Computer Hope
Other => Other => Off topic => Topic started by: t_blake07 on January 27, 2010, 10:58:31 PM
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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.
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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/
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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.
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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 :)
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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.
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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,
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No such thing as a "lack of seek time" or absense of one...
However...carry on.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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About OS load time.
If you really need quick OS load time there are/was ways to do that much better than SSD. And for less cost. The point here is the OS load time is not a big reason for going SSD. It is a lessor reson.
If you need fast OS load time, you optimize the OS for the hardware you have and then embed it into ROM. Such as Windows XP embedded. for specific applications this is the method of choice that uses proven technology.
But of low power, size and weight and. are factors, SSD is the best.
Unless you need massive storage at low cost per megabyte. Mmm, ahh, make that per Giga Byte.
By the end of this year there will be 4 terabyte hard drives in laptops. (And taht is not my idea, somebody else said that.)
But only time will tell.
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How do you embed an OS into ROM ? ?
That would be 1 big ROM chip...
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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.
Fair enough.
In that case surely it depends how much data is requested, and therefore crosses over into sequential read speeds.
That's getting rather off topic though, and more than a little nit picky (I tend to do that a lot), so I'll leave off there :)
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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.
Your guess is incorrect. Google "Moore's Law".
Only about 10 years ago, memory was about $1/MB. 128MB DIMM modules were the biggest made.
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How do you embed an OS into ROM ? ?
That would be 1 big ROM chip...
My mistake. The term ROM is no longer a precise term. From about 2007 Flash memory has been used of large projects that would not fit on one ROM chip. Mask ROM is no longer a good choice for any embedded system, unless it is a very simple. Windows is not.
An alternative to mask ROM is a type that can be programmed once. It can be put in a socket and it is called 'firmware', but has to be replaced rather than re programed.
There are large differences is load time for different kinds of 'firmware' in current use. Price, memory size, physical size, data path size and power level are factors the influence the speed of any solid state device.
Devices made for replacement for a Hard Drive are slower because they have to to emulate a hared drive. An embedded OS does not need a 'boot loader' to load itself into memory. It already is in memory.
For for information about 'Windows Embedded', check the Microsoft KB.
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http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/downloads/default.mspx
The point I wanted to make was this.
Say solid state drives really become the thing, and the prices come down. The logic choice is to stop using a OS that has to load itself from 'disk file system' to RAM. We may all have some kind of embedded system in future.
With 64 bit CPUs that can directly read terabytes, who needs a traditional hard drive file system anyway?
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Your guess is incorrect. Google "Moore's Law".
Only about 10 years ago, memory was about $1/MB. 128MB DIMM modules were the biggest made.
I wasn't serious when I said they didn't know. That's the whole point of R&D, and production cost estimations, and so on. This is the first time i've read up on Moore's Law though. Very interesting theory.
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Say solid state drives really become the thing, and the prices come down. The logic choice is to stop using a OS that has to load itself from 'disk file system' to RAM. We may all have some kind of embedded system in future.
With 64 bit CPUs that can directly read terabytes, who needs a traditional hard drive file system anyway?
yes, because embedded BASIC in the original IBM PC was so widely popular... actually, it wasn't, that's why people used dos.
Devices made for replacement for a Hard Drive are slower because they have to to emulate a hared drive. An embedded OS does not need a 'boot loader' to load itself into memory. It already is in memory.
A few problems with the whole "already in memory" approach:
A:) it's been done before (windows CE)
B:) it sucked.
In order to be able to keep the OS in RAM all the time, the RAM has to be flash ram. oh, hey, guess what? flash RAM is slower even then SDRAM, so now while the OS is "always in memory" it's also very very slow memory.
The next best thing is actually storing the OS on a ROM chip... but this is simply unfeasible. Sure, BASIC can fit on a 128 k-bit chip, but I don't think Windows XP will be able to.
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The next best thing is actually storing the OS on a ROM chip... but this is simply unfeasible. Sure, BASIC can fit on a 128 k-bit chip, but I don't think Windows XP will be able to.
My bad. I already admitted that I should not have use the word ROM. Noways nobody uses ROM for almost anything. It is all now some kind of solid state thing. I want to make a distinction between and device organized as a hard drive file system and a device that is seen just as memory.
Anyway, in just the two years there has been a lot of interest in advances in solid state devices.
Solid State? What other state is thee? Have many of you have liquid computers? Or vacuum computers?
Yes, soon we will have PCs that do not 'load' the OS. You just turn it on.
The only mechanical limit is letting the fan come up to speed. If we still use fans by then. Maybe we will have ionic air flow.
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Solid State? What other state is thee? Have many of you have liquid computers? Or vacuum computers? [/color]
We're talking about hard drives. persistent storage devices. try to keep up.
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I can't help but think that someday hard drives will be history and all computers will use SSD. But I'm not even going to make a WAG of when that's going to happen.
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I can't help but think that someday hard drives will be history and all computers will use SSD. But I'm not even going to make a WAG of when that's going to happen.
doubtful. magnetic storage is slower then SSD but it's also far less expensive and has way more capacity.
Heck, backups are still streamed to DAT tapes in most places, because they are larger still then a hard drive, and cheaper for their size, too.
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Have many of you have liquid computers?
That reminded me of a video I saw on YouTube where they filed a computer full of mineral oil. How high were they when they first thought of doing this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtufuXLvOok (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtufuXLvOok)
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Heck, backups are still streamed to DAT tapes in most places, because they are larger still then a hard drive, and cheaper for their size, too.
True, but the cost of a tape cassette hasn't gotten cheaper, but you can but an equally sized HD for about twice the cost of the tape.
I just looked at a 160GB tape cartridge for $35, where you can buy a 160GB hard drive for $70.