What's the point of an SSD drive?

[Scylla]

Excluding gaming.

Specifically, what would be the point of installing (PAYING FOR!) a 128gb SSD drive to run your OS on if your other drives are only 5400 or 7200? And is 128gb big enough for Windows 7 and lots of programs? I'm saying 128gb cos any bigger is just too expensive.

I record on 2 laptops and transfer the recordings (sometimes 7-10 hours long) to a third (the fastest) laptop* for editing. Transferring over wifi network is slow, someone recommended this ethernet switch (the price is silly cos it's out of stock at the mo):

tinyurl.com/8aygneq


Any tips for speeding everything up?

*Alienware M11x-R3
i7-2637M CPU
250GB 7200 HDD
6gb RAM
2GB GDDR3 NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 540M
2 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0
HDMI
Display port

No eSata

[steve386]

Do you have any spare ethernet connections on the back of your modem/router?

[domesticextremist]

That's a silly price for a switch. I got a GBethernet switch for about £40.

Something like this, should be fine unless you are playing heavy graphics games over the home LAN.

SSDs are just a load of flash memory in a disk case.

Benefits -

• no moving parts
  
• use less power
  
• quieter
  

Disadvantages -

• more expensive
  
• a bit slower than mechanical disks (but improving)
  
• lower capacity
  

I should have thought 128GB enough for any OS, but the problem
is that the OS usually expands to fill the available space.
Unless you are a real geek, or want a low power super quiet device,
you're best bet is still to get a cheaper, larger capacity regular disk with
a high spin speed (7200 or more).

[maccafan]

SSD has no moving parts and super fast almost as fast as RAM..

No mechanical drive can get close to SSD transfer speeds..128 GB is more than enough..I have a 32GB SSD on my WeTab and I triple boot with Win7(with latest updates)-Andriod & WeTab OS and still have about 8GB left.

[Scylla]

Bearing in mind it's for a laptop, that means my data will have to be on external drives, yes? So would I get the benefit of an SSD? That's what's concerning me.

[Scylla]

Dom - big eBay sellers tend to put silly prices on items they're out of stock of but expect more in, they do it to keep the listing alive. That was £8.99 before.

[maccafan]

If you got a laptop and want big storage and want it to be quick it's better to have a big 7200 rpm HDD rather than a SSD.

In a desktop you can have your OS and all your programs on a 128 GB SSD drive and data (vids, docs, piccys) on a big sata-3 drive..

[kingofswords]

if you drop or bang your laptop the harddriv eventually breaks cos of the moving parts ..well moving an ssd drive is more ike a usb stick ie yo can drop it.
also you dont have to defrag your drive and access times to all parts of you hdd faster as you dont have to wait for the drive to warm up and start spinning.

i got an ssd and its a pain in the arse...xp doesnt have the realavant drivers so its always a sod to install.

saying that my total boot up time on linux is less than 10secs/

[Scylla]

Mar 3, 2012 12:03:33 GMT maccafan said:

If you got a laptop and want big storage and want it to be quick it's better to have a big 7200 rpm HDD rather than a SSD.

That's exactly my thinking, Macca, but I needed it from an expert I would like 640gb minimum HDD,

Kingy, that's fab boot-up time I used to dual-boot on an XP netbook but I didn't give myself chance to get used to Linux (forgot which distro it was).

QUOTE Steve: Do you have any spare ethernet connections on the back of your modem/router?

Yes, Steve.

[maccafan]

I am no expert or a professional Scylla..I just pick it up as I go along much like everyone else.

[Scylla]

Mar 3, 2012 18:49:07 GMT maccafan said:

I just pick it up as I go along much like everyone else.

Except me Oh well, I'm not bad for an old lady It's strange, some PC things I have mental blocks on, other PC things I'm not too bad.

[Globalbloke (Tim)]

If you can (not sure with that Alienware) do what I did, I have a Dell Lattitude E6500 as my main Laptop and have the main drive as an SSD 128GB and then I got off ebay a CD caddy to fit my machine and put a 2.5" 500GB Hybrid drive in there for storage. The CD Player I rarely used so it's loss is minimal anyway.

Result:





The hybrid part of the Seagate drive is 8GB SSD, it uses this area to store files that are regularily used so access even from this "normal" drive is super quick. Didn't cost a load either.

Oh, and to answer the point of the original question on this thread, my SSD is OS only and my machine boots up super quick and is much quicker than with a regular drive, it's as simple as that

[Scylla]

Mar 13, 2012 16:12:57 GMT Globalbloke (Tim) said:

I got off ebay a CD caddy to fit my machine and put a 2.5" 500GB Hybrid drive in there for storage. The CD Player I rarely used so it's loss is minimal anyway.

Result:



The hybrid part of the Seagate drive is 8GB SSD, it uses this area to store files that are regularily used so access even from this "normal" drive is super quick. Didn't cost a load either.

That's very interesting, Global I've see hybrid drives (often described as SSD by eBay chancers > ) but I can't imagine how I'd put an HDD into a CD caddy ??? I wonder if you could explain and maybe point me to the components necessary to set this up? I don't use CD/DVD drives much either and anyway have an external one.

Oh, and to answer the point of the original question on this thread, my SSD is OS only and my machine boots up super quick and is much quicker than with a regular drive, it's as simple as that

My point is, is it worth paying £££ for, say, 128gb SSD purely for faster boot-up time? because an SSD big enough to contain data as well as OS would be massively expensive? I don't think so. But your set-up above looks like a very good idea.

Can't remember what I've already said in this thread...

I'm fed up with big video files (1,000,000++ kb sometimes) taking ages to transfer over the network - I record them on 'slower' laptops and transfer them over to M11x-R3 i7 to edit them. Have looked into an ethernet switch but do a lot of "work" on bed, would I have even more wires trailing/tangling?

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/260945234324?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

I may have said about the switch... scuse me for repeating myself

[maccafan]

If transfering files from one laptop to another is your main issue, why don't you buy a couple of 500-750 GB portable USB hard drives, attach them to your slower lappys, record on them and just move the drive from computer to computer when you need to edit, switching the recording to your other portable?

Far cheaper, faster and easier solution.

[Globalbloke (Tim)]

Ok, lots of questions there, let's try and answer them one by one:

CD Caddy - that's an easy one, if you look at this link www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l2736&_nkw=2nd+hard+drive+caddy+laptop you will see ebay littered with them, it is quite simply buy one, put any 2.5" sata drive in, push into laptop and hey presto new drive.

Is it worth it? - yes, but it depends what you do, all my high intesity data transfer programs are on my SSD, all the files I save are on the external drive. Anything that (like vid files for editing) requires a lot of accessing I would slam on my desktop knowing that was the SSD and once I have finished doing whatever save it over to the external drive by just dropping it into the folder mapped to it on my desktop. The SSD also houses my programmes because they obviously have high data access rates whilst loading.

When you say that your fed up with big files taking ages to transfer over the network do you mean you are connected wireless to this, if so that will be your weak point. You could link the laptops directly together with a crossover cable so no need for a switch, I don't fully understand your scenario at the moment so can't advise any further.

What maccafan says is right if one machine is downstairs and the other is in another room and they are not close by, why don't you do all your work on the alienware? Why the slower laptop, I've obviously missed something here (I can be quite thick)!!!