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
What is the colorful circle?
Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
91–100 of 123 posts
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#92I'm using one of the 120GB Samsung SSDs that Apple ships stock in the MacBook Pro. It's definitely faster for things like program startup, etc. (many things start in less than one dock "bounce"), but otherwise not so clear. Sure wish Apple would ship the Intel drives. Perhaps they can't get a low enough price on them. Or, alternately, that Samsung would get with the program and do the kind of controller work required…
Why are you waiting for apple to ship it? Just go to a store, buy one, and install it to your laptop. It's not exactly hard, even if you are not a hw geek.
$900(or so) vs. $300 I paid apple for theirs, which still gives me a significant benefit compared to a non ssd.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
This way TRIM would be useful because you're deleting data a lot? Do you cope with that by running linux/win7 aside or do you use Disk Utility to 'free empty space' once in a while?
I haven't run into the problem yet. How do you ask Disk Utility to call TRIM? Does writing 0's over every free block actually have the same effect?
OS X does not support trim, so I'm not sure what jrnkntl is talking about.
How do you ask Disk Utility to call TRIM?
You can't.
Does writing 0's over every free block actually have the same effect?
No. (We might like it to, but apparently SSDs don't actually look at the data they're storing and thus it would cost more for them to detect zeros.)
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#94Timely - I bought an X-25 80GB on Sunday. Can't wait for it to arrive
Yeah, I just ordered a Corsair p128, should be here tomorrow or the next day. Cannnn't wait.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#95I'm still a little wary of the reliability of these drives. I think it's prudent to wait at least another half-year. It isn't the long-term lifetime of the memory itself, which is fine. It's the tendency of the drives to be dead within a couple months.
Go to newegg and sort the reviews by date on some of the most popular ones.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#96I'm still a little wary of the reliability of these drives. I think it's prudent to wait at least another half-year. It isn't the long-term lifetime of the memory itself, which is fine. It's the tendency of the drives to be dead within a couple months. Go to newegg and sort the reviews by date on some of the most popular ones.
Smart move. I got bit last Dec with my 80gb Intel X25m completely crapping out on me. The drive stopped being recognized and despite a week of troubleshooting, and trying to restore, it was completely lost.
However, the next drive I bought was an 80gb Intel X25m. The speed difference of these drives are truly amazing
Buy yeah, I now back up my drive to an external disk.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#97Those 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.
5gb was just about enough 10 years. Different times, different size requirements. People do more with computers nowdays.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Personally, I can only watch one TV show at a time...
Sure, but if you're making a TV show or the like, it's not unusual to be compositing multiple video streams. TV companies have massively expensive hardware for this of course, but this will be a real boon for anyone who makes a living with multimedia.
Professional video editing has developed workarounds for that problem as far back as the 80's. Basically they do the editing on a low-res version of the footage (it's called an "offline edit"), then export it as an "Edit Decision List (EDL)" and then the big computers crunch on it overnight using the original, hi-res footage and produce an "online" edit. Companies like Avid sell specialized servers that have an in-built LCD screen on their case so that you can see the programme as it is being processed.
Online editing is still quite CPU intensive so I don't think that SSDs alone will change that workflow but it might still help somewhat at offline editing.
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first generation of the Intel SSD's contained halogens so Apple couldn't use them. The new ones are halogen-free, so it might be they show up in future revisions of the MBP.
That's retarded. Stop kissing up to Greenpeace and give me my SSD, Apple. :(
It's not retarded.
You make a false assumption that halogen-free directives are about being green. It's as much about safety as anything else:
For some applications there is a concern that halogenated plastic materials will release corrosive and toxic gases if ignited in a fire. The corrosive element of these gases has the potential to damage electronics wherever the smoke travels, and the toxic element can be potentially hazardous to persons if they cannot easily evacuate from the area.
Applications where corrosion potential is of particular concern include communications data centers and phone switching stations with large amounts of expensive electronics. As a case in point the fire called “the worst disaster in telecommunications history” occurred on May 8th 1988 in a Hinsdale, IL Central Office facility for Illinois Bell. The fire cut local service to 35,000 suburban Chicago phone customers and was estimated to have cost many millions of dollars in recovery cost. In the after effects of the fire the central processor of the phone switch, which was not directly involved in the fire, had to be replaced reportedly due to the effects of acid corrosion.
The toxicity of smoke is of highest concern within enclosed spaces where means of escape by persons are limited; examples include mass transit rail cars, ships, and Offshore Oil and Gas platforms. There have been several tragic fires that have occurred involving transit vehicles over recent years that have brought heightened concern to this issue. In a February 2003 incident, news reports of a fire involving two trains in a Daegu, South Korea subway station told of how toxic fumes and heavy black smoke prevented firefighters from making a quick rescue of those trapped. 120 were killed and many others injured in that incident.
http://www.gocsc.com/uploads/white_papers/E47B142616A84C3F90...
Re: Coding Horror: The State of Solid State Hard Drives
#100When the Intel X25 SSDs first came out, IMVU bought them for every engineer in the company. From a cold boot, Visual Studio starts in half a second. Subversion got dramatically faster. Boot times are a fraction of what they were before. Some of my computers are cpu-bound on disk operations now. If you run an engineering team, make the investment.
Specific numbers (that I used to push for their purchase at IMVU):
Cold-disk grep of the entire codebase: HDD 110s, SSD 7s
Cold-disk svn no-op update: HDD 140s, SSD 14s