I started with an Intel G2 SSD in my MacBook Pro, then I added an OCZ RevoDrive PCI-E SSD to my desktop PC. My work laptop has an Intel SSD, and I'm considering picking a few more up for my servers at home and my media center PC as prices plummet. I can definitely say that they make a noticeable difference in perceived computing speed, and I'd never go back to regular hard drives if given the choice.
Poll: Are you using SSDs?
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Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#12I actually meant 'server side', but if you make your living using a laptop/desktop then I guess that counts as production too.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#13I have a SSD on my Macbook Pro. Totally worth it. Definitely snappier in booting up, starting up apps, and any disk i/o-intensive operations. It's certainly noticeable.
Also, you don't need to sweat the higher price per byte, because more and more of my files (and I would assume yours?) are on the cloud every day anyways, so 256GB or even 128GB is fine for me these days.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#14I have 8GB RAM + an Intel SSD in my MacBookPro. There are very few physical reads - most of the data I require fits in filesystem cache.
When there are physical reads, the response time is awesomely fast. An IO is less than 1ms. For the drive included with my machine an IO was ~10ms.
It's response time (not throughput - as seen in many benchmarks) that makes you want an SSD on your desktop.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#15I've got an SSD in my dev machine. It's an earlier intel drive and I'm using WinXP. It has really fast read performance, making otherwise slow svn operations on my working copy effectively instant. The write performance is atrocious. When doing any significant writing, it tends to hang my whole system for 30 seconds out of every 90. I can't even move the mouse when it happens. Compiling does it, so I tend to do build…
WinXP has a poor I/O implementation that can hang the mouse if the I/O takes too much CPU. Vista and later have that fixed, as well as OSX and Linux.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#16While yes, I do use one in my laptop, I think jacquesm is talking about production use, which is quite different.
Correct, that was my intention, but it's nice to have the data either way. I thought 2010 would be the 'year of the solid state revolution', and even though there seems to have been a shift it's nowhere near as dramatic as I expected it to be.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#17My desktop and my netbook both run on Intel 40GB SSDs. Of course, the desktop also has two 1TB normal HDDs (Samsung F3s) for storage. / and /home are on the SSD. My netbook is the System76 Starling netbook, and my desktop is custom built. The netbook takes about 15 seconds from Off the the Web. The desktop takes about 10 seconds from Off to the Web. Launching Eclipse takes about 3 seconds (on the deskop; never tried…
Same experience here, got a 80MB Intel SSD for my desktop, and being able to start apps in windows the second login is completed is awesome. With a regular disk, you know you're waiting for all the background services and startup apps to launch before the app you actually wanted gets its slot in the I/O queue.
I did some tests on having my local repository on the SSD, but it wasn't substantially faster than my regular HDD, probably because working with it is sequential and heavily cached.
It will be nice when SSDs are price competitive enough to be the only storage in a desktop computer, if only for getting rid of the heat and the noise.
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#18My desktop and my netbook both run on Intel 40GB SSDs. Of course, the desktop also has two 1TB normal HDDs (Samsung F3s) for storage. / and /home are on the SSD. My netbook is the System76 Starling netbook, and my desktop is custom built. The netbook takes about 15 seconds from Off the the Web. The desktop takes about 10 seconds from Off to the Web. Launching Eclipse takes about 3 seconds (on the deskop; never tried…
Which model of SSD specifically? How much did you pay?
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#19My desktop and my netbook both run on Intel 40GB SSDs. Of course, the desktop also has two 1TB normal HDDs (Samsung F3s) for storage. / and /home are on the SSD. My netbook is the System76 Starling netbook, and my desktop is custom built. The netbook takes about 15 seconds from Off the the Web. The desktop takes about 10 seconds from Off to the Web. Launching Eclipse takes about 3 seconds (on the deskop; never tried…
Which model of SSD specifically? How much did you pay?
For both machines I use the X25-V, which cost around $110 each time. Here it is on newegg.ca: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168201670...
Re: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
#20I would absolutely recommend SSDs. It's one of the few times you can swap out a component in your computer and notice a performance boost. They are getting better very quickly though, so one big decision is when to pull the trigger. Every few months a new generation of SSDs with better firmware seems to come out. I've switched my laptop and home computer to SSDs.
Which SSDs can you recommend for your laptop and home computer?