Hew HD - New or old Skool ?

[Cain]

When I build my new PC I had intended to make a Solid State my main HD...

Now after Schultzy's problems, I am concerned about the failure rate of these drives...

Comments??

[SIR Rossy]

Failure rate is very very low on intels 320 and 510 series ... an ssd is worth the risk I believe .. its personal choice tho I say go for it ! AN Intel 510 series 120gb would be fantastic !

[Schultzy]

CAIN:

Here are my entire thoughts on SSD. To sum it up, they're mixed...

The speed and performance of an SSD is crazy. I'd say it's worth every penny. I would look at the ones in the ~100gb range, as that gives you room for your OS and a few of the MOST USED programs - games or any game support software you run, as well as drivers/etc. Then you get a second SATA drive of considerable size for everything else. On that second drive, create a small partition to install windows on with a web browser, so if you DO Have a failure, you can still be running while you await a replacement.

That said, the drive I purchased had many positive reviews and a few negative - hence my choice. I did some deeper research and found that the newer intels and the Samsungs are doing very well with low failure rates. I picked up a samsung that is due in this Tuesday for a decent price of $200 for a 128gb.

If you're really concerned about speed, make sure your motherboard has the controller to run the drive at it's peak. Some of the older boards do not have the SATA III (6gb) controllers. That said, you can pick up a PCI-E controller on the cheap if you are that concerned to get the SATA III speed over the SATA II speed. But.... SATA II SSD is still crazy fast.

All in all, SSD has tainted me. I wont go back to the traditional mechanical for my main drives. I will continue to have an SSD and replace it every other year if I must, with a pair of mechanical's as backups (re: 500gb app drive w/windows, and a 1tb drive for standard backups like pictures and the like). That brings up the next reason I picked up a Samsung - they send a copy of Norton GHOST with it as well - which is backup software. I figure this would save me the trouble of having to locate freeware, or warez, or whatever have you to do my back ups. :P Yes, I have grown lazy in my old age. I deserve it. bwaha

OK, went on a tangent. If you can make sense of that, kudos.

-Michael

[Rand{CLR}]

I'm in the same boat as Cain. It wasn't until about 2 months ago that I decided the benefits of an SSD would necessitate one as my OS drive in any new system, but I'm concerned with failure reports, particularly as I've had no less than 3 HD failures in my time, one of which was a total loss.

I was originally going to RAID 1 a pair of 500GB-1TB drives but I like the speed benefits of an SSD and I won't be in position to RAID a pair of those.

Ghost or similar full image software may help. Be interesting to see more responses and recommendations here.

-Rand

[Dead...Again]

Cain, if you are getting that Z68 MB, you have a third option. You can get a small SSD and a regular HDD, then the controller somehow treats them as one hybrid drive. It then uses the SSD as a big cache basically, keeping the files that are accessed most often.

GIGABYTE Z68 series motherboards are equipped with the much anticipated Intel Smart Response Technology, allowing users to experience system performance similar to SSD only systems. Intel Smart Response technology works by using intelligent block-based caching of frequently used applications to improve system performance and responsiveness. In fact, GIGABYTE Z68 motherboards with Intel Smart Response Technology are able to outperform hybrid drive systems by more than 2X (PC Mark Vantage) and HDD-only systems by as much as 4X. (4X+ Faster than HDD-only system in PC Mark Vantage (HDD Score).

[bobytt]

I had 4 SSDs up to date. had to RMA one Vertex LE 120GB , the other 3 working perfect especially Vertex 3 MAXIOPS its amazing OS HDD.

[Cain]

Cain, if you are getting that Z68 MB, you have a third option. You can get a small SSD and a regular HDD, then the controller somehow treats them as one hybrid drive. It then uses the SSD as a big cache basically, keeping the files that are accessed most often.

Thanks Dead, I am thinking that may be a good option...

[Donziboy2]

SSD are more reliable then HDD, but they still can fail. Make sure you back up your SSD.

[Legion181]

Have had a 120g Corsair since febuary... I wouldnt go back to anything else. Have had a few bsod issues but think that was software and not hardware. Just bought parts for the wifes new computer, am goin with an intel 510 240gig for her. From research ive done an ssd is actually more reliable than a platter drive, better power consumption and the speed difference is just insane, even compared to the top of the top platter drives. Another plus is heat and noise.... they are pretty much just non existent. I suppose they do heat up some but I have never noticed. Ive had 10k raptors and now I have an ssd, you would have to pry it out of my cold dead hands.

[Cain]

I have always had 10K Raptors....

You guys who have SSDs love them, and are quickly convincing me.

I guess I will take a long hard look at a SSD for my main drive, then platters for other stuff, like photos, music, movies, etc.

[WalkinTarget]

Cain, if you are getting that Z68 MB, you have a third option. You can get a small SSD and a regular HDD, then the controller somehow treats them as one hybrid drive. It then uses the SSD as a big cache basically, keeping the files that are accessed most often.

This is what I'm doing. The Z68 board I bought has a 20gb mSATA SSD, and it is used strictly as cache using the Z68's support of SRT. It also had the added benefit of being SLC enterprise level NAND so that it is optimized for numerous and random read/writes over the life of the SSD.
Pair that with my RAID'ed 1tb WD Blacks and it won't be as fast as a full blown SSD, but it will up to 5x faster than a standard HD config.

[Donziboy2]

I have raptors and SSD.

Love them both but for boot drive I went SSD.

[WalkinTarget]

A very good read on how the Z68 boards take advantage of Intel's SRT cache:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/i...ching-review/2

Quote:
Intel's Smart Response Technology (SRT) is an interesting addition to the mix. For starters, it's not going to make your high end SSD obsolete. You'll still get better overall performance by grabbing a large (80-160GB+) SSD, putting your OS + applications on it, and manually moving all of your large media files to a separate hard drive. Paired with a 20GB SLC SSD cache, I could turn a 4-year-old 1TB hard drive into something that was 41% faster than a VelociRaptor.

[Cain]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[WalkinTarget]

If you read the Anand article on the SRT technology you will see that the onboard SSD does its best when you use just a few apps and those apps already exist on the 20gb cache drive.

When you first launch a new game, expect no speedup at all on it. On any subsequent launch of that game, the load times drop dramatically, and will in fact INCREASE in some cases over extended use.

Once the 20gb cache fills up (you may have installed or launched a huge photo editing suite or office suite) and the game is 'pushed' off the cache and back onto the HD, then the cache load time will drop back to HD speed load times.

Its a very nice first effort for the SRT technology, but Intel could have done us buyers better by making it a 40gb cache drive instead. Also, it does not replace an SSD, which shows its speed increases across the board.

I even toyed with the idea of caching a 120gb Revo drive, in essence caching a second SSD, but the SRT technology is made primarily for a user still using a hard drive as their boot drive.

Edit -> PS: I love making Cain's head hurt when we feed him this new technology stuff !! I can smell the burning all the way up here in PA !!