SSD Prices

[Shadius]

Hey everybody! :)

I've noticed that the prices of SSDs are coming down. Such sites as Newegg and TigerDirect are offering a few SSDs on sale. I was wondering how the community feels about the state of pricing on SSDs now. Do you think it's a good time to buy now or wait a little longer for the prices to drop even more? Share your thoughts!

[KiwiNZ]

The prices are still too high by quite a large margin.

[lukeiamyourfather]

It depends on why you want an SSD. For the majority of users they offer little or no benefit.

[Shadius]

Shoot, I should've put a poll on this. So you guys think it's still too early to go out and purchase SSDs?

[KiwiNZ]

Shoot, I should've put a poll on this. So you guys think it's still too early to go out and purchase SSDs?

That is up to you, and what you are going to use it for,IMHO the only use for one is a boot drive, if you will be writing to it a lot they are a waste of money.

[Paqman]

The prices are still too high by quite a large margin.

That's a bit of a sweeping generalisation.

Take my netbook, I ripped out the awful 5400rpm spinner in there and stuck in a 40GB Intel X-25V SSD. You can get those for about £60 these days, and it's a huge upgrade for the netbook.

Is £60 "too high" for an upgrade that boosts speed, extends battery life and improves reliability? I don't think so. Are SSDs more expensive: yep they sure are. But that doesn't mean they don't offer good value.

In general, for mass storage magnetic drives make sense. For running OSes or in portable machines, it's all about SSDs.

[KiwiNZ]

That's a bit of a sweeping generalisation.

Take my netbook, I ripped out the awful 5400rpm spinner in there and stuck in a 40GB Intel X-25V SSD. You can get those for about £60 these days, and it's a huge upgrade for the netbook.

Is £60 "too high" for an upgrade that boosts speed, extends battery life and improves reliability? I don't think so. Are SSDs more expensive: yep they sure are. But that doesn't mean they don't offer good value.

In general, for mass storage magnetic drives make sense. For running OSes or in portable machines, it's all about SSDs.

That would be approx $160 in New Zealand, I can get a 2TB drive for that.

[IWantFroyo]

That would be approx $160 in New Zealand, I can get a 2TB drive for that.

This.

Their price per gigabyte is too high for me to consider them right now.

[Shadius]

I was thinking of using an SSD for booting Ubuntu, or what about using it for a PS3?

[synaptix]

This.

Their price per gigabyte is too high for me to consider them right now.

I also concur with this.

I prefer having 750GB HDD over 40GB SSD any day of the week.

More space for less money = win.

[IWantFroyo]

I was thinking of using an SSD for booting Ubuntu, or what about using it for a PS3?

I usually walk away and make some tea when I boot up my computer, so boot up time isn't an issue for me.

As for gaming, it might make the game load up faster, but I doubt it would run faster.

[Shadius]

Besides the obvious speed difference with an SSD, what are the other benefits of using an SSD rather than an HDD?

[catlover2]

I have an SSD in my desktop just for booting ArchLinux. The speed difference (mostly boot time) really is amazing.
Besides the obvious speed difference with an SSD, what are the other benefits of using an SSD rather than an HDD?You can drop your laptop with its SSD on the floor and not be too worried about the SSD itself.

[KiwiNZ]

. You can drop your laptop with its SSD on the floor and not be too worried about the SSD itself.

The rest of your PC is toast :P

[Shadius]

I have an SSD in my desktop just for booting ArchLinux. The speed difference (mostly boot time) really is amazing. You can drop your laptop with its SSD on the floor and not be too worried about the SSD itself.

I would have a heart attack if I dropped my laptop though. :lolflag:

[neu5eeCh]

The new "ultrabook" from zareason (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/08/zareason-launch-the-first-linux-ultrabook) offers an SSD drive, to which one can add an additional and traditional spinner. I think using an SSD as the boot "partition" is actually a nifty idea. This may be the direction of all new laptops -- SSD for the OS and hard drive for the rest.

[effenberg0x0]

Someone told me yesterday that some new motherboards have a feature that allows you to use a small partition of an SSD to speed up a traditional HDD, as long as both units are SATA 3 connected to the same controller. The traditional HDD would then behave as a hybrid (like Seagate Momentus, for example). I don't know the name of the feature and which motherboard brand has it. If anyone is already using it, I'd like to hear some opinions.

To my usage, I have verified that buying more than one SSD was a waste. 120GB in each was also not necessary. The best setup for me was to install Ubuntu to the SSD (takes very little space, far from 120GB) and have $HOME and content in conventional Sata 3 HDD (WD Black mdadm RAID in my case).

The only thing I added to the SSD, despite the OS itself, was my main W7-Pro VM. Running the Windows VM in the SSD makes a huge difference. Still, I only use the W7 VM for MS-Office, so it takes very little space. I should have bought only one 60GB SSD...

Regards,
Effenberg

[Paqman]

That would be approx $160 in New Zealand, I can get a 2TB drive for that.

Which would be a huge downgrade. It would be slower, more liable to break if dropped, and use more power. Extra storage isn't a useful feature if you've got an SD card slot and a permanent connection to the net (where my terabyte-sized storage is).

Not every drive needs to be huge. Speed is a feature that will trump it in many use cases.

[KiwiNZ]

Which would be a huge downgrade. It would be slower, more liable to break if dropped, and use more power. Extra storage isn't a useful feature if you've got an SD card slot and a permanent connection to the net (where my terabyte-sized storage is).

Not every drive needs to be huge. Speed is a feature that will trump it in many use cases.

I agree with some points, but the cost v benefit analysis does not add up,they are still too expensive.

[Lucradia]

I still need SSDs to go way down in 512 GB size, I won't go any lower in HDD Space. Lowest priced ones are:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211598

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227809


Speed is a feature that will trump it in many use cases.

half of a 500 GB drive for me is basically dedicated to fraps codec videos I record. Sometimes I can record 100+ GB at one session. I currently use 64 GB of space as it is... and that's mainly Windows and a few games. (Skyrim, Dead Space 2)

[viperdvman]

I myself intend to use an SSD on my desktop as my OS drive. It'll hold my OS's (Win7 and possibly Ubuntu if big enough) and all their apps/games. Now for movies, anime, music, documents, pictures, downloads, linux ISO's, and other stuff I'd store, I stick with a traditional hard drive.

On a desktop... for booting and running your OS and apps SSD's are great. For data storage, go with a big hard drive.

On laptops, get a decent-sized SSD for your OS (or OS's) and apps.

For data storage, use a secondary hard drive, if your laptop has the space for a second drive. Otherwise, use an external hard drive for data storage. WD My Passports are still really good portable HDD's that don't require an external power source.

As far as how big... for dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu (or your choice Linux), 128-160GB should do the trick, leaving you plenty of breathing room. For single-boot Windows systems, go with at least a 90GB, which gives you room for Windows 7 and all your apps. For Ubuntu systems not running Virtualbox, a small 30-45GB will do the trick.

So there you have it :)

[drmrgd]

Someone told me yesterday that some new motherboards have a feature that allows you to use a small partition of an SSD to speed up a traditional HDD, as long as both units are SATA 3 connected to the same controller. The traditional HDD would then behave as a hybrid (like Seagate Momentus, for example). I don't know the name of the feature and which motherboard brand has it. If anyone is already using it, I'd like to hear some opinions.

To my usage, I have verified that buying more than one SSD was a waste. 120GB in each was also not necessary. The best setup for me was to install Ubuntu to the SSD (takes very little space, far from 120GB) and have $HOME and content in conventional Sata 3 HDD (WD Black mdadm RAID in my case).

The only thing I added to the SSD, despite the OS itself, was my main W7-Pro VM. Running the Windows VM in the SSD makes a huge difference. Still, I only use the W7 VM for MS-Office, so it takes very little space. I should have bought only one 60GB SSD...

Regards,
Effenberg

On my new ASUS X79 Sabertooth MB, there is this feature, and I've seen it listed on a few of their other newer MBs too. They call it SSD caching (I think Intel's calling it Smart Response or something along those lines and I'm not sure the difference if any), and there's basically (if I remember correctly) a special 6GB/s SATA connector that uses a Marvell controller to control this in a RAID like fashion (at least I believe that's how you need to set the devices up in BIOS) - if I understand it correctly. I've not set it up yet, but it does look interesting.

With the superfast boot times of Ubuntu as it is - especially when working from an SSD