Solid State Drive (SSD)?

Hello there.

I am building a desktop. I have some of the components down. I am debating on getting an SSD because I've heard so much good about it.

Except, I have non answers.

What the fuck is an Solid State Drive?
What does it do?
Why does it come in such small sizes like 120GB? I saw a 720 GB SSD but that was a "hybrid"?

I read the wikipedia article. My brain hurt.

Help.

 

Overly simplified, a Solid State Drive is just like a super-high-capacity flash drive, like the USB ones you carry around in your pocket. While traditional mechanical hard drives store data magnetically on a bunch of platters, SSD's store their ones-and-zeros inside of a series of computer chips. This is one reason why they come in such small capacities; instead of simply changing the size or number of platters, you have to shrink all of that internal circuitry in order to accommodate more storage chips.

The reason why SSD's are toted as being Totally Freakin' Awesome is because, compared to mechanical drives, they have an insanely fast read-time (you don't have the physical disks to spin up, the heads on the platters to move, etc etc). This means that Windows and most applications will load quite a bit faster than they would if you were loading them from a mechanical drive.
EDIT: Also forgot to mention, another advantage to using an SSD is that it's much more physically durable than a mechanical drive. Because there's almost no (if any) moving parts, it can be handled with slightly less care than a mechanical drive without having to worry about losing any of your data. (Think about what your flash drive goes through in your pocket each day... )

There are a few drawbacks to using an SSD, though.
First, obviously, is size; if you only have 120GB to play with you won't want to put much more than Windows and some of your most-used applications onto the drive (media like pictures/video/music and video games are probably best suited for a mechanical drive anyways, because the read time of files in a video game isn't going to make the game run much faster. Ditto with pictures/video/music).
SSD's are also lots more expensive per-Gigabyte than mechanical drives. This is just the way it is. It's a newer technology that's in high demand, and the prices won't be going down too much any time soon.
Another thing to keep in mind is that SSD's are not immortal; they do fail like mechanical hard drives do. However, instead of the entire disk failing or becoming corrupted at once, individual chips will burn out and slowly eat away at the available space on your SSD. (Flash drives do this too.)

About that "hybrid" drive: In my opinion, avoid hybrid drives at all cost. Basically all they are is a bastardization of an SSD and a traditional drive in the same container. Every review I've read says that there's really no use; almost all of them use the SSD as a "cache" for the mechanical drive to make some things load faster. I'd rather have the reliability of two separate drives (and the ablilty to still use the other if one fails catastrophically). Others may disagree, but that's my opinion.

If you're considering an SSD, it's not a bad idea to pair it with a separate, relatively high-capacity mechanical drive, so that you can still store all of your media and stuff while saving the space on the SSD for applications.

This is all off-the-top-of-my-head and some TFPers will probably be able to give you some better (or, in some cases, more correct) info than this, but this should at least get you started. Let us know if you have any other questions

 

SSD's are definitely worth the money. Over the summer I replaced my old PC I built in 2006 that had a raptor 10k rpm hard drive as the primary with a new system that was based on a SSD and the load times on applications and restarting the OS went down dramatically (I would say the SSD is at least 50% faster, if not more.)

As has been previously mentioned, generally people put their OS and applications on the SSD and then have larger capacity mechanical drives to store media on.

I purchased the Samsung 830 256gb model due to the outstanding reliability that people commented on in their product reviews. Samsungs cost a little bit more than the competitors like OCZ, but when I was doing research a lot of people were complaining about the reliability of many of the other less expensive brands and I absolutely need my PC to be reliable.

When I bought it I think it was on sale for $180 Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC256B/WW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

You guys are awesome! Thanks for the info.

 

I just built a new PC with a 240G Corsair SSD. It's simply amazing how fast Windows loads and runs.

 

I have a 256 GB SSD and a 3TB USB3 drive for my laptop. Yes, it is expensive, but it has been worth it. Even program load times have gone down a lot, not just the OS boot up time.

They are a little small for all of your files is the only drawback. Movies, TV shows, and pictures have to get saved on the 3TB drive. (I can shoot 64GB of photos/video in a week at a national park for example, so while I can use my laptop in the field to edit, I have to save everything to the big external drive when I get home)

 

Upgraded my PC in Sept with a SSD as the boot drive. Only Windows 7 and programs are installed on it. All other files reside on a normal hard drive. Google for articles on how to do it. You have to remap where files reside in some programs, for example MS Office.

Amazingly fast boot and load times. Instant response for many functions.

 

Hi, I've been using OCZ Vertex2 120 gig as boot drive on my desktop for 2 years, always on, without problem. The company that built it gave a 24 hr high temperature burn-in before sending it to me, so my reliability is not necessarily a testament to OCZ.
Speeds are much faster, and I totally chime in on the side of 'Yeah! go get one!'

 

What about photo shop?

 

I'd use the SSD as your photoshop scratch drive as well.

 

From the Something Awful SSD thread this info is pretty consistently updated. There's a huge amount of information there that's worth a read if you're looking to buy one.
The SSD Megathread - Fuck OCZ and Crucial forever (check your M4 firmware) - The Something Awful Forums

 

I have two Crucial drives and they both work fine, both are almost a year old now.

 

Hello,

Depending on your budget and need there are also different kind of SSD drives. I needed to set up a Linux file-server. So like was mentioned above I split the information into the Operating System and the data. I needed it to be extremely fast with the OS so I opted for an SSD drive, and then 2 SATA drives for the date (documents, photos, videos, etc.) But I found that the SSD drives were not fast enough as they were being limited by the SATA interface rate itself. So I opted for a much faster PCI-X interface (basically the drive snaps into the motherboard using the PCI card interfaces)

Speed comparison:
SATA III SSD Interface:
Max sequential Read: Up to 555 MB/s
Max sequential Write: Up to 510 MB/S

PCI-X SSD Interface:
Max sequential Read: Up to 1,500 MB/s
Max sequential Write: Up to 1,225 MB/S

The different was amazing. Granted the PCI-X SSD are much more expensive, but depending on your need it may be an options.