Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Solid State Drives.

Anyone got any experience of these? Are they worth the money? What are the benefits? I intend to wait until they get cheaper before buying one, and I'm not entirely convinced I can move my existing HDD contents to it without enormous hassle.

Any experiences from those using them would be interesting.

Pc or Laptop

If your machine bottle necks due to a slow Hard Drive then it would be woth it.

If you have a decent machine cpu and memory then they should compensate for a slower drive and balance out.

They are fast.

Never Defrag a SSD !

Get a small one for your OS but not for storage, that doesn't really need it.

I've got a 60Gb one here and it really does improve start up times.

I paid about £120 for a 240gig SSD, which I use as my C:\ drive, brilliant drive, fast start up, app's load up very quick.

Have you seen the hybrid drives?
Usually a small sector of ssd with a large hdd sector all in one drive.
Uses smart tech to buffer and use each part dependent on use.

Big storage, not quite a fast as a standard ssd but much cheaper.

Reduced boot times. Faster program start up. Laptops benefit from improved battery life too.

Personally I'd do a fresh install, however some SSDs come with the transfer software. If you do decide to clone your current install, you'll need to make sure the SSD you get has enough capacity;
open Computer and check how much space your current install takes.

Thanks for that, everyone.

Any feedback on the limited life of these things? I know its several thousand read/write cycles per cell, but if you are using it heavily you might well hit that. I imagine it would manifest itself as falling capacity as the management software isolates the dead cells, but I don't know for sure.

Is it a problem in practice? I'd really like a 1TB drive but they are still very expensive.

Also, my computer is rather old and the SATA drives would limit performance I think. I guess I could buy a fast SATA PCI card, but that adds to the expense, and takes up another slot. Perhaps I should bite the bullet and buy a new machine.

They have a technology in them that manages the read/write on cells and will manage it. This prolongs the life expectancy.

You may find more questions after reading this.

SSD Info

Thanks Mark. I'd already read that.

I think I'll wait and see. Apart from the expense, I don't really like the idea that they can and do fail catastrophically. I've had several HDDs fail over the years, and they all did so fairly gracefully, allowing me to recover the data onto a new one.

It doesn't look like I can do that with a SSD. Yes, I could back everything up regularly, but like most folk I probably wouldn't.

The best strategy at the moment seems to be to wait and see how the technology develops.

I am very lucky in that I have a very decent laptop, it has two hard drives , one solid state drive for boot up and main programs, and another larger 7200 drive for data.

The sst drive means a boot up time of less than 10 seconds.

found it to be very fast.

no idea how to replace a normal drive with one.

expensive but "if" you have the money then you will certainly notice the difference

Noamd

Two internal drives?

There are a couple of laptops where you can swap the CD Drive for an additional Hard Drive, and a few where two Hard Drives can be fitted within the actual casing itself.

Can you name them Dr?. Thanks

Not all of them, but there's a lot of Dell Laptops (over 17") that have a spare bay for an additional drive.

Samsung RF711

HP Envy

HP DV9000

Sager X7300 can take 3

There are a few out there but you'll find that (purely due to space) they tend to be the larger laptops.

Some have the space but don't have the socket soldered to the board (as some manufacturers use the same board for different machines) don't try to solder one on as even if you did the BIOS isn't set up for it.

Sometimes you'll find the socket there but you still need to get an adapter and/or caddy to hold the actual drive. It's still fairly easy once you get the bits.

I am not after a laptop. I prefer a desktop and they generally come with space and connections for two drives. Physically there is no accommodation problem. I will probably need to buy a SATA III card, but there is room for that too.

But I think I will wait to see if they get cheaper and better before spending any money on them.