Anybody Use An SSD?

[Ron B]

Anybody use an SSD for their boot drive? Better than an HDD for video/photo editing?
Thinking about an SSD as a boot drive for programs, all scratch discs and storage on 7200rpm spinners. All SATA2.

[MJA]

waiting for the price to go down.freak'n 1TB cost over 3K LOL

[jman98]

Actually I've got one on order for a new PC I'm building myself. 256 GB. I do not plan to use it for editing though. I'm going to install Windows 7 to it and use some large conventional discs for video work. However, if you want to know what I think, send me a private message in early Feb. as I should have had enough time to give you some feedback then. The only person I know who has an SSD raves about it.

Unless you are rich I do not think it is a wise use of funds to use SSDs for scratch discs and storage. And you should be looking to SATA3 not SATA2.

[mrswla]

I just installed an Intel X25-M 80gb SSD drive as my boot drive. I use to use a Samsung SP2504C as my boot drive. I have noticed a slight increase in speed, but haven't really used it too much yet to know if it really is any better or not. I'm currently working on another computer build for the kids. Once that is done, I'll get back to mine and run some tests.

[Ron B]

I couldn't resist; I bought a 120G OCZ Vertex2 for $194 at newegg.

I only have SATA2. I do have a couple SATA3 ports, but they are on a Marvell controller which is a POS.

[jagabo]

An SSD boot drive will get you faster boot times and quicker program load times. It won't make much difference while editing or converting files though.

[redwudz]

A SSD drive will speed the OS loading and some program loading, but it usually doesn't make much difference with regular program operation if used as boot. I settled for a 150GB 10K RPM WD Raptor and it works great for boot and is mostly maintenance free and a lot cheaper.

I have one of the earlier generation of SSDs and the maintenance wasn't worth the speed increase just for boot. But I did have a small 60GB SSD. A larger drive with newer firmware would be much better. Small SSDs can get overloaded and slow the OS after a bit of use. You also needed to run external programs to even out the cell wear or you could have early failure.

With my SSD drive, you had to turn off defragging or risk early failure. Most likely the same with the newer SSDs. They move data around with the drive firmware instead of defragging. With any SSD, read the manual throughly before using.

[jagabo]

Windows 7 has SSD optimizations to help keep it from prematurely wearing out your SSD and allowing for TRIM and garbage collection.

[redwudz]

Windows 7 has SSD optimizations to help keep it from prematurely wearing out your SSD and allowing for TRIM and garbage collection.

True, but my early SSD (OCZ) doesn't have TRIM or garbage collection. I have to use a aftermarket program for optimization. Nothing against SSDs, as most of the problems I had have been fixed in later drive versions.

But I would still never advise to get a small size SSD. 128GB or more seems minimal for W7 or Vista. XP doesn't have any optimizations, AFAIK, and is likely not recommended for SSD use. W7 seems to do well with SSDs.

If you can afford the big bucks, go for a large SSD, but I just don't see enough benefit to justify the expense. JMO.

[Ron B]

I have learned to not jump at the first generation of new technical products, although sometimes you have to if you are a professional person. The current SSDs are second generation, third gen SSDs will be out any day now. Most of the third gen SSDs will use SATA3 for performance increases, I only have SATA2, the second gen SSDs mostly use SATA2, the prices are coming down with the third gen SSDs coming out, now is as good a time as any.
I realize an SSD is not going to speed everything up, but solid state storage is the future of computing, might as well get my feet wet. Most of the current SSDs have TRIM and alignment supported by Windows 7 running with AHCI. XP sector alignment is different, manual adjustment is needed. Defragging is not needed on an SSD, it is automatically disabled in Windows 7. There are a few things you have to play with, but I am interested in seeing what these drives can do. The performance bottleneck in my workstation is clearly the hard drive. When the prices do come down a bit, I think having an SSD boot drive and an SSD for a scratch drive for programs like Adobe Premiere and Photoshop will make working with these programs(especially with things like HD video) much faster.

[frlev120]

I edit audio with audacity, I've seen a big performance increase with my intel x-25m 80gb. I set the temporary folder on the ssd.

[rhegedus]

I have 3 - 2x30GB in RAID0 for the OS and 1x60GB for video work.

To be honest, I didn't notice any great improvement in boot times but I suspect that is due to the on-board RAID initilaising itself. W7 does seem to be instantaneous however I think it reserves a significant proportion of the boot drive for temp files which it then commits on shut down (like Steady State?).

I've bought a 6GBps raid card that I'll switch the 2 30GB drives over to when I get round to it - hopefully this will get rid of the boot lag.

[turk690]

I'm using an OCZ Vertex 128GB for boot drive on this Win 7 Ultimate 64 PC and can see OS and program loading seems faster than my previous WD 7200rpm boot drives. Since SATA2 is a potential bottleneck and I'm a glutton for a type of wallet punishment, I may try a PCI-e based OCZ Revo and see what improves further.

[Ron B]

OK, I got an OCZ Vertex 2 120G as my boot drive. Boot up time is definitely faster, the "pre-boot" sequence takes a few extra seconds, probably because of the Intel RST drivers that were installed. Big programs like Premiere Pro and Photoshop open much quicker and the time between tasks within the program is definitely faster, "snappier" is a way I would describe it. You can tell where the SSD work ends and CPU work begins, like when working with HD video.
So far I've forgotten the $190 price tag a bit, we'll see how long the thing lasts.

[ehero]

As I know ssd support comes with win7. Because of defragment control is different than hdds. If you use winxp, you will not see performance improvement.

But, when we look asus netbooks, some models have pre installed with ssd. My brother bought last year an asus model netbook.

It is performance was really better than normal notebook disks. I have checked the latest ssd trends in 2 weeks, and intel has produced a new 80 gb model with a good grice.

I have a plan to use at my computer.

[rhegedus]

I may try a PCI-e based OCZ Revo and see what improves further.

I did some reading on these a few months back, before a Christmas tech splurge.

Performance graphs did not show any benefit over 2 SSDs linked to a 6GBps RAID card, but it (Revo) was more expensive.

[Ron B]

If you use winxp, you will not see performance improvement.

An SSD will provide increased performance with XP, and Vista as well. The disadvantage is that some functions that are "automatic" in Windows 7; like TRIM and alignment, must be performed manually with Vista and XP.