thinking of getting an SSD with my new rig

[BicycleMafioso]

My thoughts exactly.

I concur. . .

[Fuzzykins]

I concur. . .

For the longest time, I thought that meant you disagreed. ESL. :<

[ispano]

For the longest time, I thought that meant you disagreed. ESL. :<

Just goes to show tetris speaks, or rather, writes better English than many Americans.

[Fuzzykins]

Just goes to show tetris speaks, or rather, writes better English than many Americans.

I consider myself mostly literate at this point, but English isn't my first language. (Technically, it's my third. We'll ignore that, though. I don't know enough Korean to write, but I understood it before English.)

[BicycleMafioso]

I consider myself mostly literate at this point, but English isn't my first language. (Technically, it's my third. We'll ignore that, though. I don't know enough Korean to write, but I understood it before English.)

I can play that card as well. English is technically my fourth language (and Swedish my third), but I barely know enough Spanish to get by, and my mother never wanted me to learn Finnish. ^^

However, your praise is unwarranted, ispano. :P And that's it for me tonight. Sleep well, y'all.

[ispano]

Praise? I don't praise for little things like that. It takes a lot for me to praise someone.

It's a statement based on experience.

[aikouka]

I wouldn't listen to those that say it isn't worth it to just put your OS + applications on a SSD. I use SSDs in every machine I own, and my HTPC and server both use 40GB drives. I just checked my server and it has 15.7/37GB free. So with a 60GB drive, you'd be even better off. Now, they aren't wrong in that smaller drives offer less performance. The difference is literally in the amount of NAND chips that are used on the drive. To visualize what goes on in the SSD, think of its controller as a RAID controller. If you give it 8 "drives" (NAND chips) to write to vs 4, it will be able to possibly perform more actions in parallel.

But what I try and really get across when it comes to SSDs, is that even with a lower capacity drive, you still get an insane boost in random read performance over a mechanical hard drive. Rather than trying to spout off numbers, I'll just show you a comparison using Anandtech's Storage Bench of an Intel X25-V 40GB (what I use in my HTPC and server) compared to a WD VelociRaptor 600GB:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/148?vs=182#

Random Read is the figure I typically look at the most when it comes to storage, and the performance on the VelociRaptor is so small... you literally can't even read it!

The only drives without GC capabilities (and mine do have it ofcourse, Firmware level) are the Generation 1 SSDs which have JMicron/Samsung controllers, every other SSDs have that as standard now.

Most applications, such as mini programmes, i agree, somewhat higher applications (Photoshop etc) they are.

I'm pretty certain Intel drives support TRIM in RAID as long as you're using RapidStore drivers from... I think January 2011 or later.

[BicycleMafioso]

I'm pretty certain Intel drives support TRIM in RAID as long as you're using RapidStore drivers from... I think January 2011 or later.

I believe this is a common misconception.
Intel drives allow TRIM to work when you have other drives in RAID. Ie, not being being able to run AHCI or whatnot.

[ispano]

I believe this is a common misconception.
Intel drives allow TRIM to work when you have other drives in RAID. Ie, not being being able to run AHCI or whatnot.

This is correct. The problem arose that the entire controller is put in RAID mode, not just the ports for the drives you're RAIDing. So any single SSDs on the controller were considered in RAID as wel and didn't get the benefit of TRIM. The change fixes that, no controller passes TRIM to RAIDed SSDs at this time.

[aikouka]

I believe this is a common misconception.
Intel drives allow TRIM to work when you have other drives in RAID. Ie, not being being able to run AHCI or whatnot.

Ah, okay. I appreciate the clarification! I just stick with single drives myself... the responsiveness of SSDs is more than good enough for me.

[Leyth]

I've got a fully updated Windows 7 professional and world of warcraft installed on this hard drive and I'm at 54gb used space. This laptop is basically just for Wow and school, my school stuff doesn't take much space. If you can wait and save up for an 80gb one you could get your OS and a game or two on it and definitely see improvements. As for the guy who says its pointless.. well he's the only one saying it is, so that shouldn't be too hard for you to decide.

P.s. if it's not enough, go google what others say about getting an SSD just for your OS. They all agree it's a good idea.

[Kraszmyl]

Just to confirm the other guys. in raid you do lose trim support. That being said if you put the money into the correct drives some drives , mostly entireprise ones have thier own wear leveling stuff built in.

Like my work/gaming desktop has two 256g enterprise samsung drives in a raid 0 and they have a dedicated 1 gig of ecc dram buffer on them and some sort of ondrive wear leveling. Dunno if it is as good as os trim support to be honest and im kinda doubting it is, but it does exist. Samsung is claiming i should get ~10 years of non degraded use in this configuration and they atleast back it with a 5 year warranty so they cant be completely full of crap.

And back on the topic of games, i havent seen a noticable loading bar in awhile on my setup. If i was starting from scratch tho , assuming you have an sata3 capable board i would save up for one of those since you would get trim + the speed of a raided sata2 setup and that would last you for a good long while.

[ispano]

Just to confirm the other guys. in raid you do lose trim support. That being said if you put the money into the correct drives some drives , mostly entireprise ones have thier own wear leveling stuff built in.

Like my work/gaming desktop has two 256g enterprise samsung drives in a raid 0 and they have a dedicated 1 gig of ecc dram buffer on them and some sort of ondrive wear leveling. Dunno if it is as good as os trim support to be honest and im kinda doubting it is, but it does exist. Samsung is claiming i should get ~10 years of non degraded use in this configuration and they atleast back it with a 5 year warranty so they cant be completely full of crap.

And back on the topic of games, i havent seen a noticable loading bar in awhile on my setup. If i was starting from scratch tho , assuming you have an sata3 capable board i would save up for one of those since you would get trim + the speed of a raided sata2 setup and that would last you for a good long while.

ALL SSDs have wear leveling. TRIM and GC aren't about wear leveling at all.

[Evildeffy]

The RAID card I used was superior to that one, forgot the exact model but it was LSi for sure. As for benchmarks, this is a bit old but: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...omparison.html

Also it seems to be the 4k reads/writes that cause issues. In some games where it doesn't do heavy sequential transfers, like WoW seems to do, but some sequential but also many smaller ones, the two SSDs in RAID0 are the same if not a bit slower than a single drive.

Drivers and chip optimizations can make all the difference in the world.
ASUS Rampage II Extreme here, performing like a crazed maniac.

---------- Post added 2011-08-12 at 12:27 PM ----------

well SSD's are not necessarily faster than SATA drives if you are looking for pure performance you get a comp that has SCSI HDD's but thats pricey. the point to SSD's they dont break down (no moving parts for those who dont know that SSD's are) and they use less power. but the reg SATA HDD's still read/write faster than SSD's currently do. I would wait to get an SDD untill u have a motherboard with USB 3.0 otherwise save your money

DAMNIT TO HELL, why did i go to bed before this was posted, could've had so much fun!