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Computers & Hardware => PC Hardware => Topic started by: CurlyWhirly on June 04, 2011, 11:28:33 PM

Title: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: CurlyWhirly on June 04, 2011, 11:28:33 PM
I can't believe how fast they are  :o

Windows 7 only takes 8 seconds to load compared to almost 2 minutes for my Vista installation (using a conventional hard drive)

Without a doubt SSD drives are the future of computing  8)

Anyone here installed one on their PC ?

Just curious.
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: roseway on June 05, 2011, 07:10:58 AM
I've thought about them, but they're still rather expensive for desktop use. If I used a laptop I would give one a try.
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: MartinGoose on June 05, 2011, 07:58:08 AM
I've thought about them, but they're still rather expensive for desktop use. If I used a laptop I would give one a try.

In a desktop you can use a small SSD (about £75 for 64GB) as a boot drive and retain your existing drive for your home partition.

In a laptop you have to get an SDD with sufficient capacity to do both.
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: CurlyWhirly on June 05, 2011, 08:07:46 AM
I've thought about them, but they're still rather expensive for desktop use. If I used a laptop I would give one a try.
Well yes they are expensive compared to the massive storage that you can buy on conventional hard drives but as you know new technology comes down in price over time.

I paid just over £200 for a 120 GB SSD drive which is almost what I paid for a conventional 120 GB a few years ago when their prices were a lot less competitive than they are now !

May I ask why you would consider buying one for a laptop and not a desktop ?  ;D
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: CurlyWhirly on June 05, 2011, 08:08:50 AM
I've thought about them, but they're still rather expensive for desktop use. If I used a laptop I would give one a try.

In a desktop you can use a small SSD (about £75 for 64GB) as a boot drive and retain your existing drive for your home partition.

In a laptop you have to get an SDD with sufficient capacity to do both.
So you have bought one as well then ?  8)
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: MartinGoose on June 05, 2011, 08:36:17 AM
So you have bought one as well then ?  8)

Yes. I have an SSD which is similar to this:
<http://www.ebuyer.com/product/247005>

I have a complete PCLinuxOS installation on it. Excess files go to an old Maxtor 200GB PATA drive, in the same case, which can also be used to boot into Windows if necessary.
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: roseway on June 05, 2011, 09:15:12 AM
May I ask why you would consider buying one for a laptop and not a desktop ?  ;D

Because booting time would be a consideration with a laptop, but not with my desktop PCs. And for various reasons both my desktops need high capacity storage, so I would still have to have conventional hard disks in each.
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: CurlyWhirly on June 05, 2011, 09:57:18 AM
May I ask why you would consider buying one for a laptop and not a desktop ?  ;D

Because booting time would be a consideration with a laptop, but not with my desktop PCs. And for various reasons both my desktops need high capacity storage, so I would still have to have conventional hard disks in each.
I see, you do have a point.
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: roseway on June 05, 2011, 09:59:42 AM
You're too kind. ;D
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: MartinGoose on June 05, 2011, 11:00:57 AM
, so I would still have to have conventional hard disks in each.

Or consolidate your HD requirements into a NAS?
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: roseway on June 05, 2011, 01:22:37 PM
Or consolidate your HD requirements into a NAS?

I've already got two NAS devices, which I use for multiple backups. My data is too valuable to me to consolidate it into a single place.

But the real point is that, interesting though SSD drives are, they don't currently offer any useful advantage to me.
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: HPsauce on June 05, 2011, 02:57:25 PM
At present the price difference to mechanical drives is such that I see few real uses except maybe for ruggedised systems.
Not sure if that will change over time or other technologies will appear.
Yes, a faster boot is "nice" but with hibernation etc. not really an issue.

And with the proliferation of devices these days everything is changing - will conventional PC's be commonplace much longer?

I find that when I use a real mobile laptop (as opposed to a tablet or smartphone or deskbound one) I take it out the bag, turn it on and then set up the "work area" possibly mouse, power leads, network cable etc. and settle down by which time it's up and runnning anyway.

Open-minded but currently sceptical.  8)
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: CurlyWhirly on June 05, 2011, 06:30:45 PM
And with the proliferation of devices these days everything is changing - will conventional PC's be commonplace much longer?
Are you serious?  :o

Where could this threat come from ?

Apple perhaps or the next generation consoles that have the capability of internet access ?
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: CurlyWhirly on June 05, 2011, 08:10:31 PM
I am so impressed with my SSD drive that I have decided to buy a smaller capacity SSD drive (64 GB) for my Vista installation.
I bought a 128 GB capacity drive for the Windows 7 installation.

Before I actually go ahead with the purchase, I have a query below.

I have just read why my hard drive monitoring utility reports that my SSD drive is at 128C ( http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/My-C300-128GB-runs-at-128c/m-p/14817 ) and this is because the monitoring utilities weren't coded for SSD drives as they didn't exist at the time.

Because of this difference in technologies, does anyone know if I can use an image backup utility to copy my Vista OS on to a new SSD drive ?

I've done this with Norton Ghost once when a hard drive failed and was wondering if it's possible with a conventional hard drive and a SSD drive ?

I copied over the data on to the new hard drive which took around 90 mins but was still quicker than reinstalling everything !

Thanks.
 
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: tickmike on June 22, 2011, 02:26:04 PM
Interesting, I keep meaning to put a ssd in my hardware firewall which runs 24/7.
This is a firm I have seen......  http://linitx.com/viewcategory.php?catid=100&pp=100
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: Shoei on June 22, 2011, 03:00:08 PM


CurlyWhirly: Because of this difference in technologies, does anyone know if I can use an image backup utility to copy my Vista OS on to a new SSD drive ?

There's no reason why it shouldn't work - some SSD manufacturers provide free software to do it. For example Intel have a free version of Acronis Migrate Easy which is locked to their drives but seems to be otherwise the standard product.

http://diggfreeware.com/download-acronis-migrate-easy-free-version-intel-ssd-only/

I've used the Acronis software to move Vista between conventional drives of different sizes and it's been pretty painless. It's a bit expensive to do just one drive which I suppose is why Intel have their free version.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/index.html

It's on my to do list to put an SSD on my main PC, attraction for me is the quick bootup and it's recommended for speeding up video standards conversion which is painfully slow at present. I'd be interested to know how you get on.
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: CurlyWhirly on June 22, 2011, 06:02:10 PM
Shoei, thanks for the advice about the free version of Acronis that is compatible with SSD's.

I am overdue for an image backup so I'll carry it out at the weekend when I have more time.
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: coolsnakeman on June 25, 2011, 02:52:45 PM
Hey,

I really can't see any reason why you couldn't use norton ghost to create an image backup of your OS i am sure they have updated there software to work with the new solid state drives. This forum may have the answer to your question but it looks like it can be done: http://community.norton.com/t5/Other-Norton-Products/Norton-Ghost-15-amp-SSDs/td-p/196325

Regards
Gary
Title: Re: I've finally treated myself to a SSD drive
Post by: CurlyWhirly on June 26, 2011, 07:13:34 PM
Gary, interesting link. Thanks.