Updating to an SSD . . . on a laptop?

[NitrouseXpress60]

I wouldn't say that buying a SSD will be revolutionary for everyone. Up until the time I bought one, all I read on the internet was about countless people saying how fast they are and how they are worth their price. I have come to find the opposite.

I purchased a SF Vertex 2 60GB the fall of last year to use in my laptop. Was I impressed by the performance? No I was not. Were things lightning fast as people say they are? No they were not. Was it worth the money? No it was not.

The REAL benefits of a SSD in my opinion are the lack of moving parts, silence, and durability. The performance advantages are not as great as everyone claims them to be. Does my laptop boot up faster? Yes. Does it boot up faster than a 7200RPM HDD? Yes. Is the difference worth the cost? Hell no it is. Those few SECONDS are not worth the hype in a SSD.

Would I recommend a SSD to an average consumer? Nope. Would I recommend a SSD to a computer enthusiast? Yes. They are "cool" and "state of the art" and they increase your e penis.

Do I favor my SSD over my mechanical drive? Yes I do because of the silence, lack of moving parts, and reliability. Do I favor my SSD over HDD for the speed? Well, sure I do. After all, it is faster. Not by much, but it is faster.

In conclusion, the role of a SSD depends on the use being applied. I love having it in my optical drive-less x200 tablet because it makes the thing dead silent and have no moving parts, except for the quiet ass fan. I don't find the size limitation a problem at all. As someone else mentioned, people survived years before with less than 80GB offered in a laptop. I have over 20GB left on my 60GB drive holding my music, pictures, videos, and documents. Can I put my DVD rips on there? No, but I could care less about having all my DVD backups with me all the time.

 

[dighn]

I strongly disagree that the improvement from an SSD is barely noticeable. I think it's huge, even on a low end dual core, and everyone I know who has experience one agrees. Actually, they tend to think the reduced boot times are the smallest improvement they notice from the SSD.

Ditto. I see people focusing on boot times, but who cares about boot times? How often do you boot your machine anyway? The real benefit is in the increased responsiveness. With an SSD, I spend less time consciously waiting for my computer and just do what I want to do. It really is a qualitative change in my computing experience.

Thinking more about it, it might not be too big of a deal on a laptop because there is a natural limit to how quickly a user can perform actions because of less responsive input (especially since most laptops have very poor trackpads). Though a laptop can still benefit from the more mechanically robust SSD.

 

[Emulex]

yeah macbook 2008 unibody is supah fast with ssd with the best trackpad ever. 6gb,osx,cost $500 - love it.

 

[Outrage]

After about a week with my vostro v130, I swaped out the WD scorpio black 7200rpm driver for an intel 80GB. If you have been using SSD's you can't go back to a mechanical drive.

I guess the main question you have to ask yourself is about storage space, if you can manage with 60-80GB or not.

 

[htwingnut]

Storage space is definitely an issue with an SSD. Problem is that we've grown accustomed to larger and larger hard drives and have no issue taking everything we've got with us. Learning to use network resources is the key. I use a Windows Home Server and store most of my large files on there. Granted I have a 750GB hard drive to supplement my 120GB SSD in my primary laptop, but that's mainly for games and virtual machines. I know I could live with 256GB SSD if needed though. I just get lazy when I have so much free space available.

But for the average laptop user who might carry a couple games, a handful of videos, and a bunch of Office files on their machines, can easily live with a 120-128GB SSD.

 

[Tom]

btw, I never said using an SSD was "barely noticeable" so I don't know where that came from.

 

[DirthNader]

I think some of us have very very different requirements of a laptop.

Yup.

There is nothing installed on my laptop (well, netbook... HP Mini 311) outside of the OS and Microsoft Security Essentials. Media is pulled off of my desktop or the internet. For me, an intel 40GB SSD is more than enough.

I can see a (relatively) small SSD being a liability for someone whose only computer is their laptop. Honestly, I see way more of these types than I do people like me.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Hard drives haven't "hurt" pc usage..what are you talking about ? Are there people who don't use pc's because of hard drives ?

Hard drives are slower than other storage mediums, but they are also much bigger and more reliable. The slowness is compensated for by caches and proper programming so it isn't really an issue. The only easily measurable difference between a hard drive and an ssd is boot time and loading apps or large amounts of data. Because hard drives do these tasks in a matter of seconds, the fact that an ssd does it faster doesn't make much real difference.

It's very clear that you haven't used a SSD if you think they don't make a obvious difference in performance. Even my Atom N270 powered netbook was horribly bottlenecked by it's stock 5400rpm hard drive, there was quite literally a night and day difference in performance when I upgraded it with a Vertex 2. And that's on a system that's only SATA I so it's hardly a best case scenario for the SSD.

At this point I would never have a system without a SSD.

 

[jiffylube1024]

It's all about whether or not the 60-120GB of a resonably priced SSD is enough for you or not.

I bought a Dell Studio 1747 with two hard drive bays, and initially set up my system as a 40GB SSD / 500GB HDD. The 40GB wasn't enough. I upgraded to 60GB, but still bumped into space limitations.

I then tried a Seagate Momentus XT hard drive, and even though it doesn't boot or feel quite as fast as a true SSD (I should know, I've used 3 different SSD's on this laptop!), it's still much faster than a regular hard drive, and gives you the space of a regular HDD.

Don't forget about the Seagate Momentus XT 320GB/500GB hard drives as an option for a laptop. While they aren't perfect (some older firmware versions and some drives have some issues), I've owned two - a 320GB and a 500GB, and both work perfectly.

Get an external, preferably esata. You can install steam and its games to an external with no problem.

Even better is USB 3.0. It's amazing! If you have an Expresscard 34 port (pretty much any 15" laptop aside from Apples), you can pick up a cheap USB 3.0 1-port adapter that sits inside your laptop from Ebay for about $25. It takes about a bloody month to arrive from China, but it's worth it.

I've got a USB 3.0 port in my laptop now, and it's fantastic. Because USB 3.0 provides more power to the drive than USB 2.0, there's only one cable to deal with. Previously I used eSATA, but you need 2 cables for eSATA - one for USB to power the device, and one for eSATA.

Just like eSATA-capable enclosures, USB 3.0 capable enclosures are quite cheap - about $20.


And, I get the same 50-100MB/s transfer speeds over USB 3.0 as I used to over eSATA.

 

[jiffylube1024]

It's very clear that you haven't used a SSD if you think they don't make a obvious difference in performance.

Yup. Even on an Atom, SSD's make a massive difference. It basically removes the HDD bottleneck!!

Even my Atom N270 powered netbook was horribly bottlenecked by it's stock 5400rpm hard drive, there was quite literally a night and day difference in performance when I upgraded it with a Vertex 2. And that's on a system that's only SATA I so it's hardly a best case scenario for the SSD.

At this point I would never have a system without a SSD.

While SATA 1 is limiting your max transfer speeds in your laptop, it's not really an issue because how often are you copying to or from your SSD at >150MB/s on a laptop? You get the same ~50MB/s random read performance, the same 50-100MB/s copying to itself performance, and how often are you doing sequential reads where >150MB/s is necessary?

The real boost in performance from SSD's isn't in sequential transfer speeds anyway - it's in random reads and writes, which are hundreds of times faster than HDD's.

 

[Tom]

It's very clear that you haven't used a SSD if you think they don't make a obvious difference in performance. Even my Atom N270 powered netbook was horribly bottlenecked by it's stock 5400rpm hard drive, there was quite literally a night and day difference in performance when I upgraded it with a Vertex 2. And that's on a system that's only SATA I so it's hardly a best case scenario for the SSD.

At this point I would never have a system without a SSD.

night and day ? that's like 12 hours.

I listed the 3 areas where an SSD would be faster.

It's all a matter of perspective. For you a couple extra minutes here and there is a "horrible bottleneck". Fine.

My laptop boots in 1.25 minutes. Starts Firefox in 4 seconds. Starts Excel in 8 seconds. May take 30 seconds to load a really big game. Even if an SSD was instantaneous, and they aren't, I wouldn't save much time on a typical day.

On the other hand, I've used computers with small hard drives, so I know how much time and effort it takes to load out one for changing circumstances. Transfer this app, that bunch of pictures, this movie, oops, I'm away from the network and I forgot something..

Basically, it's a pain in the ass that a lot of you are willing to overlook for the momentary thrill that SSD provides.

Of course if you have a big honking laptop with room for all the drives you need, or a desktop, then an SSD is just a matter of cost.

But we're talking about laptops with limited drive bays here. I'm not saying SSD users are wrong, just pointing out the trade offs and why it isn't worth it to me.

 

[Emulex]

how long does backup and antivirus full scan take? spin up time compared to mechanical drive? shock damage compared to mechanical?

latency man. i've found you can get away with alot less ram with ssd as well to do basic tasks.

 

[Tom]

how long does backup and antivirus full scan take? spin up time compared to mechanical drive? shock damage compared to mechanical?

latency man. i've found you can get away with alot less ram with ssd as well to do basic tasks.

I wouldn't sit around waiting for a backup or antivirus scan, I do them when I dont need the laptop.

I've seen more broken screens from shock damage than hard drive failures. ssd wont help that.

spin up time for a modern 2.5 hard drive ? are you serious ? like a few milliseconds I would guess.

8gb of ram is cheaper than SSD, and it affects more aspects of performance if you dont have enough of it.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

night and day ? that's like 12 hours.

I listed the 3 areas where an SSD would be faster.

It's all a matter of perspective. For you a couple extra minutes here and there is a "horrible bottleneck". Fine.

My laptop boots in 1.25 minutes. Starts Firefox in 4 seconds. Starts Excel in 8 seconds. May take 30 seconds to load a really big game. Even if an SSD was instantaneous, and they aren't, I wouldn't save much time on a typical day.

On the other hand, I've used computers with small hard drives, so I know how much time and effort it takes to load out one for changing circumstances. Transfer this app, that bunch of pictures, this movie, oops, I'm away from the network and I forgot something..

Basically, it's a pain in the ass that a lot of you are willing to overlook for the momentary thrill that SSD provides.

Of course if you have a big honking laptop with room for all the drives you need, or a desktop, then an SSD is just a matter of cost.

But we're talking about laptops with limited drive bays here. I'm not saying SSD users are wrong, just pointing out the trade offs and why it isn't worth it to me.

You may be willing to live with horribly long boot times and sluggish performance but some of us aren't. If I had to wait that long every time I booted up the system or loaded a basic program I would be in the market for a new laptop. It's not so much about saving time as being able to smoothly work on stuff without waiting for my pc to play catch up.

As mentioned earlier you could always look into replacing the optical drive with an additional drive bay, I haven't had a laptop with an optical drive for 2+ years and have never missed it.

If you haven't had a SSD you really need to try a good one before arguing against them. I know I was skeptical about my original Agility 60gb being worth the $160 it cost me but it turned out to be one of the best tech purchases I have ever made and I've gotten 3 more SSDs since then ( Vertex 2 40gb, Agility 2 60gb, X25-V 40gb)

 

[Tom]

A minute to boot once a day is not "horrible" to me. Rest of the time computer starts in an instant from sleep mode.

It's that kind of hyperbole that makes me more convinced that SSDs are the most overhyped hardware to come along in a while.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

A minute to boot once a day is not "horrible" to me. Rest of the time computer starts in an instant from sleep mode.

It's that kind of hyperbole that makes me more convinced that SSDs are the most overhyped hardware to come along in a while.

On the contrary they are the most worthwhile upgrade to come along in a long time.

As I said I used to be a skeptic too but after trying a SSD it made me a convert. You really don't know what you are missing.

 

[hmsrolst]

On the contrary they are the most worthwhile upgrade to come along in a long time.

Ditto

 

[Tom]

On the contrary they are the most worthwhile upgrade to come along in a long time.

As I said I used to be a skeptic too but after trying a SSD it made me a convert. You really don't know what you are missing.

I use the time to gaze out the window and contemplate the meaning of life.

 

[Fox5]

night and day ? that's like 12 hours.

I listed the 3 areas where an SSD would be faster.

It's all a matter of perspective. For you a couple extra minutes here and there is a "horrible bottleneck". Fine.

My laptop boots in 1.25 minutes. Starts Firefox in 4 seconds. Starts Excel in 8 seconds. May take 30 seconds to load a really big game. Even if an SSD was instantaneous, and they aren't, I wouldn't save much time on a typical day.

On the other hand, I've used computers with small hard drives, so I know how much time and effort it takes to load out one for changing circumstances. Transfer this app, that bunch of pictures, this movie, oops, I'm away from the network and I forgot something..

Basically, it's a pain in the ass that a lot of you are willing to overlook for the momentary thrill that SSD provides.

Of course if you have a big honking laptop with room for all the drives you need, or a desktop, then an SSD is just a matter of cost.

But we're talking about laptops with limited drive bays here. I'm not saying SSD users are wrong, just pointing out the trade offs and why it isn't worth it to me.

It's a couple seconds (or minutes) multiplied by however many times the activity occurs. Would you be ok if the frames in a video game or movie took 10x as long to render? It's only a few hundred milliseconds each time, easy to wait for.

 

[Emulex]

why? The new intel tech (Z68 and soon laptop) will do storage tiering for you. that 64gb ssd will accelerate (hella) your 1TB 2.5" in the dvd-rom bay.

You get the sustained linear write speed of your favorite 7200rpm with a monstrous learning cache for read i/o.

Anyways - time is money. Let me tell you something. when you take that 1 laptop or desktop and multiply by 100 - then have to back them all up and scan them for virus every night between midnight and 6am you'll realize the cost to do that with hard drive is expensive.

Many of us do work - office professional - the interwebs - etc - this is where you just can't beat it. Man i rock raid-10 (15K SAS 3.5") only - and i need more speed in the same amount of space and power. Storage tiering for home and enterprise is kick ass.

There is more to life than booting up and playing games lol.

 

[wpcoe]

Another data storage on a notebook with a smallish (60~80GB) SSD would be to insert, and leave in, a large (32GB?) SD card. I wouldn't run any apps off of one, but to store photos, .MP3s, videos, documents, etc, it should be fast enough.

Also, an SSD in an older notebook could run into older technology limitations that "cripple" the speed of the SSD. I had put an SSD in a 5-year old Acer notebook, and could barely tell the difference. But, that had some hybrid IDE-to-SATA connector -- IIRC, it was actually an IDE controller but with some adapter to accept a SATA HDD. The problem was not that the SSD isn't fast, but the throughput was so limited it seemed like it was slow.

 

[Tom]

why? The new intel tech (Z68 and soon laptop) will do storage tiering for you. that 64gb ssd will accelerate (hella) your 1TB 2.5" in the dvd-rom bay.

You get the sustained linear write speed of your favorite 7200rpm with a monstrous learning cache for read i/o.

Anyways - time is money. Let me tell you something. when you take that 1 laptop or desktop and multiply by 100 - then have to back them all up and scan them for virus every night between midnight and 6am you'll realize the cost to do that with hard drive is expensive.

Many of us do work - office professional - the interwebs - etc - this is where you just can't beat it. Man i rock raid-10 (15K SAS 3.5") only - and i need more speed in the same amount of space and power. Storage tiering for home and enterprise is kick ass.

There is more to life than booting up and playing games lol.

time is money. money is money too. I would be surprised if many corporations have switched away from hard drives to ssd in their corporate laptops.

To the backups and av scanning. Incremental backups only take a few minutes a day and a full av scan everyday isn't necessary.

 

[Brainonska511]

SSDs seem like a nice idea, but I would never put one in my laptop, unless they got cheaper and bigger. Some of the stuff I work with comes in large data files and carrying around a second drive or using the optical drive bay as a 2nd hard drive (instead of a DVD drive) is just not practical for me. Large, 7200RPM drives are fast enough for me.

 

[jiffylube1024]

how long does backup and antivirus full scan take? spin up time compared to mechanical drive? shock damage compared to mechanical?

latency man. i've found you can get away with alot less ram with ssd as well to do basic tasks.

Antivirus scans are definitely lightyears faster on SSD. It's one of the areas that SSD's give a tremendous benefit to, because you can scan small files close to as fast as large ones, whereas on HDD's scanning small files takes forever.

Spin up time on SSD is nonexistant. What's there to spin? It's basically RAM, just turn on the power and it's on.

Shock damage is orders of magnitude better. On an SSD it's something stupid like 50-100 G's. You can basically throw it at a wall and it will be fine. Dropping it (especially on carpet, from any height) is no longer any concern whatsoever - no platters to get out of alignment!

 

[Emulex]

i don't do incrementals on pc's. if the root is damaged by a bad sector the incremental could be fatally screwed. With gigabit point to point to each pc and a fast ass D2D server(s) i just do full backup's nightly. like the AV scan they also serve as pre-notification of disk i/o issues. moving to SSD reduces power consumption with 1minute sleep timer. Machines can power on to scan and backup at the same time (overlapping) and not be impacted. so you effectly reduce 2-3hours of time to 30 minutes PER MACHINE. times 50.

Plus no defrag - you don't defrag when users are working - that reduces productivity.

So yeah i'd spend $80 on a X25-V because the value is always there in more ways than you can imagine.

Someone complained to me their 7200rpm 3ghz pentium dual core was stupid slow (month old) - they pointed out the pentium-4 2.8HT box was way faster. The latter had an x25-V. I now have to order an X25-v for this new pc.