive little beasties, especially if you get one of the better ones. They still range in the $2-3 per GB for prices and there's currently a battle of ever improving SSD controller chips going on. Personally I would wait another six months to see the fallout of the battle to find out who is winning. Maybe the competition will start to drive the prices down as well.

What SSDs by you is the virtual elimination of seek time from a conventional hard drive. 9-14 ms average seek time doesn't seem like a lot but when you include that time when calculating disk throughput even Raptor 10K drives are 20x slower on random read/write tests than the better SSDs out there. Now if you are running a database server I can see the advantage an SSD brings but for gaming? I'm not sure shaving 10 of 30 seconds off of level load times in games is worth the price.

AnandTech has been benchmarking a number of the newer units as they come out. You can find their current numbers here.

Right now im sick of hearing my drive go nuts every now and then, make lot fo noize and i should reinstall windows, b4 my degraded raid 1, say byebye to me.

I'm a database application devlopper in RL, and playing CoX on the same box i work with (lucky ******* who work from home :P).

Now i really think SSD will make me happy.
I plan on buying 1 and win7 and reinstall my puter asap. but ASAP mean like in a few weeks, cant just now.

Well I'm hopeful I'll see some benefit also, I just ordered the 80GB Intel SSD from Newegg... when it arrives I'll be installing Win7 and I'll see what if any effect it has.

Currently I've roughly 2.5 terrabytes of hard drives in the case (two 750GB drives and a couple in the 500 range, all 7,200 RPM) so raw storage obviously isn't a factor. And yes, I AM using the majority of that space... roughly 1.8 TB in use on all 4 drives... database, photos, video files and so forth not to mention CoH.