Please update the article to reflect that OS X not supporting TRIM is not a deal-breaker. Steves, above, linked to the study I had in mind.
Otherwise, it’s kind of deceptive, don’t you think?
I agree that 64 GB is too little. On my one machine I currently use 72 GiB on my Windows partition (that’s not including user folders, those are on another partition). On my other pc I use 76. That’s on HDDs of course, and both partitions are 100 GB because HDD space is cheap.
But this usage doesn’t really grow, since it’s just Windows 7 and installed programs, and by now I’ve installed everything I need to (and more). I’d guess about half of it is installed games anyway.
But 80 GB should certainly be enough. That’s about € 180 here, way less expensive than a 128 GB drive. (For computer hardware, basically € = $.) Even if I do get close to the 80 GB limit currently, I can easily uninstall some games that I don’t really play at the moment, to get well below it.
For anything other than applications, i.e. mass storage, you should just use a HDD anyway. So I do not think 128 GB is a practical minimum, in fact I don’t see how you would need it at all. And it’s definitely strange to completely ignore the existence of 80 GB SSDs. Why did you do so?
I have 3 Intel X25-V SSDs: one in the machine at work, one in my laptop, and one in my desktop machine at home. They are stupid cheap: about $130 a year ago, now just a C-note on NewEgg.
Even though it falls into the middle of the pack of these benchmarks, the performance difference is still absolutely stunning. The last time that I had such a techno-shocking moment was when I first downloaded a file over my college dorm’s Ethernet after coming from dial-up in 2001.
On a 32-bit machine, you can scrape by with 40GB: since you’re probably upgrading, use the platter-based drive as your bulk storage (MP3s, videos, etc.) and use the SSD for the OS, your Program Files, and your Visual Studio projects that are sitting on your desktop.
On the 64-bit machine, the 40GB is really quite tight after installing a typical MS development environment, having to disable hibernation to really make it work. But you can make it work.
Long story short? Budget isn’t even a reason to avoid an SSD these days.
This actually just came up yesterday on superuser.com as well! http://superuser.com/questions/188985/how-badly-do-ssds-degrade-without-trim/189002#189002
Web developer/designer over here; my total editor, languages, 8 or so project folders, Windows XP virtual install (complete with Baldur’s Gate 2, Dungeon Keeper and a few other choice classics) and audio/video files all total something like 24gb. I don’t try to keep it down, that’s just what it comes to naturally.
I bought myself a stack of 2.5" 64gb SSDs at about $160 each, and put them in my laptop, netbook and desktop (the wife’s iMac is the only machine in the house that still uses platter drives, and it’s because she uses something like 200gb of storage there).
Granted, most of the audience here is probably Windows users, but if you’re already on some flavor of Linux for a machine or two, it is very VERY easy to get away with a 32gb SSD (which is down at the ~$100 range).
And like Jeff says, it is easily the best performance-related purchase you can make.
There are much faster SSDs on the market right now
The OCZ RevoDrive blows away every benchmark out there
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1370/9/
It is basically two RAID 0 on a PCI-E x4 card, which is bootable. It doesn’t support TRIM but its like 4 or 5 times faster than any other hard drive
References to Moore’s Law strike a nostalgic chord in me. I interned at Fairchild Semiconductor last year, and spoke with company personel while still in college. Gordon Moore and Fairchild Semi. The origination of the law, and one of Fairchild’s founding fathers, so he holds special acclaim with the Fairchild community.
This article is sweet, I can use it to upgrade my laptop and actually know a little bit about what’s going on with the technical aspects of the hardware. Thanks for the post, super informative.
I’m now working for a web startup, pricefalls.com, similar to ebay and amazon. We’re carving out a place on the web; our focus is to be better, happier, and more equitable than the two black box titans–ebay and amazon. My computer may need an upgrade as I manage a great deal of data, so this blog post will be one of my reference points. Thanks!
My real question is… why bother in an HTPC?
You shouldn’t be rebooting it very often; it should be in S3 suspend.
And that 4gb cache isn’t going to matter with your AV software in RAM and all your media files being far larger (or not played so often as to be in the cache, or so small as to just be a blip of a read, eg for MP3 audio).
Am I missing some notional benefit in an HTPC application that would make it worth the extra cost?
It sounds like it’s doing little more than a 7200 rpm with a 4GB USB dedicated to ReadyBoost.
Still, as a user of a laptop with 5400rpm internal HDD, this post has reminded me that I need to at least put a 7200rpm with cache – no, mine doesn’t even have cache. Any recommendation?
I would think cool and silent running would be one benefit for an HTPC; if the HTPC is also doing video capture at the same time it’s playing, the multiplexed access should be less prone to stuttering on an SSD.
I have been wondering about build times for software development (e.g. Visual Studio and edit-compile-test cycles).
I would imagine that using a file cache to fill fast internal memory would be much faster than any external disk could be, HDD or SSD, so switching to SSD would give little benefit.
Why isn’t this the case? Does the Windows file cache have problems?
The Crucial RealSSD 256GB version is almost TWICE as fast as the same brand 128GB version - so the same goes for the rest of the competitors in that list: Twice the storage twice the speed!..
In regards to the CPU “is just cream”, my personal experience is that, when I mounted an SSD I got super performance overall, but only very little compiling my solution in VS.NET 2010… Then I overclocked my CPU from 2.8 to 3.8 GHz and that gave me a LOT of performance in compiling! The GHz was equal to time compile time gained…
Also (in my experience) a SATA-3 controller/interface helps a lot when mounting a HD - especially for all small block reads.
@CJakeman I don’t know your system configuration, or the nature and complexity of your projects and solutions, but my workstation has 4GB of RAM, VS2010 likes to swallow most of that during a build (I’m aggregating including concurrent child processes), so there’s not much left for in-RAM file cache. Any given solution directory for me sits around 2-3GB including intermediate, ncb(well, now OXF), and pch files.
Byte for byte, an SSD is far and away cheaper than expanding system RAM.
@Anders Mad different languages, and different approaches to using language features, will tax different resources differently. YMMV.
My problem with moving to SSD is capacity right now. You may very well be comfortable with 128GB but I have to think about storage even at 640GB (2 of them for that matter). Ok maybe only once in a while but when the time comes I need to make sure I have my 2 externals out and start the data shuffle moving information from my internal laptop drives to my external archive drives. I also have to consider on what data I’m going to drop. For now I need to do capacity over performance. That is until I get my NAS hopefully later in the year. Then and only then can I even remotely consider changing out to SSD.
The PC Pro review of that drive suggests it doesn’t deliver on the hybrid drive promise:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/hard-disks/360301/seagate-momentus-xt-500gb
Would be interested to see your results with it Jeff…
I think hard disc space very important but RAM is also need compare to hard disc space.It give speed manatain
http://webconnecttechnologies.com
Let’s put up with a few facts,
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More Storage SSD != faster. While the two are related they are non in linear relationship. Generally more storage means you have more free space so SSD does less GC and can copy faster. Read is all the same.
The other reason is more storage means a HIGHER chance of reading from Multi Channel. Which translate to higher performance. However a 256GB with 10 channel is going to be as fast as 512GB with 10 Channel. -
The hybrid drive isn’t that fast. I dont even call it close to SSD. You ahev 4GB of SSD space that is being file optimized by seagate firmware. If you have to spend $99 on a 320GB Hybrid Drive. I would recommend spending 40GB on a proper SSD and just use NAS for any storage.
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The Crucial is a SATA 3.0 6Gbps drive. It is slow at Random 4K Read Write ( An important factor in day to day uses. ) And there are also high failure rate ( Go Google it )
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Wait for Intel G3 SSD and Sandforce 2 coming out in few months time.
After reading this article, I went out and got a Momentus XT for my 2007 Macbook Pro. Wow. Until I installed the new disk, I was ready to buy a new laptop, as the performance was generally poor. But now I don’t think I’ll need to. Everything loads faster, there’re far fewer spinning beachballs.
After reading the other comments, there seems to be some doubt as to whether or not you’ll see any improvement. In my case, I replaced the stock hdd that came with the laptop, so I can’t comment on the performance vs other disks. But I am happily encouraging everyone in the same position as me to invest in hybrid drives.
Is it possible to install
the current king of the hill the Crucial RealSSD C300
on a IBM Think Pad T42. Or do I get problemos with the controller ?
TIA
Herbie from Switzerland
I never knew this much about SSDs but always personally liked those…thanks for all this info…