SSD vs HDD


Father Xmas

 

Posted

Heya folks.

In my efforts to educate myself on how to increase my enjoyment of CoX, a friend recommended that I get an SSD. I'd never even heard of them before, so there was a lot of sensory overload. Well, I decided that I'd get one - a small one, 60 gigs. (My current system is only using 30 gigs. )

However, when I read the reviews, there were a lot of bad ones. A disproportionate amount, so I'm a bit reluctant to shell out money for something that can just stop working , and a drive that will "wear" out.

Anyone have any stories about these? (True stories, of course)


"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese

@Ukase

 

Posted

True Story:

Once upon a time there was something called SSD. There was also something else that was called HDD. And then there was a guy named Irish Fury who didn't know what either of those things were. He read a forum post about the two being compared and was asked to tell a true story. The story he told was sarcastic and most likely not welcome by the OP.

THE END


 

Posted

SSD = Soldier State Drive, HDD = Hard Drive Disk
I can't comment on performance, but I know that unless you have windows 7, it's best to stick to HDDs since only windows 7 is optimized for SSD support.

Edit: Excerpt from Wikipedia on my previous point:

Quote:
Versions of Windows prior to Windows 7 are optimized for hard disk drives rather than SSDs. Windows Vista includes ReadyBoost to exploit characteristics of USB-connected flash devices, but for SSDs it only improves the partition alignment to prevent read-modify-write operations because the SSD is typically aligned on 4 KB sectors and the OS is based on 512 byte sectors and they are not aligned.The proper alignment really does not help the SSD's endurance over the life of the drive. Some Vista operations, if not disabled, can shorten the life of the SSD. Disk defragmentation should be disabled because the location of the file components on an SSD doesn't significantly impact its performance, but moving the files to make them contiguous using the Windows Defrag routine will cause write wear on the limited number of P/E cycles on the SSD. The Superfetch feature will not materially change the performance of the system and causes additional overhead on the system and SSD, although it does not cause wear.


Windows 7 is optimized for SSDsas well as for hard disks. The OS looks for the presence of an SSD and operates differently with that drive. If an SSD is present, Windows 7 will disable disk defragmentation, Superfetch, ReadyBoost, and other boot-time and application prefetching operations. It also includes support for the TRIM command to reduce garbage collection of data which the OS has already determined is no longer valid (without TRIM the SSD would be unaware of this data being invalid).


 

Posted

Solid State Drive, i.e. a hard drive that is based on flash memory. Upside is it can be several times faster than a hard drive while reading and there is virtually no seek time. Downside is they cost around $2-3 per GB compared to around $0.10 for a normal hard drive.

We had a big discussion about this a few weeks back.


Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components

Tempus unum hominem manet

 

Posted

SSDs do nothing halfway. Some are slow, inconsistent, and fast to wear out; others are extremely fast, unshakeable, and will last longer than any normal HDD.

Understand that an SSD will not help your framerate in any game, but it will help load times and reduce stuttering. You know how your PC starts to crunch when you do a lot of things at once, right? You can hear the PC whirring and grinding its gears as the hard drive frantically tries to fetch all the data you need. The same goes for loading Windows, as it tries to load up so many different things at once. In those cases, you'd be lucky if you saw one tenth of the speed that the hard drive is capable of. Maybe even one hundredth.

Solid state disks don't crunch. You ask for data, and you get it. You can load all kinds of stuff at the same time and it will do its job diligently. Just make sure you get one that has been recommended by any of the Nerdlington J Tech Supports around these parts, like Father Xmas or myself, and you'll do fine. If they are out of your price range, or you don't feel they're worth the expense, then keep the money. Cheaping out on an SSD will cost you.


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Aber ja, nat�rlich Hans nass ist, er steht unter einem Wasserfall.