I've been out of custom pc building for a few years now and my XPS is getting a bit old so thinking of building another custom. With SSD drives being so fast, I'm wondering how people are using these nowadays? Boot the OS only? Only for loading games/apps? External storage?
I dont see a big market for them in terms of external storage. There expensive for there size so they dont offer alot of storage for your buck. One day they will, but not yet. They would make external drives though in terms of not generating much heat at all, there basically indestructible, and lighter then a mechanical hard drive. Now I invested in mine about a year or so ago so not as much was known. I ended up putting 2x80GB drives in RAID0 using the mobos raid controller. They run about twice as fast as my WD Caviar Black, but I dont think think I really see a performance gain from running them in RAID0. I have never tested them in a single drive configuration though so I cant say that for certain. From the looks of it, and this is just on a single SSD on ra Raid card vs mobo, the burst rates were much higher on a raid card. The average read speed was still about the same, but far more stable on a RAID card. I run my OS/Apps,Games of of it, and use it for some storage of say photoshop or modeling projects I am working on.
OS drive. External storage is a waste, as the speed of external interfaces isn't really good enough save USB3 or eSATA. USB3 is still in its infancy and has expensive enclosures, and eSATA is prone to all sorts of cable interference problems. SSDs are small enough, and don't even get warm to the touch, you may as well just hide them somewhere in your PC case, no matter how many of them you need. Eventually I'd want games on an SSD, but to do that I'd want one 300GB in size. Right now the benefits I'd get don't warrant the absurd cost for doing so. I'll wait until they've dropped to about a quarter of their current price before I consider doing that
I think that wingedpig meant using the drives as giant flash drives; for use in situations that would kill a hard drive...such as high vibration applications...to use a SSD in place of an external hard drive would be insane. As for eSATA, it really only has cable issues when you use cheap parts...and cheap parts tend to have problems even when they are USB. As for games on SSD, I don't see much point. Loading times might be slightly shorter, but actual gameplay should be the same. ...So that really only leaves OS drives and drives operating in conditions where a platter drive would have problems.
I'm not sure how cable issues can be through the use of cheap parts - cable issues is what it implies - the cable is at fault, not the enclosure.
Thanks for the replies guys, again I was just wondering how people "out there" were using the drives was all. Xplorer4 hit on what I was leaning towards doing in using 2 drives in a RAID0 configuration. But I agree with all of you in that the GB/$$ ratio is still so far off that I may hold off all together for the mean time. I appreciate the info guys, thanks.
If it's any help, Intel are massively upping the size of their SSDs in the coming 6 months by moving to 25nm flash, they're hoping to produce a 600GB one, though it'll be very expensive I'm sure.
Storage/money ratio there expensive but you have to look beyond that and consider performance as well. Also heres a nice look at 2x80GB RAID0 vs a single 80GB. http://hothardware.com/News/Intel-SSDs-RAID-0-A-Case-Study-In-Speed-Take-2/
Hmm, not owning any 'premium' eSATA cables perhaps that was an issue. Still, 'premium' cables always seem a bit of a con to me.
I know they are more expensive...but you can actually see and feel the quality difference...the clips lock with a click that just "feels right", and the cables themselves are thicker than a PC power cord thanks to wide, flexible leads and lots of grounded insulation. I know that they are digital, but that does not always mean that interference is harmless.
