Poll 3: Do you have an SSD or plan to get one?

[CA_Steve]

Rounding out the capacity/disk use polls with a snapshot look at SSDs.

This poll will run for a week.

[kater]

Picked the last one. I guess 2 RAIDed VRs* should be fast enough for some more time Also, I'm running Vista and will probably not benefit from the fabled Trim function, so an SSD is not an attractive option to me now. Let's wait at least 1 y and see what $ 150-200 can buy. Until then, SSDs remain fancy gadgets to me

* my momma always told me - never pass a chance to brag

[faugusztin]

I think i'm one of the ones who has too many of them. One Patriot Torqx 128GB in PC, one X25-M G2 80GB in laptop, one X25-M G2 and one X25-M G1 in the Lan party/Media center PC (i simply cannot sell the G1, bought it for loads of money and now it is not worth much because of no TRIM).

[ilovejedd]

Waiting for a price drop which should hopefully happen when the Intel G3's get released. Aiming to get an 80~100GB SSD for $150. A 60GB SSD just feels tiny given I want it to house OS, programs and games along with my Dropbox folder (basically important photos and documents).

[Znorkus]

I plan to get one within the next 6 months. Right now the 80GB ones are kind of available @ my budget, but I would like to see at least double that capacity for that price (around 210 dollars -rough estimate): 160GB is what I'd call a fancy 'main' disk to install all my programs (including games). I hear rumours about sharp price drops within a few months. But as I am building a new pc right now, I might get one within the next month That will probably be a 80 or 120 gb version, and it will be coupled with a 1TB seagate f1 drive for mass storage of photo's/movies/etc.

[cordis]

These polls are interesting, but a little simplistic. In my pc? I have about 5 in use reasonably often, each with different basic tasks. Most of them now have ssd boot drives, although I recently popped the top off my htpc to stick one in there too. They do seem to boot a lot faster from SSDs, so that's nice.

As far as the polls about general storage, I think about half the machines have dual 2 TB drives, the rest have around 2 TB in various configurations. Then there's the 4.5 TB NAS. I recently stuck a bunch of drives in my new linux box (see the big brass box in the general gallery), so I'm planning to set that up as a backup for the NAS, but I haven't gotten around to getting the software going on that. Why so curious?

[JL5]

I picked the second to last "plan to buy in > 1y". But I do not really plan on getting one. They still seem prohibitively expensive and with XP OS I doubt it would be of much benefit.

Main priority concerning SSDs is price. From what I gathered it is the controller in them which is the expensive bit.
This makes the larger drives more affordable, but I only use about 50GB.

If the SSD makers put a cheap controller in a drive with reasonable lifespan I would be interested. Silence is more important than speed.

[AuraAllan]

"Yes. I have an SSD in my PC"

[sub]

Hi,

No ssd for now, was too expensive and old computer inside.

but i'll buy one in Q4 when Intel goes to 25nm, bigger and cheaper

[CA_Steve]

These polls are interesting, but a little simplistic.
<snip>
Why so curious?

Last question first: Mostly, just a wild hair. SPCR readers are a diverse crowd. After reading about people buying multiple TB's of storage, I thought I'd get a snapshot on storage capability and use. Plus, it's interesting to know what percentage of the SPCR crowd has taken (or plan to take) the leap to SSDs.

The poll module in this bb is simplistic, which leads to just top tier questions. When the results are tabulated, perhaps more detailed questions can be asked. I could have used a branching poll and drilled down to separate capacity by use, etc. But, I think the response rate would be lower/too low to pull out any conclusions. YMMV.

[fumino]

30gb vertex. got it on sale, so the price v performance curves swung into the buy zone.

[rpsgc]

"Yes. I have an SSD in my PC"

My name is rpsgc, and I support this message.

[bonestonne]

Prices need to be much more competitive with standard hard disks for me to make the jump.

Although I would like to see it in my computer as soon as it's monetarily possible.

[who1zep]

The only noise I heard from my stock Mac mini was a little tick of the hard drive, and now even that's gone!

[kuzzia]

Their sturdiness is definitely appealing for laptop use (and silencing the desktop of course).

When I run out of space (180 GB free out of 500), which will probably take several years, I'll buy a SSD. Never again, regular HDD for system use.

The same for my laptop, when it eventually breaks.

[Zargon]

a 30gb vertex in my server, and about to put a 60gb in my wifes pc when I ditch its POS g31 flaky mobo fora new gigabyte engergy saver g41 board

when I rebuild my gaming rig next year once the new chips start to launch, I'll get one for it too

[Cerb]

I've been sold on the technology since using a CF card that could only write at 7MB/s. I can't come near affording larger ones, now, though, and there's no way I could fit multiple OSes on a 30GB. Voted >1 yr.

[Modo]

I'm including an SSD in a new rig planned for late this year. It looks like the 80 GB Intel one, unless some revolution happens. My current PC had enough upgrades in its lifetime.

[Freeco]

I have an Intel Postville 80GB since a couple of months. Very pleased with it.
Last week I've ordered a Crucual RealSSD C300 64GB to be installed in my new HTPC.

So this week I'll even have 2

[chienpourri]

I have 4 ssd's in 2 machines (not counting the crappy stock SSD in my Acer Aspire One), one has 2x30 Vertex in RAID 0 and 1x60 GB Agility. The other has 1x60 GB Agility. I do have however a NAS with 2x1.5 TB in RAID-1 for all my pictures, music, steam, and VM's.

I agree that currently the higher capacity drives are still overpriced... but I see the prices dropping in a few months.

My next upgrade will be when they have SATA-3 drives as currently the newest generation saturate the SATA-2 max speed at around 280 MB/s.

And to anyone waiting to buy one for ANY reason, don't! Just buy a 30 GB to put your OS on it (enough to put Windows 7 X64, Office and your main apps) and keep your regular HDD for all your other files. A friend even bought one for his older Celeron 2.4 GHz with SATA-1 and he noticed a big difference!

[Buddabing]

I bought one of the new, inexpensive Samsung 40 GB drives for system use only. In my experience it has made quite a difference in boot time and in general system use. I'm very pleased with it. I think the cost was $120 or so.

[Kaleid]

I'll wait at least one more year since the prices are absurd.

[swivelguy2]

Agility 120 GB and it's [falsetto]awwwwweeeeesome[/falsetto]. Only have to spin up my 1.5TB F2EG to run backups and to watch movies.

[colin2]

Just to pile on: you can get a 32 or 40 GB SSD for around $100 now. In terms of dollars against difference in performance (using it as an OS and app drive) it's one of the cheapest upgrades I've ever made.

And for perspective, SSD $s per GB are now about where mechanical disks were 8 years ago. http://ns1758.ca/winch/winchest.html

[aztec]

getting an SSD and setting up a WHS box for storage and file serving has made a world of difference for me.

[ekerazha]

I've an Intel X-25M G2 80 GB from November 2009, it's great.