SSDs appear to be coming down in price quicker than... well insert your dirty analogy of choice here.

The Titan 128GB SSD has been announced with pricing of $300 USD - that's $2.35 per GB. A 300GB VelociRaptor currently costs about $0.77 USD per GB - so SSDs are only three times more expensive than probably the best "pro-sumer" HDD on the market, and I would almost bet by the end of 2009 that they will be at parity.

With SSD capacities of 128GB and 256GB in the market, if you were in the market for a VelociRaptor, would you buy an SSD instead if the capacity and cost per GB were equivalent? e.g. a 256GB SSD for $199 USD.

Will SSDs replace VelociRaptors for fast personal storage, or will there remain a need for VelociRaptors that SSDs don't address?

This is of course assuming that new controllers/onboard cache (e.g. like OCZ Vertex) genuinely fixes the stuttering issues.

I think they will be replaced for many applications in some point in the future, but I don't know how soon that is.

I have a 300GB Velociraptor, and what I like about it is that it is huge for a OS+programs+documents drive and it will last me years without space issues even with Linux and Windows sharing the drive for this purpose. Media drive is a separate WD 640GB.

Also it has good random write performance, while SSDs seem to have very different results in this.

5 year warranty on the Velociraptor and limited number of write cycles on SSDs makes me also happy about my drive.

But I'm quite sure that when I need to replace my Velociraptor for being obsolete and not because of hardware failure, I will get a SSD to replace it. But I am hoping that moment is years away.

The disadvantages of SSD now is how the OS talks to it. All OS's try to get the most out of rotational media. The functions used, work adversely on SSD's.
When OS's are changed to better make use of SSD's, things will go fast. It's announced in Windows 7, there may even be a fix for Vista. I'm sure other OS's will follow, if not faster.

By the end of 2009 I expect the price difference being mostly gone. Who will not want a drive with the same capacity and price that is quieter, lighter, "greener" and faster ?!

I went from a Raptor150 to a MTRON Mobi 32 Gb harddrive for system drive. I can honestly say that load times are decreased notably. And mine isn't even the fastest of SSDs. Windows XP boots much quicker and under Linux (which I use mainly) things like Open Office loads notably faster.

However for my secondary drive, I can't see it being replaced by an SSD for some time. Although that might just be the last thing I could do to quiet down my PC even further.
And it's much easier to quiet down a single harddrive properly*, rather than two.

I've seen a couple of specific server benchmarks, where fast hard drives beat SSDs by a margin, so they're not completely superseeded yet. But for your average consumer, I guess SSDs are the fastest for everyday uses. Still too expensive! I bought mine because of the quietness, though. I was very satisfied with my old Raptor, but quieter and faster .. that was a no brainer for me, and I picked up a bargain on eBay at roughly $200 for 32 gigs of Mtron.


* to my standards, that is... Others may be satisfied with much less!

I've been pleased with my Velociraptor, mostly because the performance is incredible. However, I suspect I'll switch to an SSD fairly quickly once I can get a reasonably-priced >64 GB drive without the stuttering/random write issue currently plaguing the cheap examples of the technology. Partly it's the noise (my Velociraptor is one of the loud ones, even in a Scythe Quiet Drive), and partly it's the appeal of a computer where the only moving part is a fan.

I've been playing with the cheap "flawed" SSD drives lately and I am very impressed by them. I have followed the various tweaks posted by those who have spent a lot more time and trouble with them. The drives are definitely faster than my Raid 0 Velociraptors for their purpose in my HTPC running Vista 64 Ultimate. The AHCI/Raid BIOS on my motherboard is now the slowest part of my bootup time.

SSD + a slower big storage hard drive will be the way to go. As more SSD models are released and reviewed this year I think I'll likely make my Velociraptors become my secondary storage in my main system soon.

I wouldn't say that they are 3 times more expensive.
$/GB is not the only measure, they are much cheaper then VR when it comes to $/Read speed and cheaper too with $/overall speed as long as one doesn't need high capacity.

Maybe you know it already, but Titan != Vertex, it doesn't have cache. It's a RAID of 2 JMicrons, just like Apex.

Yes, I think that VRs are dead.

I vote for this approach. SSDs are too new and/or unreliable for all data storage. I had 2x SSDs in my system and the DATA one died on me !

SSDs are brilliant for fast access and low power/low weight (i.e can just hang anywhere), but a heirarchy is till the way to go.

I have the following (at the moment):

a. 256MB RamDisk (Farstone) - could be more but I store/restore the contents on my SPARE drive at each boot up/down. All the Win temp directories plus Firefox profile etc are in here.
b. 16GB Mtron SSD as System/Programmes. I use 10GB of the 16GB and as the wear pattern becomes evident (I have one section that only reads at 20MBPS), I move the 10GB drive to the other end of the SSD
c. 74GB Raptor as a SPARE drive (first 10GB) and as a DATA drive (rest)

PLUS

d. 1TB of RAID in a networked NAS.

This won't work for users who want lots of local storage, but with a VRaptor there's 290GB local to play with.

A while back I replaced my C drive with an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD. Depending on the measure, it is 3 to 8 times faster than the spinning disk it replaced. Of course, it wasn't cheap (and still isn't), but for me, total silence and the ability to launch such pigs as Acrobat more or less instantly is a clear winner.

Nope.

I want years of real world testing before I trust SSD.

Remember how long CD's were supposed to last originally?

Surely, even with long-lived magnetic media, you have a backup strategy in place?

As I said earlier, I would happily use an SSD in my computer, both for the performance and noise. Of course, I've never trusted magnetic media, so I'm certainly not going to trust unproven SSDs any more. All personal data, as well as the Application Data folder and any other important information, will be backed up every week or two on external storage.

If I need more storage space than an SSD allows, I'll use a NAS device with a magnetic drive, but I'll still keep the same backup system in place; it's how I back up my computer already. Any data which isn't backed up is data you don't want, regardless to the technology used to store it.

However, all this is fearmongering. SSDs actually promise to be more reliable than magnetic media, because they should theoretically only fail in writing. Once you get past the maximum number of writes on the drive, you will no longer be able to add data or boot from the drive, but you should still be able to retrieve data. That's a big improvement from a magnetic drive, which is fairly all-or-nothing when it dies.

I have no real important data, that said the data i do have is backed up both on and off site.

imo most tech is put to market way before its ready.

I am just sick feeling like beta tester, that has to pay for the privilege.

I rather stick with something that's limits/risks are known.

Nope. When my SSD failed - it disappeared. Of the 16GB only 15MB remained available and that contained Zippo. Must be a controller failure.
On the Mtron site, there is now a known failure mode where only this 15MB is available. So beware.

Is there a comparable Magnetic Drive failure mode anymore ?

Sure. Magnetic drives probably die just as often from fried controller chips as from actual mechanical problems (which can generally be identified by horrible noises). These failures are actually easier to deal with if there's no backup and therefore a need to retrieve personal files, because you can often swap in the controller board from an identical drive.

I suppose I should also emphasize that the ability to recover data after the drive has stopped writing is a theoretical benefit. If not, you're still no worse off than with magnetic drives: backups.

I will definitely go for a Vertex once they settle in the market for good. With the stuttering gone I think I can deal with making a backup every now and than for the sake of performance.



Where did you get this info from? I'm not sure wheter it's good or bad news...

http://www.legionhardware.com/Board/vie ... 936#p17936
Definitely a bad news.

A bigger problem may be emerging with SSD's. Serious slow downs from fragmentation, at least on MLC designs, would seem to be a serious issue. Serious slowdowns are being reported.

oc

My vote is for the SSD as a system drive.

We know that SSDs can break, and that it is less predictable than with traditional drives. But if you use an SSD purely as a system drive, then all you really risk is some configuration information, which usually isn't a big deal. On the other hand, you get great performance, virtually no heat, zero vibrations, and zero dB. As mentioned above, this problem is even less pronounced if you simply do backups.

As to the price per gigabyte, that is a marketing issue in my opinion. The Velociraptor is bigger than the Raptor, but it's much more expensive per GB than 7200rpm drives, so it doesn't look like a good choice for storing a lot of data. On the other hand, there is no model with less than 100GB capacity, which could be used as a fast system drive at a reasonable price. A 150GB Velociraptor can buy you a decent 64GB SSD, or a very good 32GB SSD, which very often will have enough space for your system, so why put up with the noise (as low as it may be under good conditions)? Yes, a good SSD remains more expensive per gigabyte, but the price of an SSD per system drive is actually pretty competitive. If you just take the price for one system drive, then even Intel SSDs are only twice as expensive as the 150GB Velociraptor.

The one issue is warranty, which can be worse than traditional drives. Solution: Move to a place where long warranty periods are set by law.

i have an ocz vertex in my desktop as the root drive. for boot speed, and application loading times, because ssd is still new i dont store any thing on the ssd, i store all my media on my file servers 1tb hard drive, that i access using nfs.

im going to be ordering another picopsu soon, then my desktop will be pretty much silent, the only moving part being the cpu fan at 800rpm

I made a silly impulse by of a Raptor not too long ago and am regretting it now. I would much rather have saved whatever I spent on the Raptor and saved it for an SSD. All the reviews make me drool! I would just have a small one for my boot drive and keep the Western Digital Black I have for everything else. It seems like the perfect combo.

The Intel X-25M is still the best SSD at the moment. Even though the Vertex has higher reads/writes, once all the cells have been written to it actually is slower than the X25-M as these benchmarks demonstrate (tr.im/w5zB)

I voted 'Yes' since I upgraded from a 300GB Velociraptor to a 160GB Intel X25-M 'G2' SSD last week and it made a noticable difference in pretty much everything. There's no way I would go back to a mechanical HDD for a system drive now. Also Intel rate these SSDs as capable of writing 100GB of data per day for 5 years, so I have no concerns over SSD longevity. Comparing them to CDs/DVDs is stupid because the way they store data is completely different.

I have a 15k SCSI raid setup (very noisy but cool) and I will be upgrading to SSD this winter.

This pretty much answers the original question

I replaced all my harddrives with ssds, in laptops, desktops, nettops, workstations, etc. there's no way back to spindles anymore.

the only place where hdd's still have place is, as the storage pool on the windows home server. and there, i wouldn't use a raptor as well

raptors are the beasts of the 20st century. ssds are the 21st. once you had one, there's no way back

I tried an SSD. I thought my hard drive was quiet until then. Man, the SSD is wonderfully silent. YES!

SSD's will always win, running a xm25 and it flies with windows 7 on it previously was running a 74Gb raptor.

I'm still stuck in the dinosaur age, and I wouldn't have it any other way

My 150gb Velociraptor is my pride and joy. I bought it new about 9 months ago for over 300 Aussie dollars, and would happily do so again, which is a good thing, as I'm saving up to purchase another, and run them in RAID0.

I care not for those silly little SSDs, give me a flesh-eating dinosaur any day.

You be wise brother neumein.


- SSDs are far from solid.

If I had more cash and if decent SSDs were selling in Poland for prices more similar to those in US I would definitely start looking for a replacement for my VR. Right now tho I'm oogling another still cheapish VR on a running auction and getting ready to run'em in RAID0. Just for the hell of it

So I voted "yes" but "yes" as in "yes, when they become more available"

RAID0 is a terrible choice. It's great for server use, but it gives nearly no real-world improvement for single-user desktop/workstation applications, while doubling your chances of data loss. A few years ago, a friend of mine ran a RAID0 of two original Raptors. He never lost personal data, but operating system files would become corrupted or lost at the slightest provocation, with the end result of reinstalling Windows on a monthly basis. He finally got tired of the problems and split the RAID, using each Raptor in a separate computer. He had no further problems with either drive, and while there may have been a measurable performance hit, there was definitely not an observable one.

If you don't trust SSDs yet, fine (although you're paranoid if you trust a bunch of complicated silicon chips plus a bunch of finely-machined moving parts more than you trust a bunch of complicated silicon chips on their own). I'm very happy with my Velociraptor, and I won't trade it for an SSD for silence alone - the replacement drive will also have to be faster. Please, please don't buy into the hype and set up a RAID0, though. It's a big risk for nearly no gain, along with twice the noise and power consumption.

It's not the parts that are the concern, it's the firmware. Given what Intel has achieved with its last couple of firmware upgrades I'd say it's not an unwarranted concern.

Granted there have been firmware issues with HDDs recently too, but there are decades of industry experience in writing HDD firmware, and one HDD isn't that different from another. The SSD firmware guys are still figuring out what not to do (kind of the way the manufacturers of commercial airliners figured out what not to do to make commercial airliners that don't crash!).