Solid State Drive...

[t_blake07]

I was doing a little window shopping at newegg and seen some of their deals on SSD's. I was wondering if anyone here owns one? I was also wondering if it's really worth paying that much for one. I seen a 120GB SSD, for $1,349.00!!! I mean seriously. Is it really worth it? Does it really save that much time? Even if you're a business owner and you rely on the speed of your computer to keep things on schedule, is it really worth it in the long run? Personally I think i'll wait until the price comes down drastically before I consider purchasing one. Just my two cents.

[Geek-9pm]

No, not worth it. No today.

Users that need high performance and will spend money for it will go for quad core CPU, with 64 bit OS. And lots of RAM like 8GB or more.

For Hard drive they will buy six high end 250 GB drives. Install 5 in a RAID and keep one as a spare. Pricey? Yes, but it has a proven track record.

But the Solid State drive could prove to be a winner a little later on.

Meanwhile, the magnetic spinning storage makes are looking for ways to boost performance. No new announcements yet. But real soon.
http://www.storagereview.com/

[t_blake07]

I'll just stick to my WD VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM HDD's. No where near as fast at reading, but not too much slower at writing.

[Crosshair]

Depends on the make/model of the drive.
A decent SSD, such as the Intel X25 series, offers a massive performance boost from any mechanical drive.
The main advantage is the total lack of seek time.  Even with Raptors or enterprise level 15k rpm drives, there's still a seek time of (being generous) ~4ms or more.  An SSD has no seek time, so data stored anywhere on the drive is instantly accessible.  Sequential read/write transfer rates may not be much higher than some mechanical drives, or may even be a little lower, so SSDs aren't necessarily better if all you want to do is load large contiguous files one after another.  But for real world usage, SSDs are night and day over hard drives.
The price is still high, not sure what kind of 120GB SSD retails for $1349 (maybe an enterprise model?) but for many people the performance is worth the price and tradeoff in storage space.
Just my opinion anyway

[rthompson80819]

One of the things I've seen is a combination of SSD and standard HDs.  The SSD is much smaller and more affordable than the one mentioned above and the standard HD is used for bulk storage.  The SSD could be used for frequently used programs and frequently used data storage, and the HD used for less frequently used stuff.

I don't have any hard numbers, but I'm willing to guess that 90% of what's on our HDs only gets used occasionally, the the other 10% is used frequently.

[Geek-9pm]

....
I don't have any hard numbers, but I'm willing to guess that 90% of what's on our HDs only gets used occasionally, the the other 10% is used frequently.

yes yes,

[patio]

No such thing as a "lack of seek time" or absense of one...

However...carry on.

[Computer_Commando]

No such thing as a "lack of seek time" or absense of one...

Seek times are on the order of 100us (100 times faster), low power consumption is another big plus, as prices drop all laptops will have them as the primary drive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

[patio]

Which means there still exists a "seek time"...it's just quicker.
On that note i am no longer engaging in arguments over semantics.

I'll get this Post notarised tomorrow...after i'm done shoveling snow.

[computeruler]

SSDs really help with loading time of... well... everything. Bedsides boot/shutdown times becuase thats mostly with the motherboard.  Loading times of programs will be super quick and copying and pasting and everything.  Even little things like thumbnails previews loading faster.  You decide for yourself if its worth it.

[t_blake07]

SSDs really help with loading time of... well... everything. Bedsides boot/shutdown times becuase thats mostly with the motherboard.  Loading times of programs will be super quick and copying and pasting and everything.  Even little things like thumbnails previews loading faster.  You decide for yourself if its worth it.

I see what you're saying, I just think they're too pricey, still. I think with time the price will come down, but until then it's basically the same thing as paying $60/mo for a 10Mb/s internet connection, when you could get 8Mb/s for $25/mo. This is just my opinion though and i'm sure a lot of people feel differently about it. Those are probably the same people that paid $250 for 40GB of storage.

[patio]

Storage was a Buck per Mg when i bought my 3rd PC...

540 Mg HDD cost approx $540.00 give or take.

Thats Mg not Gigs.....and it was not too too far ago.

[t_blake07]

Storage was a Buck per Mg when i bought my 3rd PC...

540 Mg HDD cost approx $540.00 give or take.

Thats Mg not Gigs.....and it was not too too far ago.

Yeah, i'm guessing they didn't know what kind of price tag to put on storage, so a dollar per MB sounded good. Such quick advances in technology has changed that dramatically. As with just about all technology.

[Crosshair]

No such thing as a "lack of seek time" or absense of one...

However...carry on.

Depends how you define "seek time".  I've always heard and though of seek time as the time for the head on a mechanical drive to move from the data it's currently reading to the next chunk of data.  This obviously varies depending on where the chunks are on the disk, therefore the commonly quoted "seek time" is almost always in actuality "average seek time".
By the definition I've always used and seen used, SSDs have no seek time, due to them not having a read/write head.
Of course if your definition isn't the same as mine, that's perfectly fine, I'm not saying mine is correct or the only valid definition of the term.
Hope this clarifies my post

Bedsides boot/shutdown times becuase thats mostly with the motherboard. 

Can I ask ... how's that?  I could see boot time depending to a certain extent on the motherboard and peripherals, as some boards do take longer to POST and of course some peripherals and settings (RAID cards and boot priority respectively come to mind) will affect the time it takes before an OS starts loading, but I can't see how a motherboard would affect shutdown times.

I think with time the price will come down, but until then it's basically the same thing as paying $60/mo for a 10Mb/s internet connection, when you could get 8Mb/s for $25/mo. This is just my opinion though and i'm sure a lot of people feel differently about it.

As you said, it is your opinion.  Have you by any chance used an SSD yet?  I wasn't convinced until I tried one for myself, and I've never looked back.

[patio]

Your hardware definition of seek time is correct.
But since we are discussing SSD drives with no hardware involved to me the seek time would be how long it is before the data is shown after it is requested.