SSD SATA III drives? I'm thinking of upgrading my laptop to a SSD. Has anyone done this yet? They are a little expensive yet, but they claim to last and perform for 1,500,000 hrs or...

lgross1949 Loc: Arizona

I'm thinking of upgrading my laptop to a SSD. Has anyone done this yet? They are a little expensive yet, but they claim to last and perform for 1,500,000 hrs or more at ten times the speed of a normal hard drive. Sure would be nice to work or photos with!

L.

nviaches Loc: Brighton, MI

Yes, I have upgraded 3 desktops and 2 laptops thus far in my home network and the results far exceeded my expectations. I used cheaper Kingston brand ($79USD for 128G).

Trick is simply to load your apps and Windows on this type of drive, and use standard SATA for most storage. I use them for editing photos as it is much faster, then save final images to standard SATA mechanical drives.

Windows 7 machines now boot in 6 seconds, internet surfing seems quicker, and when you shutdown it happens in 4 seconds flat. Applications load lightning fast, and pics save and load very quickly. They are still too expensive IMHO for the sizes needed for large photo collections, but eventually prices will drop I would imagine.

Fat Gregory Loc: Southern New Jersey

I installed a 480GB SSD in an aging MBPro I use with Aperture 3 as a part of my photo traveling kit. The results exceeded my expectations. Remember SSDs have different thru put speeds just like hard drives. I learned the application issues at Other World Computing. Enjoy the perception of performance improvement... You adjust to it quickly and it becomes the new norm. Also remember that SSD performance slowly declines over time from wear! IMHO if you buy the SSD with s superior leveling approach the impact should be insignificant. FYI that is why the 480GB drive is a non binary number... It really is a 512GB base unit and the unassigned capacity is reallocated to active storage as cells fail. Winchester technology drives use the same approach, on a much smaller scale, as media defects are mapped out in manufacture and test.
Another SAD advantage is that they typically fail slowly, rather than catastrophically, typically resulting in a longer Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF).

lgross1949 Loc: Arizona

Those are encouraging comments, Thanks! I broke down after I posted this thread last night and ordered the Samsung 250 gig SSD. So, now I'm excited to see the results. I will house the existing 360 gb unit and use it as an external USB drive. It's only a 5400 rpm unit so, I should notice a lot of difference. At the same time I'll be going from 1 gb of RAM to 4 so it should be an entirely different machine.......I'm hoping.

L.

ted45 Loc: Delaware

lgross1949 wrote:

Those are encouraging comments, Thanks! I broke down after I posted this thread last night and ordered the Samsung 250 gig SSD. So, now I'm excited to see the results. I will house the existing 360 gb unit and use it as an external USB drive. It's only a 5400 rpm unit so, I should notice a lot of difference. At the same time I'll be going from 1 gb of RAM to 4 so it should be an entirely different machine.......I'm hoping.

L.

A hard drive is mechanical therefore it has a predictable failure point. The average failure of a hard drive under normal office usage is 5 years.

An SSD is electronic with no moving parts. The average predicted lifetime under normal office usage is 50 years.

The SSD is faster and it's only enemy is static electricty. I saw a demo video where the SSD was dropped on a road and run over by a car. Didn't look to pretty but it still worked.

You did the right thing.

Fat Gregory Loc: Southern New Jersey

Note: average and mean are two different things. The M in MTBF is mean and indicates than half of the devices will have failed before that calculated point in time. The distribution of that failure profile can be assumed but not accurately predicted... Average is a different metric and is not used in Reliability computations. Electronic and Mechanical and Hydrid Devices all have Reliability standards established and measured... Note a Winchester Disk is a hybrid device with both mechanical and electronic components.
You did the Right Thing but SSD's do fail and will fail and the MTBF is the projected time when 50% have crapped out, so keep your back up strategy active!

Fat Gregory Loc: Southern New Jersey

Note: I'd like the source of the 50 year average statement... IMHO those oats have been through the horse once!

papayanirvana Loc: Kauai

I had a 500Gb SSD die after 2 years... actually not dead, just lost all data and wants to be re-formatted.

I guess we live in a world filled with static electricity.

lgross1949 Loc: Arizona

Hope you had one with the 3yr. warranty! I notice most of them have either two or three year.

L.

papayanirvana Loc: Kauai

hehe... the drive is worth maybe $60...

I had 300GB of images, animations and website source files (5 years of stuff)

lgross1949 Loc: Arizona

I will use my old HDD (350 gb) to back my important stuff and I always burn my photos to DVD's and file them.

It would kill me to loose that much stuff! :(

papayanirvana Loc: Kauai

It's a common misconception that burned digital media's shelf-life is infinite. Unlike pressed original DVDs and CDs which are near invulnerable to degradation, burned media have a relatively short life span, typically between 2 to 5 years depending on the quality of the media and the handling of the discs. The problem is material degradation and general misuse of the medium. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and DVD-R, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. Over time the dye begins to break down and fade. This degradation process can result in the data "shifting" on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam. Once this degradation begins to occur, there is little that can be done to stop it. There are, however, several things you can do to increase the lifespan of your burned digital media.

ted45 Loc: Delaware

Fat Gregory wrote:

Note: I'd like the source of the 50 year average statement... IMHO those oats have been through the horse once!

The source is the warranty book I have received with my OCZ drives. The average I stated is based on my experience building computers since 1978 and numerous test reports. Until 2011 when I retired I trained over 1,000 computer techs in building, designing, and repairing computers.

The specs for drives are stated as MTBF, the specs report the number of read/write operations performed before failure. Simple math can convert average read/writes in a week to number of years. The numbers are not absolute, just predictions. I have seen drives fail in a week and some last ten years or more.

Yes, SSD drives do fail. As I said their primary enemy is static electricity and like any other drive, power surges. Most people don't bother to get a decent UPS to protect their machines.

I just tried to help with some simple advice and now you want to get into a pecker measuring contest. WTF!

Fat Gregory Loc: Southern New Jersey

I have no interest in measuring any pecker... I hold a patent on the Winchester technology disk drive and managed manufacturing and engineering for 450 million units give or take a few. I do understand reliability prediction any measurement and was simply trying to keep things accurate for the sole benefit of the original post Hog.