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Many have hear about SSD, but don't know if it's worth their price premium for the sake of speed while loosing drive space. Well here is a comparison
between HDD and SSD. The results speaks for themselves.

Test bed: HP mini 311 (netbook)
Intel Atom N270 @ 1.6GHz
3GB DDR3
Nvidia ION
Windows 8 Professional 32bit
Hard Drive: Toshiba 160gb HDD (MSRP: $65)
Solid State: Intel 120gb SSD (MSRP: $150)

WinSAT (HDD)
http://i46.tinypic.com/x9fm0.png

WinSAT (SSD)
http://i49.tinypic.com/6p0whv.png
SSD will get a higher score in WinSAT, 7.1 on a SSD compare to 5.3 on HDD


Crystal Disk Mark (HDD)
http://i48.tinypic.com/21yasg.png

Crystal Disk Mark (SSD)
http://i48.tinypic.com/16k87pk.png
Sequential as well as 4k read/write has jumped dramatically when it's on a SSD.

Real world test: (HDD/SSD)

Copy test (5GB)
HDD: 4min:39sec / SSD: 1min:30sec

Compression (1GB)
HDD: 23min:44sec / SSD: 18min:54sec

Extraction (1GB)
HDD: 55sec / SSD: 19sec

Shutdown
HDD: 27sec / SSD: 16sec

Startup
HDD: 27sec /SSD: 15sec

Program loading (various all at once)
HDD: 51sec / SSD: 34sec

Virus Scan
HDD: 2hr:15min / SSD: 1hr:13min

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UsagixKitsune

UsagixKitsune

nsɐƃıxʞıʇsnuǝ

Cool thread.

Rather than everyone agreeing how great SSDs are I thought I' point out some issues to consider other than speed.

Lifespan
SSDs typically don't last as long as traditional hard drives. I'm sure everyone has had a usb flash drive that's just died on them at some point. While those are massively inferior to the SSDs what we're talking about here, they're the same technology so they will die eventually (after a few decades?). The performance will also degrade up until that point; they progressively get slower with age and there's nothing you can do about it because it's a physical problem. Having said that, SSDs don't really crash since they have no moving parts so that's a definite +1.

Erased files
I don't think we have enough technical members here to get into a good argument about this so I'll just post the widely accepted points. When you delete a file on a traditional hard drive it is only erased when it gets over written by other data. This means if you accidentally delete a file you may be able to get it back. SSDs use TRIM technology which means the cells physically erase deleted data in preparation for it to be overwritten. Since this is a (retentively) slow process the drive does this automatically in the background. So erased files can't be recovered on SSDs. That might be good or bad :p It also means that if you fill up the drive entirely and then try to overwite something you'll see a massive speed drop as it tries to reset the cells of the data that needs to be overwritten before writing again.

Encryption
In addition to the above point SSDs use wear levelling. This means the logical locations are not the same as the physical locations of data. The only fair thing to say without getting into controversy is this screws with software encryption making it a little unpredictable and unpredictable is not a popular trait for a secure system.

I mean SSDs are great and I have one but it's apples and oranges in my opinion. You could replace all your hard drives with SSDs but I'm not throwing my HDDs away just yet.

For the life of a SSD and even a HDD, I say how long they last is based on luck. Some have a drive that basically last forever, while others will go out after a year or two. There are longer lasting SSD and that's based on the type of cell they use. SLC (single level cell) typically last longer, which is why they're more expensive, but is it guarantee they will last longer than other SSD? Probably not.

As for recover data from a corrupted SSD, one shouldn't have to go through this if they get in the habit of doing backups daily or use a backup software where you can
set a schedule and it will do it automatically. If a data is really important like family pics or a special event, then I suggest they be backed to more than 1 backup device.
For TRIM, not all SSD has this feature. SSD from the early days lack TRIM support, so when they're almost full, performance degrades and some even to a point it's even slower than a HDD. These type of SSD use GC (garbage collection) and it takes a long time for it to finish.
SSD these days now have TRIM which is sort of like garbage collection, it's faster and optimized the SSD so that it will perform like it's suppose to, even if the drive is almost full. In order for TRIM to work, all 3 components needs to support it. If one component does not support TRIM, then TRIM will not work.
1. Operating System-Windows 7 and 8, certain linux and OSX supports TRIM
2. SSD- the drive itself needs to have this feature, if not then it won't work.
3. SATA controller- some think that if the OS and SSD supports TRIM, then TRIM is working, well it does not. For TRIM to actually work, the controller needs to understand the TRIM command in order for it to pass it from OS to the SSD.
Windows 7 defragment don't support SSD, so it's strongly recommended that it's disabled on a SSD or else will reduce the SSD lifespan by half.
Windows 8 defragment has a optimized SSD feature where if all 3 components supports TRIM, then Windows 8 will send TRIM command to the SSD.
I also use a SSD just for Windows and programs. My files and other stuffs goes into the HDD. All you have to do is move the User folder to the HDD and setup a
junction link.

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UsagixKitsune

UsagixKitsune

nsɐƃıxʞıʇsnuǝ

There are two types of people in this world: those that do backups and those that have never had a hard drive crash on them ^_^

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