SSD - Another Noob Question

T

Toff

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I feel like a noob for this one as I'm an IT Manager yet have never had an SSD. We don't even use them at work.

How much better than a hard drive is it?

Totally worth it? Will I only see improvements in loading times?
 
I have two laptops 100% SSD. Dead silent, Incredibly fast boot cycles and zero failures. I will not revert to standard disk. The downsides are cost and capacity. You will pay for capacity!
 
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In one sense, they are hard to justify - price to capacity is poor, and the difference they make is not going to change your world. But... once you get used to the snappy responsiveness of your OS on an SSD, it's very hard to go back.
 
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They're significantly more expensive, but you'll never go back to using a mechanical drive once you get used to having a SSD.

A lot of people just purchase a smaller SSD and just keep their OS and a few other things on it while keeping the majority of other programs, including games, on a larger HDD.

Personally, I think that's a waste. Buy a SSD that's large enough to store all your games. It's worth it. I have a 512GB SSD for my OS and games and I use a 4TB external HDD for media files, etc.
 
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You'll see improvements in boot times, launching programs and games, loading levels in games and transferring larger files.

The difference is quite significant and totally worth it. (IMO)

You will not see any improvement in Frames per second though.

I have an external 2 TB hard drive for storage. In my PC I have only SSD and will never go back. It's that big a difference for me.

There are several youtube videos showing the difference, so watch them and decide for yourself.
 
SSDs are the best invention in computers since graphic cards IMHO. They're incredibly faster than hard drives, and for laptops they have three more advantages (other than speed): lighter, more resilient, and use less battery power.

I wouldn't consider having a computer without an SSD now. In fact, I'm still using my 1TB HD I bought in 2009. SSDs used to be expensive, but nowadays you can buy them for like 40 cent/GB (used to be over $1/GB). I dont' think I'll buy a HD ever again.

JDR13 said:
A lot of people just purchase a smaller SSD and just keep their OS and a few other things on it while keeping the majority of other programs, including games, on a larger HDD.

Personally, I think that's a waste. Buy a SSD that's large enough to store all your games. It's worth it. I have a 512GB SSD for my OS and games and I use a 4TB external HDD for media files, etc.
Click to expand...
That's the setting I have. It's a mistake if you buy them that way, but in my case, when I purchased my 2nd SSD, I set my old SSD as the 'Windows' drive, and the new SSD as my content drive. I left my old HD for things that I never use (I wonder what's in there nowadays, oh some old music probably).
 
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I knew I would be easily convinced and you have all succeeded.

I'll be ordering one this week for sure.
 
I have SSD's in both my laptop and my floortop, using them for the OS and the programs, games included, I use the most. The rest is stored on regular internal hard disks.

While I notice most of the speed benefits listed here, I don't see it as a revolution. In most cases a hard disk is fast enough for me. And I'm not troubled by the noise of hard disks, until now the fans of my machines have been more noisy.

Contrary to most watchers, I'm not sure I would say that SSD's are worth the cost. I will keep using hard disks, possibly (probably?) with a 250 GB SSD in addition. But obviously I'm i the minority, so maybe it's wise to pay more attention to the other guys.

Good luck with your upcoming SSD. Yes, asking for advice here can be dangerous. :)

pibbur who seems to be a very patient creature
 
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The advice is not dangerous at all.
It's still possible to live without SSD but once you put one in your PC, you will look on HDD based machines like those are ice age stuff. Buy now!
 
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I think the speed makes a big difference and whenever I load my work laptop, I don't understand why it takes such a long time to load anything.

However, at the same time, I think they're still a bit too expensive.

I would also recommend having a 240GB SSD and adding however much space you need for other stuff on an HDD.

240GB SSD isn't too expensive but gives you enough for your main games and even much other stuff... Then if you plan on doing other things like movies, they don't need to be on the SSD. There just isn't any point.
 
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+1 for SSD. However… they wear out. The industry marketing line runs something like "you'd need to write 20GB a day for 10 years before it dies". Reality is that with pagefile hiberfile plus 50GB games coming on and off, I managed well over 1TB of r/w in my first month. That's 1/30 of what the device is guaranteed for (though it should - contrary to most guarantees - do more). Pro tip 1 - disable hibernate as soon as you get it. Pro tip 2 run crystaldisk to see if the drive hasn't already been 'tested out' and returned under distance selling regs. Some people buy and intensively benchmark 3 before settling on the best and returning the other 2 after 14 days with huge wear. Then one of those other 2 gets shipped to you as 'new'. If wear is an issue invest in the better MLC disks.

Also SSD data can degrade if the disk is not plugged in for long periods. And there is heresay that they die in a more abrupt manner than mechanicals.
 
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No hearsay. They die faster than mechanicals. I work at a place with thousands of hard drives and the SSD's die hard but everyone still prefers them. Buy 2 today :)
 
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Which means - put 'em OS and unoptimized games that have longlasting loadscreens (DA3 and Sims 4, I'm looking at you!), everything else keep on good old HDD!
10 years is a long time though. By the time SDD you buy today dies, their prices will drop significantly.

Oh yeah… Don't buy games gaxkang mentions. At least don't put them on SSD. Ever.
Like recent 50 gigs (of what?) Wolfenstein.
 
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I wouldn't worry at all about SSD's dying with normal use. I looked at this a little while back and many of the tests were going to 1 petabyte and beyond. Some were at 2 petabytes and still going.

They said 2 petabytes would be about the equivalent of 1000 years of normal use.

Besides were talking about gaming anything critical should be backed up off site.

Also I'm a big supporter of 1 small SSD for the OS and 1 or 2 big ones for games. It makes reinstalling and keeping your OS clean much easier and more efficient. I reinstall every 6mo. Just reformat the c drive, reinstall and then run steam on my second drive and I'm up and gaming in less than 30 min. It's a little more money obviously but worth it to me.
 
Bear in mind that, unlike mechanical hdds, ssds do not experience any wear at all when reading data, which is what they'll be doing most of the time. They have a limited number of times they may be written to, but it's a very high number.

There's no problem at all running large games on them, because after installation, they will be almost exclusively be just reading the data, which doesn't affect their lifespan.
 
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When I said faster up above, I mean when they actually die, they die fast. We have had maybe 60 SSD's actually die in the 3 years we've been running them. Considering the numbers, this is a very small percentage so they seem to be pretty stable. In my line of work, the drives get written to much more often than they would in a gaming environment.
 
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I think that's probably down to manufacturing and firmware problems causing the failures, rather than "legitimately" wearing out. I had one that died after a couple of months, and another that erased itself one morning. It's more teething troubles of the new tech, I think.

When they wear out, you shouldn't see instant failure - just an increasing number of failed sectors.
 
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I ordered a 1 TB 850 EVO.

That will be my C and I will have the existing 1 TB HD as my D.

Thanks all.
 
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