Is it time to consider a Solid State Drive(SSD)?

[johnny333]

Just reminded that I used to use a Bernoulli drive in the 80s and those days damn proud of it. Anyone use this before? If I'm not wrong each drive that I had was only 20Mb max.

View attachment 3323

In the latter 80's I bought a Syquest drive which could be used like a HDD. Each cartridge could store 44MB & it had a SCSI interface to connect to Macs. I still have the drive & some cartridges along with my Mac Classic, LC, Quadra 800,..& PCs. I'm pretty sure that the Mac computers still work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_Technology

 

[johnny333]

Windoze 7 is an "upgrade"???

That's like saying "I've upgraded from a bicycle to a bullock cart.".

Sometimes a "fast" bullock cart is good enough for the job

With my DIY i7 PC I can play around with different components. Something you can't do with a closed Mac. I'll probably get a Mac mini, Macbook, iPad... to replace my 10 year old ibook which died last year. For what I'm doing I can get by with a PC or Mac.

 

[uncleyap]

As it is, prices per GB are as follows:

DD3 RAM S$6 to S$7.5
SSD S$2.4 to S$4.1
Flash USB S$1.5 to S$2 (thumb drive)
HDD $0.09 to S$0.20 (normal hard disks)

RAM can be configured as RAM DISKs which speed is thousand times of SSD, where SSD is few times faster than HDD. Only catch is RAM DISKs have to be copied to HDD / SSD before power-down and copied from them when power-up. That is the only time you face a reduced speed. In e.g. server that you almost don't power-down this is not issue. In office PC, you would typically power-down only once per day. You can use as much RAM DISK as your board can. or use a costly battery backed SATA RAM Drive.

SSD max capacity is not reaching the TB range yet.

I use SSD for certain OS to boot only. Data are in HDD RAID. When I really need performance I would use part of my RAM as RAM DISK. e.g. a virtual machine can boot and run on a 6-7GB RAM DISK, it's disk I/O is extremely fast. Applications pop open like dream. I store these VM like canned food and drag them out to RAM DISK when I want. In only rare occasions I might went to keep some data after using them, I drag data back to RAID before I power-down these VMs. Usually not necessary, because these are usually tools or tests only.

RAID 0 5 ways and above can beat I/O performance of single SSD. But SSD are much more reliable.

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

to UY yup ram disks are very fast as fast as the hdd but the saving to disk when shutting down and starting up really kills the time.


ANyway guys if you want better performance can consider doing your ssd in raid. Performance even better than a single ssd.

 

[halsey02]

Sometimes a "fast" bullock cart is good enough for the job

With my DIY i7 PC I can play around with different components. Something you can't do with a closed Mac. I'll probably get a Mac mini, Macbook, iPad... to replace my 10 year old ibook which died last year. For what I'm doing I can get by with a PC or Mac.

The trouble with windozed as a "fast" bullock cart is, after using it for some time, the contents gets too heavy & one or two of the sproket gets broken & the cart is listed on one side.

Win7 supposedly to be this or that, I am using win7 ultimate, does hang once in a while, even with built in self diagnostic, can't detect what is ailing the OS. :p

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

i got my win 7 ultimate for free and it's also activated.

 

[singveld]

ANyway guys if you want better performance can consider doing your ssd in raid. Performance even better than a single ssd.

ssd on raid is bad idea, obviously you do not know what you are talking about.

 

[uncleyap]

to UY yup ram disks are very fast as fast as the hdd but the saving to disk when shutting down and starting up really kills the time.


ANyway guys if you want better performance can consider doing your ssd in raid. Performance even better than a single ssd.

Yes I know the video rendering guys do that 4 ways SSD RAID 0, because their data are too big for RAM DISKs. Other factor is SSD are too Small for video actually so RAD 0 4 ways increased their capacities 4X.

Those who really want speed and when data size can fit in RAM, use RAM give you TB/S speed, SSD gives you few hundred MB/S. RAM Disk speeds are multiplied by the number of CPU casings (not core) since each CPU with own memory controller can have an independent bunch or RAM DIMMs.

It is 4X speed in this one for example:

 

[johnny333]

The trouble with windozed as a "fast" bullock cart is, after using it for some time, the contents gets too heavy & one or two of the sproket gets broken & the cart is listed on one side.

Win7 supposedly to be this or that, I am using win7 ultimate, does hang once in a while, even with built in self diagnostic, can't detect what is ailing the OS. :p

I was reading a how-to magazine & they recommend a free utility such as www.piriform.com/ccleaner . It does some of the necessary garbage cleaning. I know there are many, many,..many other similar utilities out there but many people don't know that such utilities areessential when using Windows. I simply reformat the HDD & re-install when problems start appearing because I know how difficult it can be to troubleshoot a PC

In the past I would actually do all my serious work on a Mac:o However since my iBook died I am trying to make do with a PC until Apple introduces something that catches my eye. If I find the SSD stable on a PC, I will probably install one, on a yet to be bought Mac.

 

[johnny333]

i got my win 7 ultimate for free and it's also activated.

I'm sure there are many "evaluation" copies out there

I paid for Vista but am reluctant to pay for another terrible OS Already paying for the world's most expensive & terrible gov't :o

 

[johnny333]

to UY yup ram disks are very fast as fast as the hdd but the saving to disk when shutting down and starting up really kills the time.


ANyway guys if you want better performance can consider doing your ssd in raid. Performance even better than a single ssd.

I would use a RAM disk back in the mid 80's when I was using a Fat Macintosh(the 512k Mac). Back then the Mac was only equipped with a single 800kb floppy drives. I would use a utility to create & RAM disk which would load a word processor program called Macwrite into RAM. After the program loaded into RAM, it would then eject the floppy, making the disk drive available for saving of data disk.

 

[Fook Seng]

I started using computers back in the 70's, back then it was 4kb Sometimes have to look at the specs to remind myself whether it's MB or GB:o

4kb computers were those that did not come with alphanumeric keyboards, maybe hexadecimal pads, like Ohio? I still have an 24kb Apple II.

 

[Fook Seng]

For a faster boot, another way is to go for a 2nd gen processor, i.e. a Sandy Bridge processor or better still, wait for Ivy Bridge which should be coming out around April. Johnny's board will not be able to accept any of these though. The board should be configured to work on UEFI which can avoid the long bios booting. With UEFI, the startup time is cut short to just 2 seconds before Windows start booting up. Another thing, there are also hybrid SSD HDD disks but I have no experience using them. Anyone has this experience?

 

[johnny333]

For a faster boot, another way is to go for a 2nd gen processor, i.e. a Sandy Bridge processor or better still, wait for Ivy Bridge which should be coming out around April. Johnny's board will not be able to accept any of these though. The board should be configured to work on UEFI which can avoid the long bios booting. With UEFI, the startup time is cut short to just 2 seconds before Windows start booting up. Another thing, there are also hybrid SSD HDD disks but I have no experience using them. Anyone has this experience?

The new chipset Z68 already supports using an SSD dirve as a cache e.g. 20GB, 40MB .. One of the Gigabyte motherboards the Z68XP -UD3-iSSD20GB SSD is sold with a 20GB SSD that is used as a cache. With 60GB SSD drives going for under $150, it makes more sense to get a dedicated SSD for system & applications files.

As far as I know only Seagate is selling a hybrid HDD, the Seagate 2.5" 500XT. The benefits of caching only come into play if one is accessing the same data .
I remember reading of some problems when the hybrid drives are used with Macs. Don't know if the problem has been resolved?

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

ssd on raid is bad idea, obviously you do not know what you are talking about.

why is a bad idea? FYI i'm talking about the speed.

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

I'm sure there are many "evaluation" copies out there

I paid for Vista but am reluctant to pay for another terrible OS Already paying for the world's most expensive & terrible gov't :o

it's not an evaluation copy.

 

[uncleyap]

As far as I know only Seagate is selling a hybrid HDD, the Seagate 2.5" 500XT. The benefits of caching only come into play if one is accessing the same data .

Seagate forum claimed it's available @US$90 but it is still an awaiting product unseen in SG market so far. :(

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Moment...le-for-under-100-Delivered-in-USA/td-p/142589

 

[Fook Seng]

Seagate forum claimed it's available @US$90 but it is still an awaiting product unseen in SG market so far. :(

No. I think it is marketed by Fuwell. At least I saw it in their catalogue.

 

[johnny333]

4kb computers were those that did not come with alphanumeric keyboards, maybe hexadecimal pads, like Ohio? I still have an 24kb Apple II.

The early computers came in plastic bags & which you had to assemble yourself

Even when computers were available assembled like the the TRS80 sold by OG Dept store, came with a nice keyboard & only 4kb of RAM It was more than what a "lesser mortal" made in the 70's

 

[johnny333]

No. I think it is marketed by Fuwell. At least I saw it in their catalogue.

Their online price is here http://www.fuwell.com.sg/uploads/misc/Fuwell010112.pdf