Laptop Hard drive has died...

Now thinking of going SSD,

The laptop is regularly backed up on a NAS.

Would you?

Yes!

I used an SSD in my netbook for a while and it flew!

The drive is now in my desktop as a boot drive mainly (128gb) and it boots up in no time.

They are really coming down in price now.

Phil

No, but simply because they are far too dear at the moment.(GB per GB)

If money was no object then sure.

Yes, without a doubt one of the best computer upgrades you can buy. They are finally starting to get down to a more reasonably price, £150 ish for a 250ish gig drive now.

Yeah, I would. I made a similar leap with my desktop recently when I could finally buy a 128GB SSD for <£100, and I don't regret it at all. The computer is quicker, and also quieter, as the spinning disk that's in there just for mass storage doesn't get touched half the time so just spins down after a while. Plus it's not doing a lot of noisy head seeking.

Without even thinking about it! Just about the best thing you can do to a modern computer

I would. I'm thinking of replacing the drive on my old laptop for a SSD for the performance boost it can give older kit.

Keep an eye on UKhotdeals.co.uk SSD deals pop up there most days.

i.e. http://www.hotukdeal...ry-dabs-1253181

128Gb Kingston SSD for £60 from Dabs

http://www.dabs.com/products/kingston-128gb-ssdnow-v200-sata-6gb-s-2-5--solid-state-drive-7V53.html?src=2

Prices ramp up steeply if you want a lot of storage.

Edited 29 June, 201214 yr by Aspman

Thanks for the replys and your help!

Aspman - Thats the one I have just ordered!

Adam

only possible issue i can think of is if your laptop is running XP as this doesn't support trim natively otherwise you should be golden.

Yes, best upgrade I've ever made, ever.

I'm currently on SATA-3 SSD's and enjoying 550MB/s read/writes.

Boot times are mere seconds, game loading times also mere seconds. Working with large images in Photoshop is an absolute boon (14 Megapixel SLR camera taking RAW images...)

Love them.

Next laptop I get will have one or I'll install one. Current HDD only read/writes at about 11mb/sec

Or how about a Hybrid Drive - Conventional / SSD combined. Only Seagate do them at the mo, but the other manufacturers are coming on board this year.

Much cheaper per gig than true SSD and only slightly slower.

Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 2.5" internal hard drive - 750 GB + 8 GB SSD memory, SATA 3 (6GB/Sec) - £108 + delivery

http://www.pixmania.....html?srcid=369

Edited 29 June, 201214 yr by Trilogy2k

I have been using a ssd as system drive in my main PC for 18 months. Biggest step in performance you can make to a PC in my experience. They are getting cheap enough that I may pop one in my NetBook.

Chris

I would. I'm thinking of replacing the drive on my old laptop for a SSD for the performance boost it can give older kit.

Keep an eye on UKhotdeals.co.uk SSD deals pop up there most days.

i.e. http://www.hotukdeal...ry-dabs-1253181

128Gb Kingston SSD for £60 from Dabs

http://www.dabs.com/...7V53.html?src=2

Prices ramp up steeply if you want a lot of storage.

This Kingston isn't rather a "performer" - I'd go somewhere else.

I'm currently on SATA-3 SSD's and enjoying 550MB/s read/writes.

Have you ever tested it? Or you've only copied speeds claimed by manufacturer ?

Another thing is - not sequential speeds matter but random ones. Speeds you mentioned (seq) are easy to achieve with traditional HHD (in RAID0). But these random speeds - whatever the configuration of HDDs, whatever quick they are they will never in thousands of years match SSD.

Just to briefly explain - your OS and many files are rather small. Therefore random reads can be something like 17MB/s- 35MBs @4KB (value-good SSD). They are nothing like speeds you mentioned and such high speed are only achievable when you work with large files (say you move divx).

But still these speeds are way superior to random speeds of HDD - that s why you...

Boot times are mere seconds, game loading times also mere seconds. Working with large images in Photoshop is an absolute boon (14 Megapixel SLR camera taking RAW images...)

Love them.

... see exactly this .

I did some test SSD vs HDD, different configs some time ago. Can show some results - they are rather interesting

Or how about a Hybrid Drive - Conventional / SSD combined. Only Seagate do them at the mo, but the other manufacturers are coming on board this year.

Much cheaper per gig than true SSD and only slightly slower.

Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 2.5" internal hard drive - 750 GB + 8 GB SSD memory, SATA 3 (6GB/Sec) - £108 + delivery

http://www.pixmania.....html?srcid=369

I've never tried them but current PC platforms (LGA 1155 Ivy Bridge) has a special socket for mSSD on mother board. The reason for this is to treat this SSD as a "cache" for a HDD and in result you get a hybrid, similar to what you mentioned.

A year ago I'd say - not wort the money but now when the prices of HDDs went through the ceiling it's an interesting alternative. However I'd only consider it if laptop was my only PC in my household.

Not reliable enough yet. With an estimated life span of just 3 years, it's simply not good enough yet to take the plunge.

Not reliable enough yet. With an estimated life span of just 3 years, it's simply not good enough yet to take the plunge.

absolute rubbish.

I've got a ssd life app on my desktop which is on all the time and using photoshop and estimates 12year lifespan.

Also have 4year old laptops at work that came with early ssd drives and these are on 24/7 and are absolutely fine.

By far the best upgrade you do to your pc.

Not reliable enough yet. With an estimated life span of just 3 years, it's simply not good enough yet to take the plunge.

Not like you average desktop hard drives are more reliable.

Yes, sub 10 second boots ftw

Depends what you're doing, btu my advice would be a small SSD device for your OS/aps, but set it up so it's not written to much and a big hard disk to keep for content, data and pagefile etc.

absolute rubbish.

I've got a ssd life app on my desktop which is on all the time and using photoshop and estimates 12year lifespan.

Also have 4year old laptops at work that came with early ssd drives and these are on 24/7 and are absolutely fine.

By far the best upgrade you do to your pc.

No idea where your estimate came from, but either you paid a lot for an enterprise grade SLC drive or your estimates are miles out.

The early drives are SLC and they are a lot more reliable than MLC drives.

The people talking about TLC drives are currently having a giraffe as the write cycles are in the low thousands.

Edited 29 June, 201214 yr by cheezemonkhai

Depends what you're doing, btu my advice would be a small SSD device for your OS/aps, but set it up so it's not written to much and a big hard disk to keep for content, data and pagefile etc.

No idea where your estimate came from, but either you paid a lot for an enterprise grade SLC drive or your estimates are miles out.

The early drives are SLC and they are a lot more reliable than MLC drives.

The people talking about TLC drives are currently having a giraffe as the write cycles are in the low thousands.

Its a crucial M4 and it is only a boot/work drive and all the big stuff is on normal drives.

Not an estimate as they are standard Lenovo SSD's that have been running XP for 4 years (with no trim support either).

I have no doubt that my SSD will last a hell of a lot longer than 3 years. Added to the fact how much a 128gb ssd will be in 3 years is neither here nor there to me really and I will have upgraded my PC's and laptops a couple of times by then anyway.

They would probably outlast any standard hdd nowadays anyway.

Have also found this article on them:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20646

Crucial wouldn't confirm the write-erase limit of the m4's flash chips, but it does publish endurance specifications for the drive as a whole. According to the company, the m4 can write 72 terabytes of data over its lifetime. Amortize that over a five-year span, and you're looking at 40GB per day. Which is a lot. 72TB is also the same Total Bytes Written (TBW) rating that Crucial slaps on the C300. All flavors of the old RealSSD share this rating, but 64GB variants of the m4 do not. The new drive's smallest capacity point is limited to 36TB of writes, which still works out to 20GB a day for five years.

On an average day i would probably struggle to hit 1gb, call it 5gb for arguements sake and that works out at 39 years. Need i say more?

Not reliable enough yet. With an estimated life span of just 3 years, it's simply not good enough yet to take the plunge.

Where did you get it from? SSDs come with 3 years warranty, and their lifespan is calculated @~5 years at extremly harsh conditions. In normal conditions that apply to 99.99% of users SSD should last at least twice this like not more...

Not like you average desktop hard drives are more reliable.

+1

On an average day i would probably struggle to hit 1gb, call it 5gb for arguements sake and that works out at 39 years. Need i say more?

Nowadays when memory grows very quickly current 64GB SSDs will be very outdated in say 5-7 years - not to mention 39 years