SSD disk INTEL 320

[skymaster9999]

Hallo boys,

I am considering buing above mentioned SSD disk as I think the price is reasonable OK. My aim is to reduce small pauses caused by loading of the scenery and sounds from the HDD in DSC A10. I plan to strore DSC A10 main folder and win swap file on in (win 7 will probably stay on its old dedicated WD Caviar). Are there any users of this hw on this forum? Can you comment if its worth the upgrade? Thank you in advance

MB

[HiJack]

I got the OCZ 120 GB SSD 2,5" S-ATA II TRIM/GC, Vertex 2, Max Read/Write 285/275MB/sec as my C: drive. I can recommend going to SSD but check that it got "TRIM"!

[b101uk]

I cannot comment on the specific hardware, but they do say not to put your pagefile or other temporary folder that often gets written to on an SSD, instead they should stay on a regular HDD.

 

With respect to pagefile if you had 6gb+ of RAM you could afford to get shot of the file totally as the OS will generally use some of the free RAM in lieu of the pagefile.

[HiJack]

Estimated lifespan on the SSD disc is mesyred in percentage. When my disk was new it was 100%, now after 8 monts my estimated life of the C: drive is still 100%. The mean time before failure is 2 million hours, that's about 282 years. Whats the MTBF on the physical disk you run b101uk?

 

EDIT: Changed typing error from years to hours. Changed number from 5 to 2.

 

(HJ)

Edited May 13, 2011 by HiJack

[HiJack]

8 months and still 100% life left :D

[b101uk]

Estimated lifespan on the SSD disc is mesyred in percentage. When my disk was new it was 100%, now after 8 monts my estimated life of the C: drive is still 100%. The mean time before failure is 5 million years. Whats the MTBF on the physical disk you run b101uk?

 

(HJ)

 

I did say "they" which includes some of the companies who make SSD, so its NOT my personal opinion BUT is the opinion of people and some manufactures who are more qualified than YOU or I to say such a thing, do you want to explain how they have tested the "5 million years" that would take the use of 1 million drives being tested for 5 years unless it was reached using theoretical MTBF.

 

FYI: my oldest drive is my C: which is a 40gb IBM IDE Deskstar that’s ~11 years old and doing a sterling service and has been free from any errors, my next oldest drive is my E: & G: drives which is a 2003 Hitachi (IBM) Deskstar, and my newest drive is a 2008 Hitachi Deskstar which is F:

[xXstubbifiedXx]

I would suggest using a faster speed conventional (7200 or 10k rpm) drive over SSD, unless you have ridiculous amounts of extra money to blow. In general, the performance gains you'll get from games on SSD do not outweigh the cost.

I understand you're trying to solve the stuttering issue from audio loads, but I'd suggest looking at cheaper solutions first.

[ht-57]

"the performance gains you'll get from games on SSD do not outweigh the cost."

 

Its been My experience that this statement is incorrect.

Intell ssd 171 -184 usd

wd raptor 10k optical 169-289usd

 

SSD approx 100x faster,no moving parts, no defragmenting, less pwr consumption.

 

optical, more mem 4 money

 

I use 2 ssd's one for os and one 4 programs. My former rig I used 2 wd 150g 7200's, its like comparing apples to hand grenades @ least 4 me.

If you like music and video and u need 500g or a tb for storage then the ssd is not cost effective and u don't need the performance.

But if you r a gamer then u dont need much mem. win7 64pro leaves allota room on an 80g drive! also a 500g external drive for b/u n storage is cheap anyway

[EtherealN]

The mean time before failure is 5 million years.

 

No, it isn't.

 

Don't go around saying things that are patently false to people asking for guidance as a consumer. Please.

 

MTBF for a 510 and 320 unit: 1.2 million hours.

This is NOT however anywhere close to interesting. The interesting thing is write cycles. Your drive will be turned into a ROM way before your MTBF becomes relevant.

Edited May 12, 2011 by EtherealN

[Moa]

Good analysis EtherealN.

 

Plus, what is not given is the variance around the MTBF. A variance of 1.2 million hours would mean 66% of drives would die in two years.

 

Obviously the variance would be much less than this, but without knowing it the MTBF is relatively meaningless.

 

Also, existing hard disks have failure rates that are not normally distributed. The distribution is 'U' shaped with the second part of the U around three years (the front part is those drives that fail within weeks of being used).

 

SSDs have great performance. The Intel X 320 series has excellent capacity, performance and cost.

 

One thing to know about SSDs is that they don't do partial failures like magnetic platters. With a magnetic disk you can often recover data when part of the disk fails. With an SSD it is usually reliable (no partial failures) but once it goes, it goes, and you can't usually recover anything :(

 

So make sure you make regular backups when you use an SSD!

Edited May 12, 2011 by Moa

[PoleCat]

Having just recently switched to a pair of kingston 128GB SSD in Raid 0. I am completely wowed by the performance gains. I will simply never ever go back to mechanicals. Price is the barrier and I did wait a long time to be able to get SSD at just about $1.25 per GB. A deal I still have not seen since.

 

Having said all that, the facts raised by EtherealN and Moa are not to be ignored. SSD is by no means bulletproof and when the inevitable failure comes there are no degrees of failure. Without a good backup expect total data loss.

 

So enjoy it but be very very prepared. ;)

 

Out

[HiJack]

Backup is mandatory on any system if you don't wanna loose data. For the performance part and lifespan I really do not care. It works great, that is fine for me.

 

(HJ)

[bumfire]

mtbf 5 million years LOOOOOOOOL

 

sorry, but I found that Hilarious.

[Malefic Rage]

I cannot comment on the specific hardware, but they do say not to put your pagefile or other temporary folder that often gets written to on an SSD, instead they should stay on a regular HDD.

 

I just want to say that, as somebody who has researched a bit on SSDs out of both personal and professional interest as well as being an SSD user, I would like to state that the while the notion of moving the pagefile off the SSD to prolong its life is often mentioned around forums, that I believe it to be a highly subjective truth.

 

I have a 60GB OCZ Vertex (original) upon which I keep my OS, documents, pagefile, a virtual machine and a few high-performance games. As a software developer I have made thorough use of the drive (by typical desktop standards) and after over a year of use, my drive lifespan sits at 95%. This works out to approximately 20 years of drive life (based upon write-cycles only) which outlives anything we generally use a hard drive for.

 

So while technically, you will improve your drive's write life by moving the swapfile elsewhere, when considering the timeframes involved with typical desktop use, not only do I believe this to be unnecessary, but one also loses the performance advantage of having their pagefile on an SSD. The most cost-effective way to reduce pagefile dependence is to increase your system RAM.

 

(win 7 will probably stay on its old dedicated WD Caviar).

 

My strong reccommendation is to move your OS to the SSD. You will find the loading times and general performance improvements to be astonishing.

 

Are there any users of this hw on this forum? Can you comment if its worth the upgrade?

 

From experience I highly recommend you make the upgrade if you are able to afford it. Barring some new technological breakthrough, I would never go back to a mechanical drive.

 

Out of curiosity, have you considered a Sandforce based drive such as the OCZ Vertex 2 or 3? The Vertex 3 significantly outdoes the Intel drive in terms of both performance and (at least historically) price and is very well received in professional reviews.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Malefic Rage
Merged with second post

[HiJack]

mtbf 5 million years LOOOOOOOOL

 

sorry, but I found that Hilarious.

Changed my typing error ;)

[skymaster9999]

Thank you all who contributed. SSD Intel is inside my rig and I'm a happy user - loading pauses are gone and the A10 experience is smooth as silk

[HiJack]

Glad to hear that. Play on :D