# Pros and Cons of SSD?



## mtb211

Hi everyone, I wanted to know what the pros and cons are of a Solid State Disk vs a normal 7200 sata II drive. As I have looked around online, it seems that SSD's only con is the price per gigabyte is much more expensive.. Would it be harder to permanently erase data on a SSD, is it a security risk?


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## Aastii

you are right in saying it is just the price that is the only con. You can use killdisk on an SSD as well as a hard drive, so eraseing data on an SSD isn't any more or less of a problem than it is on a hard drive


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## diduknowthat

Pro: *Blazing fast*, silent, lower power consumption

Cons: Expensive


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## Bacon

Doesn't their performance slowly degrade over time?


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## diduknowthat

Not that I've seen. Maybe in older drives, but newer SSDs has all the necessary commands (such as trim) to retain its performance.


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## tremmor

Im curious also.  What size are some of you buying. these big ones are expensive. Im just wondering because im looking. 
maybe 80gig. do i need higher for operating system and a few immediate programs i might use. then maybe put everything else on a internal secondary drive. How are you using it.
thanks


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## diduknowthat

tremmor said:


> Im curious also.  What size are some of you buying. these big ones are expensive. Im just wondering because im looking.
> maybe 80gig. do i need higher for operating system and a few immediate programs i might use. then maybe put everything else on a internal secondary drive. How are you using it.
> thanks



I have a 60GB drive and I'm only using 30 gigs of it. I currently have windows 7, photoshop, MS office and MW2 installed. All other programs I install on my secondary drive. All my documents and folders are mapped to my secondary drive too (Pictures, Music etc).


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## tremmor

Ok thanks......count me in. i will get one. take my time shopping.


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## Aastii

Bacon said:


> Doesn't their performance slowly degrade over time?



I don't think so, but to be fair on the consumer market they are relatively new. Although it may not have been shown yet, it could be that they degrade very slowly and the rate of degredation increases rapidly over time. I think they have probably been around long enough to show that now though


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## mtb211

All our new laptops come with a 256 MB SSD inside of them, my boss wanted to know what their flaws are


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## mtb211

Do you need any special utilities to run a SSD , can you still just use the normal windows defragmentation?


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## tremmor

good question. didn't think about it. do ya defrag it?


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## diduknowthat

There's no point in defragging an SSD because the seak time is practically instant. And the cons of a 256MB SSD? Well, it's 256MB...


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## Aastii

mtb211 said:


> Do you need any special utilities to run a SSD , can you still just use the normal windows defragmentation?





tremmor said:


> good question. didn't think about it. do ya defrag it?



you don't defrag it. It doesn't work in the same way that a stardard HDD does. Because fragmentation is just data spread around the platter, so it takes longer to get the bits together because you have parts moving, and because an SSD doesn't have a platter or moving parts, it doesn't get fragmented, so no need for defragmentation


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## Shane

diduknowthat said:


> Pro: *Blazing fast*, silent, lower power consumption
> 
> Cons: Expensive



+ low storage capacity on cons.

They're worth it though imo,You dont have to wait for anything to load...its usually instant or a few seconds at the most,I dont think i could ever go back to using a Standard 7200Rpm drive again,Thats how big of a difference it really is.


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## Twist86

I would like to add to the cons.

Cons
Power Consumption Higher (every labtop user I met with one admits to lower battery life after upgrading)
Price $2.25 to $4 a GB vs  HDD is .10 a GB.
Limited Writes
New Tech with new bugs/issues (limited now but still there)

The biggest issue I have is the max writes on a SSD. They give us numbers such as "40GB a day for 10 years" but I have seen poor souls plagued with this issue within 6 months of buying one.


Sadly I tried to justify the cost but I am waiting for the next generation to come out and drop the prices. The only real benefit a SSD would give to me is faster loading on video games. BTW Anyone have any news on the new 3rd Generation Intel Drives? I heard Q4 this year was going to be a lot of 22nm drives out dropping prices by 30%


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## bomberboysk

SSD's have finite read/write cycles. The biggest con though is the price, even the cheapest drives are over $1.50/GB, many are over $3/GB.


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## mtb211

I read about that, I read random writes are slower, then I read they are much faster... Out of all the articles Ive read on the net... seems solid state is the way of the future, no moving parts, no special utilities needed(no need to defrag_, Many articles say they break less but HDD can write more.. so its a bit confusing

maybe HDD's break before they can write their max ammount of times, lol hope that makes sense, im like 4 IQ points above from being down syndrome

thxx for all the input






Twist86 said:


> I would like to add to the cons.
> 
> Cons
> Power Consumption Higher (every labtop user I met with one admits to lower battery life after upgrading)
> Price $2.25 to $4 a GB vs  HDD is .10 a GB.
> Limited Writes
> New Tech with new bugs/issues (limited now but still there)
> 
> The biggest issue I have is the max writes on a SSD. They give us numbers such as "40GB a day for 10 years" but I have seen poor souls plagued with this issue within 6 months of buying one.
> 
> 
> Sadly I tried to justify the cost but I am waiting for the next generation to come out and drop the prices. The only real benefit a SSD would give to me is faster loading on video games. BTW Anyone have any news on the new 3rd Generation Intel Drives? I heard Q4 this year was going to be a lot of 22nm drives out dropping prices by 30%


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## tlarkin

diduknowthat said:


> Pro: *Blazing fast*, silent, lower power consumption
> 
> Cons: Expensive



This is 100% correct.  I don't think SSD is quite worth the price versus performance boost at the moment.   It is not like it gives you leaps and bounds performance over your standard SATA2 drive doing every day usage type stuff.


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## tech savvy

IMO and alot of others, the SSD is the best thing that hit the PC in a long time.The bottle-neck of the modern PC was the HDD. I have a OCZ RevoDrive 50GB SSD, which is blazing fast.I will list some pro's/con's.

Edit- RevoDrive reads at 550MB/s and writes at 450MB/s($239.99) The OCZ Vertex 2 reads and writes half of that, at $169.99. point, the extra $70 is worth the extra 200MB/s read and write speeds.

pro's-
Waaaay faster
longer life span
more reliable
no need for maintenance
lower power consumption
silent
no heat

con's-
people say price, but IMO...well worth it.


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## Hsv_Man

No cons buy solid state and don't debate


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## tech savvy

Hsv_Man said:


> No cons buy solid state and don't debate



110% agree.


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## Okedokey

Couple of points, but really only people that have experience with SSDs should comment, the rest is conjecture (particularly if negative).

The standard mechanical hard drive in a modern computer is by far the biggest bottleneck.

Windows 7 automatically disables defrag on a SSD and TRIM prevents any degradation.

The power consumption is significantly lower so don't believe otherwise

Much less noise and heat.

Ensure you have a backup routine as if the MTBF is much lower than expected it should still be under warranty.

Firmware updates are available for most SSDs to overcome any initial problems.


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## tech savvy

bigfellla said:


> Couple of points, but really only people that have experience with SSDs should comment, the rest is conjecture (particularly if negative).
> 
> The standard mechanical hard drive in a modern computer is by far the biggest bottleneck.
> 
> Windows 7 automatically disables defrag on a SSD and TRIM prevents any degradation.
> 
> The power consumption is significantly lower so don't believe otherwise
> 
> Much less noise and heat.
> 
> Ensure you have a backup routine as if the MTBF is much lower than expected it should still be under warranty.
> 
> Firmware updates are available for most SSDs to overcome any initial problems.



all you did is just repeat what i said on page two.


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## Okedokey

tech savvy said:


> all you did is just repeat what i said on page two.



where did you specifcally mention TRIM, Windows 7's handling of SSDs, warranties and back up routines?  I didn't read your post as I normally find them of little interest.  May be you will also find that your post is repetitive, however for a summary i included it all, plus the stuff that noone else mentioned, including you.


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## Shane

tlarkin said:


> It is not like it gives you leaps and bounds performance over your standard SATA2 drive doing every day usage type stuff.



Id have to disagree,You cannot compare a standard Sata 2 hard drive to a SSD drive!

Everything from Bootup speeds and system responsiveness has just been 10x better for me since switching to an SSD drive.

Im hoping that sometime in the next year or two that higher capacity drives will come out and hopefully not cost the earth...then i can install the OS + all my games to that.

A 250Gb drive would be perfect for me,But the OCZ Vertex 2 250Gb SSD are $630 USD


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## tech savvy

bigfellla said:


> where did you specifcally mention TRIM, Windows 7's handling of SSDs, warranties and back up routines?  I didn't read your post as I normally find them of little interest.  May be you will also find that your post is repetitive, however for a summary i included it all, plus the stuff that noone else mentioned, including you.



I wrote-"no need for maintenance" =  "Windows 7 automatically disables defrag on a SSD and TRIM prevents any degradation"
I wrote-"lower power consumption" =  "The power consumption is significantly lower so don't believe otherwise"
I wrote-"no heat" = "Much less noise and heat"
I wrote-"silent" = "Much less noise and heat"
I wrote-"longer life span, more reliable and way faster and" = you wrote-nothing

you just wrote it differently, thats all. Maybe you should start reading post before you post your own, you might be just repeating what someone else said.


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## tech savvy

tlarkin said:


> It is not like it gives you leaps and bounds performance over your standard SATA2 drive doing every day usage type stuff.



I have to strongly disagree there, its way beyond leaps and bounds.


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## Infinity_Plus

From my experience with SSD's, they are significantly faster, but the price-point is not worth the change-over unless you are (a) Getting a cheap, MLC SSD, likely without TRIM or (b) you have a decent cash flow coming in.

That's not to say SSD's are stupid expensive, but they are a bit pricey.  The significance is great, however, and they are generally worth the money.

Some SSD's are limited in their Read/Write/Overwrite capabilities.  Be sure to do your research before picking an SSD.  Some can only Read/Write so many times before simply failing out.


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## diduknowthat

tlarkin said:


> This is 100% correct.  I don't think SSD is quite worth the price versus performance boost at the moment.   It is not like it gives you leaps and bounds performance over your standard SATA2 drive doing every day usage type stuff.



But it is the usual everyday stuff that you see the biggest performance gains. I can boot up quickly and then immediately launch chrome, steam, aim, skype, thunderbird and winamp all the at the same time while loading startup programs. With my old hard drive they'll be a huge choke there. Photoshop loads in 3 seconds flat. The entire operating system is much more responsive.


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## Okedokey

tech savvy said:


> I wrote-"no need for maintenance" =  "Windows 7 automatically disables defrag on a SSD and TRIM prevents any degradation"
> I wrote-"lower power consumption" =  "The power consumption is significantly lower so don't believe otherwise"
> I wrote-"no heat" = "Much less noise and heat"
> I wrote-"silent" = "Much less noise and heat"
> I wrote-"longer life span, more reliable and way faster and" = you wrote-nothing
> 
> you just wrote it differently, thats all. Maybe you should start reading post before you post your own, you might be just repeating what someone else said.



When you become a mod, then you can tell me what I can write.  Since you are new to this forum i suggest you pull your head in.  I simply wrote what I thought.  You too repeated many points that had already been suggeted, however with some errors.



tech savvy said:


> pro's-
> Waaaay faster
> longer life span
> more reliable
> no need for maintenance
> lower power consumption
> silent
> no heat
> 
> con's-
> people say price, but IMO...well worth it.



secondly, there are some inaccuracies here.  There is no evidence for increased life span or realiability, in fact its probably the opposite due to the limited write / read cycles (called write endurance).  If you don't have Win7 (which you didn't specify one way or another) you will see degradation and they *do *actually generate heat, just less.  So don't be so cocky as what you wrote is actually different to what i said and is several instances inaccurate.


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## JBuck4DK

*SSD pros and cons*



Bacon said:


> Doesn't their performance slowly degrade over time?



It's worth noting that although the performance rate of SSD's usually start off very high and and stay at a good range, there can be a percentage slide within the first 6 months of use. There are some other factors that play a role in the general usage of SSD's though that should at least be known. For example, SSD's to have a finite life cycle of only so many erase/write cycles. 

With that in mind, fragmentation can exacerbate the problem to where the erase/write cycles can be increased where fragmentation is present. Despite that, frequent defragmentation of SSD's can invite a similar problem in reducing the life cycle further so there is a bit of a catch-22. I actually work as a Tech Support Rep for Diskeeper Corporation and they have some extensive information on SSD voulmes that cover information on performance and reliability metrics for these drive types. If you ever want, you can see some of our findings at: http://downloads.diskeeper.com/pdf/Optimizing-Solid-State-Storage-with-HyperFast-Technology.pdf


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## Okedokey

JBuck4DK said:


> It's worth noting that although the performance rate of SSD's usually start off very high and and stay at a good range, there can be a percentage slide within the first 6 months of use. There are some other factors that play a role in the general usage of SSD's though that should at least be known. For example, SSD's to have a finite life cycle of only so many erase/write cycles.
> 
> With that in mind, fragmentation can exacerbate the problem to where the erase/write cycles can be increased where fragmentation is present. Despite that, frequent defragmentation of SSD's can invite a similar problem in reducing the life cycle further so there is a bit of a catch-22. I actually work as a Tech Support Rep for Diskeeper Corporation and they have some extensive information on SSD voulmes that cover information on performance and reliability metrics for these drive types. If you ever want, you can see some of our findings at: http://downloads.diskeeper.com/pdf/Optimizing-Solid-State-Storage-with-HyperFast-Technology.pdf



Nice, welcome to CF.  Doesn't Win 7 take care of most of the issues by disabling superfetch etc and with (in my example) intel's toolkit?  I haven't noticed any performance losses yet.


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## kdfresh09

i agree that ssd are fast, but yes expensive.  im wondering though, what people think of 2 drives in raid 0.  i have 2x1 TB in raid 0 for a total of 2 TB, and my read and write times are both 250+mb/s.  doesnt it make more sence to just raid 2 or more drives together, giving you similar or better speeds (depending on how many drives are in the raid), much more drive space, and cheaper than a ssd?  sure i know that raid 0 posses a risk of data lose, but to be honost ive ran raid forever now and never had a problem.  i also have a ssd by intel the x25 40 gig, and im more happy with my 2 drives in raid 0 as it is a little faster than the ssd, and is literaly 500 times the space, and only 35 more than the 40 gig ssd.


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## Benny Boy

Like mentioned, ssd's aren't defragged. They will frag, but they don't take the performance hit. There are several other things that can be done to ensure an ssd's speedy lifespan other than 7's native tweaks.

I wouldn't say the con to a Mercedes is it's price because a Chevy is cheaper.

Drive for drive, the only place the hdd beats the ssd, is in the hdd's install/uninstall- format abilities. And that's managable.


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## JustinKranz

SSD's are a lot more expensive than a regular 7200rpm HDD but with reason. SSD's are a lot faster, a lot quieter, and if you are using it in a laptop it's very helpful because you won't have to worry about shaking your laptop because there isn't a spinning disc that will get scratched.

Overall, if you're thinking of putting it into a desktop, I would wait for the price to lower unless you're just getting a small size for your boot up.

If you want to put an SSD into a laptop, get the biggest size you think you will need because SSDs are a lot more beneficial in a laptop. (you can also buy a small SSD for your laptop and use a external for all your data).


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