Live data from Hacker News

Why are you not using a SSD yet?

debuggable.com

31–40 of 97 posts

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#31
I'm all SSD now. I've been telling my friends "This is as big as the floppy disk, get one".

Corsair SSD are like $250. And don't tell me you need 1.5TB in your desktop! You'd be a lot smarter to have 180gig hdd and all externals.

When I jump on someone's machine who has spinning disks and do a build in visual studio, I feel like time stopped. I keep moving the mouse "is it frozen? What's wrong?"

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#32
I'm using a SSD for the operating system and 'hot' files that I'm currently working on, and a harddisk for bulk storage.

This works very well, and is much cheaper than going 'full SSD'.

I do agree that SSD is the single greatest advancement of computer technology the last 10 years. It's such an awesome speedup. And nicely silent.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#33

I'm amused at how strongly the for/against sides are arguing in this thread. This is a case where the cost benefit analysis is quite simple. I used to start my day at work by doing git status on my project repos to warm up the disk cache, then go get coffee. Now I just dive straight into whatever's on my plate. Then there's the 20 seconds I save whenever I start up Eclipse. The 2 minutes I save on every reboot. It al…

The people who have them are for them. The people who don't are against them. I have yet to see a comment from someone who bought one and regrets it.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#34
I just switched my mid-2010 17" mbp to 300gb intel 320 SSD in the drive bay and a 7200rpm 750gb spinning rust seagate drive in the optibay (for mp3, infrequently used vms, etc).

Advice: do it, but make sure your homedir from your old drive, if you use file vault, is smaller than the new drive. Manually mounting the sparse bundle later to copy files is a big pain.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#35
As a developer, I'm more concerned about the lifespan of a SSD than a 'usual' user. That's why I didn't get a SSD, yet. I probably would, if the SSD will last long even when thousands of files change on a daily basis (compilation etc). But maybe my concerns are unnecessary...?

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#36

I'm amused at how strongly the for/against sides are arguing in this thread. This is a case where the cost benefit analysis is quite simple. I used to start my day at work by doing git status on my project repos to warm up the disk cache, then go get coffee. Now I just dive straight into whatever's on my plate. Then there's the 20 seconds I save whenever I start up Eclipse. The 2 minutes I save on every reboot. It al…

The people who have them are for them. The people who don't are against them. I have yet to see a comment from someone who bought one and regrets it.

I noticed that, I just don't understand why people who don't have them are so negative about them.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#37

As a developer, I'm more concerned about the lifespan of a SSD than a 'usual' user. That's why I didn't get a SSD, yet. I probably would, if the SSD will last long even when thousands of files change on a daily basis (compilation etc). But maybe my concerns are unnecessary...?

If it's replacement cost you are worried about, I think an SSD will last on average about as long as your system, assuming a max 3 year upgrade cycle.

If it's data preservation you are worried about (ie, if I wear it out and lose everything) then remember than flash memory, unlike spinning disks, is fail on write. That means that even if the drive dies, it can still be read. Compare to an ever so slightly misaligned platter getting a big scratch from a drives head.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#38
I'm on a "crippled" Macbook Air 11". 1.4Ghz C2D, 2GM RAM, and a 64 GB SSD. The SSD makes this machine snappier than my previous 2009 macbook pro. As far as living my life on 64GB, I have room for development (Rails), I keep my music on Amazon Cloud, and any movies on my linux server. It's my portable workstation and it zings along.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you need to do so under Windows either, just clone from disk 1 to disk 2, maybe fiddle a bit with the drivers, and you should be done.

IIRC good performance of ssd requires slightly modified formatting parameters. I'm not sure if this is still true, though. Anyway, with different block sizes etc. I'm not sure if cloning works, does it? On windows, unfortunately information essential to running an app is stored in the registry and the files are scattered over several directories. So windows users might have to reinstall the stuff -- which could turn…

This is what I've done to move an existing Windows 7 installation from an HDD to a SSD.

1. SSD preparation - format the SSD with the correct alignment:

    diskpart.exe
    list disk
    select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your SSD in list disk)
    create partition primary align=1024
    active
    exit
2. Ensure that the current OS is not using drive letters to boot:

    bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device boot
    bcdedit /set {default} device boot
    bcdedit /set {default} osdevice boot
    bcdedit /set {memdiag} device boot
3. Use PartedMagic to copy the partition from the HDD to the SSD.

4. Disable the scheduled defragmentation.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#40

Because I'd have to reinstall my OS from scratch, then all my apps, etc. It's a full day of work.

Yes, in the worst case it's a full day of work, but your computer will be much faster for _every_ day afterwards so the invested day is more than worth it. Just give it a try, I'm 99% sure you will not regret it.
Post reply on HN