If you'd like to see exactly how a macbook pro with an Intel X25-M feels like, I made a video to give you an idea: http://vimeo.com/7057850
Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
51–60 of 123 posts
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#52Those complaints about the cost are hilarious. Either the person making them is a kid, or they have no "on-board" memory between their ears at all. The first 5 Gig HD I bought was a cheapo Maxtor at Staples and it set me back $500 about 10 years ago.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#53If you'd like to see exactly how a macbook pro with an Intel X25-M feels like, I made a video to give you an idea: http://vimeo.com/7057850
[deleted]
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#54Is there any estimated self-life comparison of SSD vs HDD for "average" computer usage? I wanted to migrate to SSD earlier this year - but I did some research the information wasn't very convincing. There seems to be a compromise in self-life and performance decrease (over time) for overall speed gain.
The performance decrease is mitigated or eliminated with TRIM support. The idea that you can wear out your SSD appears to be little more than urban legend at this point, as even with absolutely absurd and obscene levels of load, they will still last longer than your magnetic drives.
Oh, yeah, BTW, you do realize that it's not a question of whether your magnetic drive will die but when, right? No fair comparing SSDs to a hypothetical magnetic drive that will "never" die. If you're actually worried about data integrity, I'd trust a well-manufactured SSD over a magnetic drive any day, though whether or not the current crop qualify as "well-manufactured" is something that is hard to determine. (I have no data either way.)
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#55Those complaints about the cost are hilarious. Either the person making them is a kid, or they have no "on-board" memory between their ears at all. The first 5 Gig HD I bought was a cheapo Maxtor at Staples and it set me back $500 about 10 years ago.
Cost is and always will be relative.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#56I picked up a 160GB X-25M G2 for $450 on Newegg the minute they were posted - I have it installed in an otherwise-maxed 17" non-unibody MacBook Pro. It's an amazing and surprising difference, one that reminds me of my first dual-processor machine. It's not that your system feels faster when doing one thing (although it does), but that no matter how much you throw at it, it just doesn't slow down - a tremendous differ…
I have an OCZ SSD in my desktop machine and I can agree with you, the biggest noticeable difference to me is in moving and deleting large files. I can't remember the last time I had to wait on a file to do the whole moving/copying/deleting dialog.
I almost grabbed an OCZ, but I'd seen enough reports in their forum of odd problems with Macs that I decided to stick with the Intel.
When I bought the G2, it was reasonably competitive with the other drives - I think the pricing on competitive drives has come down quite a bit since then, but the G2 is fast and stable - I have no complaints.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#57Does anyone know much about the lifetime of an SSD like this? I keep reading that with all SSD's, you only get a limited number of read/write cycles before they go bust. I can't seem to find out if this is something that should concern the average user or if it's just some FUD.
The speed benefits look enormous but I don't want to have to go through the trouble of replacing this in a year or two.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#58Is there any estimated self-life comparison of SSD vs HDD for "average" computer usage? I wanted to migrate to SSD earlier this year - but I did some research the information wasn't very convincing. There seems to be a compromise in self-life and performance decrease (over time) for overall speed gain.
The performance decrease is mitigated or eliminated with TRIM support. The idea that you can wear out your SSD appears to be little more than urban legend at this point, as even with absolutely absurd and obscene levels of load, they will still last longer than your magnetic drives. Oh, yeah, BTW, you do realize that it's not a question of whether your magnetic drive will die but when , right? No fair comparing SSDs…
Either way, KEEP BACKUPS!
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#59Does anyone know much about the lifetime of an SSD like this? I keep reading that with all SSD's, you only get a limited number of read/write cycles before they go bust. I can't seem to find out if this is something that should concern the average user or if it's just some FUD. The speed benefits look enormous but I don't want to have to go through the trouble of replacing this in a year or two.
Intel claims you can write 100GB of data every day for five years before the flash burns out - I don't know what other companies provide as statistics.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#60Those complaints about the cost are hilarious. Either the person making them is a kid, or they have no "on-board" memory between their ears at all. The first 5 Gig HD I bought was a cheapo Maxtor at Staples and it set me back $500 about 10 years ago.
...how is this relevant to the fact that filling a server with SSDs is still much more expensive than with conventional HDs?