SSD 's - Are They Worth It ? ? ?

[stormgol]

i currently have the gigabyte aorus gen4 1tb. they have just released the aorus gen5 series 10 000 1tb and 2tb, but they are impossible to find in stock.

https://www.gigabyte.com/SSD/AORUS-Gen5-10000-SSD-1TB#kf

 

[missingcurlybracket]

My 2008 ThinkPad T400 was pressed into service early 2019 and performance was night and day thanks to an SSD. Ran a cheap one in there and it got me through my last semester of uni just fine. (coding, browsing, couple VM’s paired with 8 GB of RAM.)

Any main drive these days should 100% be an SSD, even a cheaper one. Spinning hard drives are just fine for media, backups and games in my case.

 

[ripcord]

Don't get an SSD unless you'd like your computer to boot in < 20 seconds and your applications to open nearly instantly. Not to mention they last longer because of having no moving parts so they lose your data less often.

 

[y_p_w]

Absolutely. If you're retrofitting an older computer that has a SATA connection, there is no more cost-effective upgrade than an SSD. Most computers these days come with SSDs, especially soldered on or with SSD specific cards.

 

[y_p_w]

How old is your computer that it didn't come with an SSD from the factory?

I remember getting a computer for work in 2019. Still had a 1 TB hard drive. But that was supplemental and the main drive was a 256 GB SSD.

Heck - my Chromebook has an SSD and I don't know if any ever had hard drives. Only 36GB but that's plenty for web surfing and limited applications.

 

[y_p_w]

i currently have the gigabyte aorus gen4 1tb. they have just released the aorus gen5 series 10 000 1tb and 2tb, but they are impossible to find in stock.

https://www.gigabyte.com/SSD/AORUS-Gen5-10000-SSD-1TB#kf

I'm rather wary of anything that's not from a Tier 1 NAND flash company. Like Intel, SK Hynix, Samsung, WD/SanDisk, or Micron/Crucial.

 

[daves87rs]

Work pretty good!

 

[UncleDave]

It seems like SSD's are all the rage these days . Are they worth the cost and trouble of installing them ?

It will be like a new machine for you.

 

[tyman]

Don't get an SSD unless you'd like your computer to boot in < 20 seconds and your applications to open nearly instantly. Not to mention they last longer because of having no moving parts so they lose your data less often.

20 secs?!? What kind of 2.5" SATA SSD you using?!

 

[stormgol]

I'm rather wary of anything that's not from a Tier 1 NAND flash company. Like Intel, SK Hynix, Samsung, WD/SanDisk, or Micron/Crucial.

intel nand business has been aquired by sk hynix at the end of 2021. and yes it is micron, 232 layers. with 5 years warranty. same as intel and western digital and samsung. my gen4 7000 1tb gigabyte has been nothing but rock solid. a tank. and my previous gigabyte gen4 ssd 1tb has been going strong for almost 4 years. also come with 5 years warranty. no worries with gigabyte stuff. these gen5 gigabyte are going to be more than fine.

 

[Skippy722]

A spinning hard drive is like a 1995 Camry with the 4 banger. Infuriatingly slow. They are however more reliable than 1995 Camry’s (Camrii? Yes I’m still salty about my experience with a 95 Camry), but so are SATA and NVMe drives.

A SATA SSD is like a 2023 Camry with the v6. Capable of getting out of its own way.

A NVMe SSD is like a top fuel dragster. Blink and you’ll miss it.

 

[vavavroom]

How old is your computer that it didn't come with an SSD from the factory?

My 2018 Optiplex came with only a 1TB HDD. I have since added an SSD that I use as C drive for the OS and programs while a new HDD is my data drive. My 2020 Alienware laptop has a hybrid drive. Again, SSD for OS and programs, HDD for data. My old Dell Latitude is not suitable for SSD retrofit and has still the factory HDD despite a rough life on the road.

 

[RTexasF]

It seems like SSD's are all the rage these days . Are they worth the cost and trouble of installing them ?

Actually, it's the standard these days.

 

[Warstud]

How old is your computer that it didn't come with an SSD from the factory?

Not Sure

 

[MNgopher]

Worth it on the performance side? Absolutely!

As to the more reliable claim, just went through a warranty claim at 2 years old on a Samsung ssd. 5 year warranty.... and when they go, there is zero warning and most often the data is not recoverable (and was not in my case). Work IT says the same thing.

 

[y_p_w]

Worth it on the performance side? Absolutely!

As to the more reliable claim, just went through a warranty claim at 2 years old on a Samsung ssd. 5 year warranty.... and when they go, there is zero warning and most often the data is not recoverable (and was not in my case). Work IT says the same thing.

There are pros and cons of SSDs and hard drives with regards to durability. Hard drives can be subject to random failures too. I've had those, including head crashes and bearing wear. I remember one head crash where it was almost immediately apparent that my drive was gone. I suppose it might have been possible to recover it, but I didn't even bother because it would have cost at least a thousand dollars to try and rebuild the drive.

The "failure mode" for SSDs is different. Obviously they're less likely to suffer from damage due to physical shock, unlike a hard drive that could suffer a head crash. But there's the endurance issue and the possibility of the data fading if one just puts one away and hopes that it works in a few years. There's always the worry that there's charge leakage through a "floating gate". But using it will eventually result in the data being erased and/or moved via wear leveling, so hopefully it's "refreshed" before it fades. But yeah - there can be catastrophic random failures, like if the wear level tables get borked. No matter what, there should be a backup.

I remember some sci-fi TV series where a smart phone is recovered from a time capsule after make 300 years. Besides the fact that the battery would have likely leaked and damaged the device, they manage to create a suitable battery replacement using their replication technology. But they also have intact data on a device, and there is no way that the data is still intact after a few hundred years.

 

[dogememe]

Absolutely yes. Once you go SSD you won’t want to go back and using a computer with a mechanical HDD will feel like torture.

 

[bunnspecial]

For large amounts of inexpensive storage where speed isn't a primary consideration, spinning drives are still a viable option. There's a reason why I have an 8tb spinner in my 2019 iMac.

For pretty much every other use, though, SSDs are king. That same iMac I mentioned above mostly runs off a 2tb NVMe drive, and I'd not do it any other way.

It's been quite a few years since I had a main/primary computer that ran off a spinner. Even for some of my older sort of still used computers I've started either dropping in SATA cards for desktops(not always easy to get Mac bootable SATA cards, but they are out there) and using mSATA-IDE bridges for laptops. Even on an old ATA-100 or ATA-133 bus, an SSD can reliably saturate it(I typically measure Apple PowerBooks at 92mb/s using mSATA drives over an ATA-100 bus). Even on a slower bus, there's still a noticeable difference in random read, which is one of the biggest things that makes things feel faster.

 

[SubieRubyRoo]

SSDs have been the rage for 10 years now.

Longer. I got on board when OCZ was still in business and never looked back.

I still use HDDs only where very large (4TB+) quantities are stored. Any computer I build for friends and family is almost always just a single SSD with TLC memory. Your boot times will go from ~30 seconds on a 7200rpm drive to probably 6 seconds on a good M.2 NVME drive, and maybe 12 seconds on a SATA III drive, depending on your processor and if you do a fresh install and eliminate the crap.

 

[bunnspecial]

Longer. I got on board when OCZ was still in business and never looked back.

I still use HDDs only where very large (4TB+) quantities are stored. Any computer I build for friends and family is almost always just a single SSD with TLC memory. Your boot times will go from ~30 seconds on a 7200rpm drive to probably 6 seconds on a good M.2 NVME drive, and maybe 12 seconds on a SATA III drive, depending on your processor and if you do a fresh install and eliminate the crap.

I still have a 60gb OCZ drive that I bought new when I was in college-around 2009 or so.

The thing was horrendously expensive for its capacity-in fact it was one thing I "treated" myself to with a well paying summer job. I should say it seemed expensive at the time-I think it was around $200 or $250.

It landed in a Mac Mini 1,1 that had some niche uses but now is dormant because it can no longer do those jobs. The drive is still good although quite slow compared even to a modern low end SATA drive.