SSD or HDD

[Dene76]

Hi,

My rig is currently on the 3rd working day and I was wondering whether or not to swap my 1st HDD from a 500gb Velociraptor to a 120/240gb SSD?
This drive will only hold the OS and standard programs while games will go on my 1TB Velociraptor 2nd HDD.

Comments appreciated.

Cheers
Dene

 

[Turtle]

Well i usually make a pros and cons lis to decide .

HDD

Pros: Lots of space, Reliable and very cheap £/gb.

Cons: Slow, Louder than SSD by hearing the drive spinning.

SSD

Pros: Very fast performance, Very quiet, Uses low power

Cons: Very very expensive £/gb ratio. Less storage space available. Rumours of it being less reliable through excessive use.

Hope this helped.

 

[Wozza63]

An SSD will be lightning fast compared to any hard drive (including velociraptors)

I think in general, the velociraptors are overpriced, you would be better off with a caviar black and a SSD cache drive, although im unsure if they work on secondary drives, you would need to phone PCS about that

A good setup would be 240gb SSD 1st drive, 1TB Caviar Black w/ 20GB SSD Cache (or a bigger SSD cache, for improved performance), if it works, if not just go for a standard caviar black, i imagine the difference between it and the velociraptor isnt much as the caviar black has double the cache

 

[tom_gr7]

I'd go for a 60 or 120gb ssd and a 1 or 2tb caviar black drive.

 

[mishra]

If you go with SSD just make sure you will not install Steam into the "default" location as you will ran out of storage in first week!
I still claim that SSD is an enthusiast hardware. It's nice if you know how to get full potential of such drive. If you know little about PC and you just want to play games, listen to music, browse catz on the internet... normal HDD is just fine.

Simply what tom_gr7 said (if money allow), get SSD as main drive and HDD as a second, but from day one be aware what are you installing and where!
If you are not so confident, just forget it.. nothing wrong in HDDs at all!

 

[danielw2599]

I gaurentee once you go SSD you will never go back! I have a 120GB vertex 3 as my main drive, 1TB caviar black as general purpose and a 256GB Samsung 830 for games. Well worth the investment IMO.

 

[_Francesco_]

SSD
Rumours of it being less reliable through excessive use.

From what I've read, this is more so applicable to HDD. Makes sense if you think about it since HDD comprise of moving parts while SDD doesn't.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than myself can clarify either way, but I've been under the impression ever since learning about them that SSDs have a much lower failure rate / higher reliability rating than HDDs.

If you go with SSD just make sure you will not install Steam into the "default" location as you will ran out of storage in first week!

How come?

 

[Wozza63]

How come?

Because modern game files are huge, some being over 20gb, not including any DLC, so just ten games will be well over 100GB

 

[danielw2599]

From what I've read, this is more so applicable to HDD. Makes sense if you think about it since HDD comprise of moving parts while SDD doesn't.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than myself can clarify either way, but I've been under the impression ever since learning about them that SSDs have a much lower failure rate / higher reliability rating than HDDs.

Believe the reason being there is a finite amount of times the sectors on the drive can be written to and over. Not worth worrying about to be honest.

 

[_Francesco_]

Believe the reason being there is a finite amount of times the sectors on the drive can be written to and over. Not worth worrying about to be honest.

Ah, I see. Isn't writing and overwriting happening constantly, though? Never heard of that before, so thank for clarifying.

 

[mishra]

I'm just going to resurrect some ancient thread as I have some more feedback to post...

For a long time I was rather against SSDs due to their price and size. However, I was able to get my hands on a SanDisk Extreme 120GB SSD for amazingly cheap price of £50 - just couldn't say no! I've installed Win7 on it and also put some applications: Lightroom, Photoshop and Battlefield 3, web browser and bunch of other small applications too.

After a week of using it - I am not that massively amazed by it, as some people tend to be.

I agree, booting times are amazing! (I mean seriously amazing!). Also time from where I get a login box to actual desktop is also super quick, but in general that is about it. I saw no "noticeable" improvement in Photoshop or any other application I am using. Windows does "feel" quicker with opening explorer windows and in general use - but Windows always was quicker after you reinstalled it! After a while it will just slow down - I hope that is where SSD will shine and it will refuse to slow down, as normal HDDs tend to do.

I can see where SSD would be amazing... Lightroom! But since I have +250GB of photos, I just cannot afford such SSD size yet , so even tho Lightroom is on SSD actual photos are on Momentus XT - so it is as quick as HDD not SSD. Battlefield 3 also "feels" quicker to load the maps.. but it's hard to say, is it because of SSD or just fresh installation of windows.

To sum up, I am quite happy with SSD, especially for such price - but at the same time I am not much amazed by it. Especially reading some posts/threads of other people claiming how amazing it is.
I can see where someone will see a massive benefit replacing "old" 5200rpm hard drive with fancy SSD, but in my case... moving from Momentus XT to SSD... well it's not amazing at all - tho to be completely fair, system does feel snappier indeed.

Hope, my feedback may help someone... if you are loaded with money go SSD all the way. However, if every little counts... just stay with your current HDD and invest that hard earned cash into a better graphics card as it will be a better investment after all.

 

[Karnor00]

I'd have to agree with mishra. The SSD is nice for the fast boot speed, but the rest of the time I don't really notice the difference. The couple of games I have installed on my SSD don't really seem any different than installed on an HDD.

So personally I'd regard an SSD as a luxury item rather than a must have.

 

[keynes]

Considering that the price per gb has decreased significantly in the last few months for SSDs and it is possible to obtain a decent 120gb SSD for around £50 it is not quite a luxury anymore. I have not experienced any significant improvement when running games on my SSD as well but for other applications it is pretty fast and meets my needs.