Anyone's ideas on my SSD moves Options

[Electr0]

No worries.

I've been busy with exams the past week, but now have a bit more free time.

I'm still tossing up between the Vertex 4 and the Intel 520.

They seem to have similar performance but the Vertex is able to do more than 3x the amount of IOPS on Random 4KB reads.
Is that actually a significant performance difference? It seems so to me.

But will that have any effect if I'm running the drive on SATA 2?
Which kinda sucks, as I can only run the drive at 1/2 speed.

[stash]

Will suck using it on sata2 just knowing its half speed, but will still be a massive increase over a HDD, and when you eventually upgrade in the future it will run full speed. (there are some ocie expansion cards that add sata3 though i havent heard the best things.)

The speed differences between the Intel 520 and the Vertex 4 might look like a lot on paper but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference in use. Out of those 2 I would go with the cheapest option, both are great

[Electr0]

Cheers man.

I'm in WA, so looks like it's the Vertex 4 from NetPlus for $168.

[aliali]

From what I read you should never use a SSD drive for data storage, but i never have with my OS drives.

That's just to do with the lack of affordable big drives more than anything. Too easy to fill up with stuff.

[stash]

I read it was to do with constant writes to ssd's decreases there longevity

[aliali]

I read it was to do with constant writes to ssd's decreases there longevity

Oh well there is that too, but then that means laptops with SSDs are in trouble. :P
Write life is improving and IMO is to the point that you don't really need to worry about it.
Even got idiots on Whirlpool suggesting moving the temp folders and pagefile off the SSD to increase it's life, totally ignoring that doing that means you may as well not have an SSD at all. It is the fast read and writes that make SSDs so great and guess what? Temp and pagefile (and therefore the OS) are two things that really really benefit from an SSD.

[strifus]

I am going to continue on with what aliali was saying. Essentially, the reason for going with a SSD is for the performance increase it gives you, end of story. I understand that not everyone wants all out speed or cant/dont find it a viable alternative considering its cost per GB. However, it is the BEST option when you want to increase the performance of your system without having to massively upgrade your system with new parts. I bought the original vertex with the indillix controllers and now ive come full circle with the vertex 4 with the up to date controllers, and havent looked back since.

[xnatex]

has anyone chucked 3 x SSD's into a RAID 5 ?

[xyzzy frobozz]

No worries.

I've been busy with exams the past week, but now have a bit more free time.

I'm still tossing up between the Vertex 4 and the Intel 520.

They seem to have similar performance but the Vertex is able to do more than 3x the amount of IOPS on Random 4KB reads.
Is that actually a significant performance difference? It seems so to me.

But will that have any effect if I'm running the drive on SATA 2?
Which kinda sucks, as I can only run the drive at 1/2 speed.

Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier.

Even if you're on SATA 2, I'd try to look around for a SATA3 bargain SSD somewhere. A SATA3 drive will actually be a little quicker even plugged into a SATA2 port. You'd never notice the difference except when running a benchmark, but the price difference is negligible and you may wish to keep it when you upgrade to a SATA3 motherboard.

Where you notice the big difference with SSD is the latency. All SSD are low latency so you'll really feel the difference in response. If you're looking for an SSD on a budget, I'd go something like:OCZ Agility. $110 shouldn't break your bank.

When I put my current rig together, the Super Talent Sandforce SSD I put in it (and still have) was $750 for 256GB - less than three years ago! Times have changed!

I've owned 3 SSD's and never had a problem with any of them (Super Talent, Intel and OCZ). Reliability is a relative thing and, any way you cut it, SSDs are an order of magnitude more reliable than a traditional HDD. Bare in mind that a lot of the publicised SSD wear issues have come from environments where they're reading and writing all day long - in other words - commercial environments. For the average home user it shouldn't be an issue, and it's mostly been addressed wit the newest controllers anyway.

You'll never look back.

This post has been edited by xyzzy frobozz: Jun 24 2012, 04:24 AM

[aliali]

Bare in mind that a lot of the publicised SSD wear issues have come from environments where they're reading and writing all day long - in other words - commercial environments. For the average home user it shouldn't be an issue,

Better exclude torrenters from that as torrenting thrashes hard drives as it has a lot of read write going on.

[xyzzy frobozz]

Bare in mind that a lot of the publicised SSD wear issues have come from environments where they're reading and writing all day long - in other words - commercial environments. For the average home user it shouldn't be an issue,

Better exclude torrenters from that as torrenting thrashes hard drives as it has a lot of read write going on.

Oh really?

I didn't know that. Then again, I don't really torrent!

Cheers for the heads up.

:-)