what's a SSD and how do i know if i need one

[heyjoe]

everyone's talking aboot them and i feel left out, especially when they go on sale

[Jimboski]

SSD's Is basically a luxury item, You don't really need It but If you have money for It then definitely get one.

SSD's are faster then HDD's by a lot, You tend to install your Games and OS on the SSD (Also any other needed programs that you use daily). Reduces loading time by a lot!

They're $2/GB I think, So yeah.. Can get pretty pricey.

I have 60GB OCZ Vertex, It's grrrrreeeaaat! (Tony the Tiger .)

[heyjoe]

ah thanks

i thought they were like USB keys for some reason, i think it's the SD in SSD

[jz1n]

They are like USB keys, but on a larger scale with better controllers. They offer several advantages over "disk" hard drives such as faster read/write, lower power consumption, zero noise, etc. But currently they cost significantly more (as is the case with anything new) and while the benefits are certainly there, the average user (who surfs the web and watches youtube) will not really gain much from having an SSD.

As a measure of comparison, the average boot time for Win7 is about a minute (from cold boot to desktop) on a traditional HDD. This gets shaved down to about 20 seconds on an SSD.

Checkout this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lR0XoHFU6Y

[heyjoe]

ah can laptops use these?

not like taking them apart, but liek with a port or something?

[flamenko]

If you want to learn about ssds, hit my blog below. It has a Beginners Guide, Buyers guide, Manufacturers Listing, Optimization Guides for both SSDs and Windows 7 as well as reviews. To answer your question, I will copy over an article if thats ok...


"Ok so that’s it! You have spent weeks reading every article ever created about SSDs and are convinced that you have to have one. Life will simply cease to exist if you can’t experience the amazing technology that has rocked the earth for the past 3 years. And that’s why you are here! From this point forward, we are going to make sure you understand and get the right ssd for you. We are in it together and we both understand that the ssd is the absolute best visible upgrade you can do for your computing experience.

WHY AGAIN DO WE WANT AN SSD?

Lets quickly go over all the things we know one more time shall we?

SSDs:

- weigh less than a hard drive;
- have no moving parts;
- are completely silent;
- are cooler than a hard drive;
- have less total fan use;
- have less total system noise;
- provide a longer battery life;
- won’t destroy your work or break if dropped;
- can start a laptop in as little as 10 seconds;
- speed up everything you do on a computer ALOT; and
- load and transition between scenes in games some times 4-5 times faster.

Ok so…that’s it in a nut shell but how do we know what ssd to get? There are price considerations, storage capacity concerns, different manufacturers, different controllers, firmware, TRIM and just exactly how do we get through all of this??? Wait….Do I have to TRIM my SSD? Do I dare ask how to do this? Is there a course available?

Lets take a breath for a sec, go grab a beverage and some chips, come on back, put our feet up and enjoy the read."

Eheheh I kind of laugh but I wanted the articles to be ...non-technical... Guess I will always be a redneck boy from a closed down steel town.

[heyjoe]

ya too technical loool

what i really wanna know is if i can buy one as an addon for my sorta old laptops during one of these sales and be able to instantly reap their benefits without much work

[Jimboski]

ya too technical loool

what i really wanna know is if i can buy one as an addon for my sorta old laptops during one of these sales and be able to instantly reap their benefits without much work

Yes, SSD's work for laptops.

How old Is your laptop? It may be to old to support an SSD . (I doubt It though!).

[flamenko]

The visible increase in the ssd comes from the seek times which means you will immediately see a difference regardless of the system.

[Roll]

If you want to learn about ssds, hit my blog below. It has a Beginners Guide, Buyers guide, Manufacturers Listing, Optimization Guides for both SSDs and Windows 7 as well as reviews. To answer your question, I will copy over an article if thats ok...


"Ok so that’s it! You have spent weeks reading every article ever created about SSDs and are convinced that you have to have one. Life will simply cease to exist if you can’t experience the amazing technology that has rocked the earth for the past 3 years. And that’s why you are here! From this point forward, we are going to make sure you understand and get the right ssd for you. We are in it together and we both understand that the ssd is the absolute best visible upgrade you can do for your computing experience.

WHY AGAIN DO WE WANT AN SSD?

Lets quickly go over all the things we know one more time shall we?

SSDs:

- weigh less than a hard drive;
- have no moving parts;
- are completely silent;
- are cooler than a hard drive;
- have less total fan use;
- have less total system noise;
- provide a longer battery life;
- won’t destroy your work or break if dropped;
- can start a laptop in as little as 10 seconds;
- speed up everything you do on a computer ALOT; and
- load and transition between scenes in games some times 4-5 times faster.

Ok so…that’s it in a nut shell but how do we know what ssd to get? There are price considerations, storage capacity concerns, different manufacturers, different controllers, firmware, TRIM and just exactly how do we get through all of this??? Wait….Do I have to TRIM my SSD? Do I dare ask how to do this? Is there a course available?

Lets take a breath for a sec, go grab a beverage and some chips, come on back, put our feet up and enjoy the read."

Eheheh I kind of laugh but I wanted the articles to be ...non-technical... Guess I will always be a redneck boy from a closed down steel town.

Nice write up..U sold me a month ago. Thanks for sharing with us.

[flamenko]

Appreciated.

[Busybuyer888]

ya too technical loool

what i really wanna know is if i can buy one as an addon for my sorta old laptops during one of these sales and be able to instantly reap their benefits without much work

You need to determine if your laptop's hard disk has a serial ATA (SATA) or older parallel (PATA) interface.

All SSDs use the newer SATA interface and cannot be adapted to a PATA system in a laptop.

If it uses the older ATA, it is really too old to put money into the hard disk. The other items are limitations too - slow cpu, slow memory, small memory, etc.

If you don't know, then tell us the make, model #.

[movieman]

- speed up everything you do on a computer ALOT;

No they don't.

I agree with most of your points, but that one is misleading at the least; SSDs speed up everything that involves access to the disk, but will have no effect on anything that's CPU or GPU-limited. I'm probably going to stick one in my netbook soon, but only because we regularly boot it up for a few minutes and then shut it down, so knocking 20 seconds off the boot time is worthwhile.

Anyone reading that and expecting an SSD to increase their frame-rate in games will be sorely disappointed...

[flamenko]

No they don't.

I agree with most of your points, but that one is misleading at the least; SSDs speed up everything that involves access to the disk, but will have no effect on anything that's CPU or GPU-limited. I'm probably going to stick one in my netbook soon, but only because we regularly boot it up for a few minutes and then shut it down, so knocking 20 seconds off the boot time is worthwhile.

Anyone reading that and expecting an SSD to increase their frame-rate in games will be sorely disappointed...

Well, actually...its just a bit more than start up times. In fact it is everything more than startup times. The seek time of the ssd is .1ms whereas a typical hdd is 9-10.ms so lets consider there is a 90x difference in seek time with every operation that it does. We all know in reality that this isn't anywhere near realistic but you can visibly see everything you do in your drive work for you faster. All of the built in Windows programs are pretty much instant as well as anything else you care to mention.

Once upon a time I quoted it as the computer knowing which key you would press next before you pressed it.

A real life example... I use acrobat to create and manage 6000 page sensitive documents. On my work computer it is excruciatingly slow and, in fact, when trying to redact, it can be as much as 30-45 seconds. I have rebooted any number of times thinking it was frozen. On a ssd...7-8 seconds max for anything.

In the end, I have to concede that I have had the experience of seeing the ssd in an Atom netbook as well as any number of other systems and the end result is that there is a visible improvement in everything you do on a ssd when you switch from a hd to ssd. I do not take into accound cpu intensive tasks. I will be the first to say the cpu does not include gaming frame rates as they are entirely cpu dependent.

Oh...to get back to the point... Load and transition times are increased dramatically which is not the frame rate. No longer can you get a coffee and chips once you start to load a game.

[chinesedevil]

sorry for hijacking thread,

but do SSD's get damaged from heavy usage? and i saw that SSD's have these health indicators, can they last 5 years before dieing? (assuming normal wear and tear only, not some other defects or w/e)