My home machine is reaching the 8yr mark, and I'm looking to put together a new build.

Has anyone got any experience of the benefits of SATA vs SSD for the main system drive. At the moment I'm pricing up, and a 500Gb SATA drive is still coming in cheaper than a 60Gb SSD, but I'm leaning toward the SSD more for the actual programs side of things.

(my data/media/etc will be stored on a seperate 1/2Tb SATA drive)

SSD drives for your OS install is like giving your computer crystal meth.

Yes. With a high end SSD you can boot Windows in <30s.

In terms of access speed, or in terms of it pulling it's own teeth out before robbing my DVD player?

Do you mean 'high end' in terms of manufacturer, or size, or spec?


(Am currently looking at a Corsair 60Gb)

You sure 60GB is enough? I have a 120 on my 15" lappy and only have about 20GB left after Adobe CS5.5 and a few games.

Spec. Not all SSDs are made equal. Check their read write speeds.

Hmmm, I'll need to take a look at exactly what is going to be on there. I don't think FL Studio (the main program this machine will be used for) leaves that big a footprint, but I could be wrong.


Would that be a 6.0Gb/s measurement?

That is a burst rate. You want to look at the read write speed. Lower end 80MB/s to higher end 500MB/s+.

Technical Specifications

Sequential Read Speed: 550Mb/s
Sequential Write Speed: 490Mb/s

ANY SSD is better than even the best HDD.
SSD are much much less likely to suffer sudden failure, so more reliable.
SSD use bugger all power
SSD produce no heat(!!)

Unfortunately Windows systems are full of bloat so a 32GB or 64GB SSD which is more than enough for even a hefty Linux install, might be a little small for Windows...
Bear in mind though that you don't HAVE to install applications in "Program Files". There's nothing stopping you having a 2nd "Program Files" on your HDD storage for larger applications.

The key thing with SSD is that as long as your page file is on there, everything will be RAPID. Paging memory to a SSD is many times faster than to HDD and this is why systems slow down. You don't need to store your applications and OS on a SSD. It helps, but the biggest performance boost by far is gained by just getting your page file onto SSD.

If you want the best "performance for money" ratio, buy a used 8GB SSD from a netbook! You can get one for a tenner on eBay! Then configure Windows to store it's page file on that drive ONLY. You should be able to get the entire Windows install on there if you are careful and don't just install all the options.

Final note for anyone reading this and considering SSD for any kind of server application:
I use a cheap 32GB SSD for the OS/apps on my Ubuntu server. The server is a general purpose "home" server, handling secure, safe file storage, remote backup of "on the move" laptops etc., media server for movies, audio and photos, VM server for use by me to run work projects on, download server (torrent, http etc.), print server, and loads more.
I originally had HDD boot partition, but since fitting the SSD, the performance is so much better. The system can sleep the HDDs when not in use (I actually have it set to sleep the raid pairs at different times so one disk sleeps after a short period of inactivity and the other after a longer period).
When a request (eg to play a film) comes in, the SSD is still active (no sleep mode) so can load up the relevant libraries and get ready to stream the content immediately. Obviously the relevant HDD still needs to spin up, but the initial loading of media encoding software and setup of FIFO's etc. can all be done before the drive is online saving a fair few seconds (really noticeable when staring at the TV waiting for the film to play!).

I wouldn't recommend buying one to replace ALL your persistent storage. You need to spend a LOT of money to get the required storage space.

No-one has mentioned this yet, but there is also another kind of drive. Have a look for a HYBRID drive. This consists of a spinning HDD (for capacity) **AND** A SSD (for speed). It's all self-contained and self-managing so there's no need for you to have to tweak which files to place in which storage area. The entire drive appears as a normal HDD on your PC.
Regularly-accessed files are promoted to the SSD section for speed automatically by the drive itself. Because it's self-contained, you don't need to worry about "trim" either.
Well worth a look if you need this for a laptop (not enough space/slots for TWO drives).

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
John

Depending on your application you probably want to use the SSD drive as scratch disk as well.

Mate, more information that I would ever need. Much obliged :-D

What's this mean?

Temporary swap space when you are working on files.

True, but note that Photoshop uses the "scratch disk" quite intensively, so this will age the SSD quite rapidly. Aim to have a shitload of RAM (cheap!!) and minimise the amount of "scratch" you actually need. Certainly ensure that PS is set to only use it when needed and not "by default".

Out of interest, do other applications use the term "scratch disk"? I've only ever come across it in PS.

Happy Christmas All!!

32GB :D :D :D

Bugger me that's rather a lot!!
What do you need all that for? Are you into some serious video rendering?