SSD Experience?

Hey guys, just writing to ask if any of you have any thoughts/opinions on using an SSD as your primary drive for your workstation? I know quite a few people that have made the switch on their laptops, and in most cases these are their main computers. But I don’t know anyone personally that uses an SSD as their primary drive on a workstation. I’ve got my workhorse PC up and running, and the drive has been clicking recently, so I’m backing stuff up just in case it decides to die on me. So I’ve been thinking about making the switch to SSD and using a regular drive as more of a larger storage device. Any thoughts, for or against the idea?

I’m seeing some great reviews in terms of speed. But I’m also seeing a lot of people complaining about stability. With some saying their drive just crapped out after a few months. And since there’s no moving parts, there’s usually very little warning that it’s about to go. Also worried that these have a limited number of reads/writes and again it could hit that mark and die without warning.

I use CORSAIR Force GT [CSSD-F240GBGT-BK] and works well.

Overview :

You probably already know that solid-state drives are fast. With up to 85,000 IOPS and read speeds of up to 555MB/s, Force Series GT is on another level. Whether you’re building the ultimate gaming PC, a monster of a video or photo editing workstation, or you simply crave serious solid state storage performance, this is the SSD you want.

Specifications :

  • Backward compatible with SATA II and SATA I
  • Microsoft® Windows® 7, Vista®, and XP; Macintosh OS X; Linux
  • Operating temperature : 0° C to +70° C
  • Storage temperature : -20° C to +85° C
  • Operating Humidity : 10% to 90% RH (0° to +40° C)
  • Maximum Operating Altitude : 3,048 m (up to 10,000 ft.)
  • Maximum Non-Operative Altitude : 12,192 m (up to 40,000 ft.)

I have a 240GB OCZ Vertex III working as a dedicated disk cache for Ae.

If you’re putting one in a Mac, you need to make sure to get hold of Trim Enabler. Mac only allows it’s own brand of hard-drives to have Trim enabled. Trim enabler changes that for you without you having to get your paws mucky in Terminal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/37852/trim-enabler

I’ve read the reviews and heard that people have had problems, but from personal experience so far so good. I’ve only had the thing installed for three months though, so who knows. The drives have a three year warranty, so I guess the manufacturers are relatively confident in their sticking power. When I’ve returned failed mechanical drives I’ve always found the service prompt and without question, so I hope the same applies here. The estimates that I’ve heard from pundits with no vested interest are 7-10 years under a fairly steady load. For me, that’s fine. I have lots of hard drives that are that age and still working, but none that I use anymore. Simply because the march of technology makes them obsolete after about 5…whether obsolete connectors, too small or too slow or too cheaply replaceable with something better.

I haven’t taken the plunge and made a system SSD yet. I’ll probably give the first one another 6 months first. I’m going to put one in my laptop though and see how that fares.

I like to look at it this way. If the thing saves a day of work in its life, then it has easily paid for itself.

But don’t stop backing up in triplicate just yet. :slight_smile:

Thanks guys, Felt I’d be sure to backup often if I were you. I’m a big fan of OCZ’s hardware, so I went looking to them first for drives, and they seem to have more than average negative feedback regarding drive failures on Newegg.

I’ve been looking into this one, as it comes with a transfer kit and it’s got a number of solid reviews. The same drive without the transfer kit, has over 400 reviews and it still maintains a 5 star rating.

I was going to initially use is as a scratch disk, but since I haven’t been using AE as much as I would like in recent months, this is going to be mainly the system disk. Small and nimble. Oh and this is for a Windows 7 machine.

I used both OCZ and Corsair GT. All I can say is stay away from OCZ and get a Corsair GT.

My system is on Intel SSD X25-M 120 gb drive.
Flying like a rocket!

Use a SSD 500gb from the apple website and it is amazing. I have had zero problems in the past 11 or so months!

Interesting reading, SSD will be my next upgrade, and I found this some weeks ago.

Crucial C300 and m4 SSDs works great for me around 1 year.

Best Regards,
Andrey

I have OCZ Agility 3 120GB and so far I can tell it was one of the best investments. After two feeks I already felt a little slowdown and then found out that my TRIM support still didn’t work. After enabling AHCI in bios and installing AHCI drivers everything works fast as light :slight_smile:

I have had an OCZ SSD for the past year and it is working perfectly so far(crosses fingers). It’s hard for me to use a regular hard drive now since the response time is very noticeable. I can turn on my computer and have After Effects running in about 30 seconds. I just have my most used programs on it right now.

SSD are monster power.

I went for it and bought the Crucial 128GB model. Hoping the transfer kit works and allows me to move my entire main drive over without issue. I lost my Windows install disc and don’t feel like having to start completely over, so fingers crossed. Should be arriving tomorrow.

Just got a Asus N73 laptop in which i will install a SSD into as well, it’s gonna be my first try to replace the dvd optic bay with a hdd caddy and install the SSD. If any of you have any tips or warning i would surely appreciate it :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh and i am using a OCZ Vertex 2 for almost a year now and it stood by me day and night, no issues and fast as light.

Got the SSD in the mail today and didn’t get to installing it until just now. I was afraid that the cloning process would be a pain as most reviews on the site were saying that the transfer cable and cloning software was worthless and they ended up having to do a clean install. Took me about 15 minutes and I had my entire main drive cloned onto the SSD. Swapped out the drives and it booted right up in about 20 seconds. Updated the firmware on the drive and this thing is FLYING. This is my first real experience with an SSD, and I’m completely blown away… Makes me want to upgrade my video card though…

Im thinking about exactly same process: to buy ssd and clone system partition from old hdd to new ssd.

Mark, which software you used for cloning?

Edit:
Or maybe… can I simply attach old and new hard disks to another computer and just copy/paste everything from old to new drive (of course correctly formatted ssd)?

Hi,

what about OWC?Does anybody got a OWC SSD and want to share some experiences?
Thanks

Using SSD for a system drive for over a year already and had a disk crash. My first SSD was the corsair F120 120GB. It worked fine for 14 months and crashed. Since it has 3 years warranty I got a new one, and also bought OCZ Vertex 4 128GB for a system drive and now using the Corsair for After Effects CS6 disk cache. Try to get a disk with as much IOPS as possible. The Corsair had only 50.000 IOPS, but the new Vertex 4 has 120.000 IOPS which means that it will last longer. Hope that this information helps.

I’m actually loving my Crucial but getting really worried about a crash. Reviews show many people happy with the same drive for many years, but I also read that SSD’s in general can crap out without any warning. Where as with a regular drive you usually can hear it going bad over time.

But since I love it so much, I’m thinking about buying a new one soon, and then keeping a monthly ghost image going on a regular drive just in case something decides to die randomly.

I ve my OS on a Corsair GT 480 , no more.
No extra files,pictures, nothing.
I use another 250 GB Corsair for Renders only(when jobs are done they will be moved).
My Whole files are on a 2TB 6gb/s raid.
2TB raid of time machine for medias and OS.
I try to keep my SSD with at least 3/4 space free.
I feel more confortable now, since I had some big crashes and lost data in the past.:wink: