Get an Solid State hardDrive (SSD) today!!

[offroad]

So I finally drank the koolaid and ordered an SSD. This is a replacement or additional hard drive for your computer that has no moving parts. You use cloning software or detailed instructions to copy your old hard drive to the new one. Literally ten times faster performance on your computer.

Total price $100 for all the parts and shipping for a 120gb drive.

It's like I have a new computer. Everything is blazing fast.

Many are commenting that they are now upgrading their old PC systems (need win7 or newer) and feeling no need to ever upgrade the computer or laptop again. Last best upgrade.

---

I used the Paragon hardDrive to SSD migration software for $15. Saved me hours of messing about. From SSD in the shipping carton to running system took one hour.

 

[kyonu]

I agree. I use an SSD in both my laptops (work and personal), and they are ridiculously fast. they also use very little power, and make no noise. They are worth it, but $100 for a 120GB is a bit steep--you can find good sales and get them for as low as $60 (which I did twice! Woohoo!)

Just beware XP users: XP has horrid SSD drivers, and the performance with Win7 and Win8 has been reported to be more than twice as fast just because of the driver support.

 

[offroad]

Kyonu - drive, plus hardware mounts, plus cables, plus shipping, plus software all combined get you near $100 but yes, you can buy just the drive for $60 and make it fit with free duct tape and hack experiment software.

---

There is always $10 to $20 more in parts when working in a computer.

 

[kyonu]

I understand that, but if you're replacing an HDD, typically you don't need to upgrade any other hardware pieces, especially in a laptop. Using a desktop, you typically just use the same hardware as the 3.5" HDD. Now if you're upgrading from IDE, which many XP computers have, then most likely will need a new cable. But you also don't need hack software on XP if you don't want it. I was able to buy just the SSD for my laptop and that's all I needed. (but I'm also using Win7 and Win8)

 

[offroad]

Stupid win7 or win8 license costs $100 by itself. Does LINUX have SSD drivers ? Maybe take a winxp to SSD and Linux is a path?

 

[caseyc]

Good to know prices are falling. When I first checked out the new drives a few years ago on laptops, they were very expensive and for small drive sizes. Actually, I'm going to wait longer to upgrade because I'm used to having hard drives at least 750GB, so 120GB seems...well, small, at least to me. I prefer terabyte drives, but that may take awhile longer, I'm sure. After years and years of being an early adopter of buying ever larger storage drives, I think I've finally learned my lesson. Just to give you an idea, the first very 1GB size CF (Compact Flash) card for my DSLR high end digital camera cost nearly $1,000 more than several years ago. Nowadays, a 1GB CF card costs peanuts. I have literally spent thousands of dollars on constantly upgrading the size and speed of my Compact Flash cards over the course of the last decade. Heck, even a measly 2GB SD (Secure Digital) card for my pocket digital cameras cost $200 a number of years ago. So after being a sucker and guinea pig for so many years, I now prefer to wait until the price falls to a level for the size that I want. Hard drives for computers is no different and is also subject to Moore's Law.

Moore's Law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

 

[Willy]

One thing to keep in mind re. older computers is that they most likely have a relatively slow SATA or PATA interface , which will reduce throughput to/from the SSD. Still, a lot faster than a mechanical HDD, but won't see the same gains as when used with something that has, let's say, SATA 3.

One of the major benefits, IMHO, is the shockproof nature of SSD's. No head crashes and lost data from bumps 'n spills.. great for a mobile lifestyle. ..Willy.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

There's something new for people with only one drive bay in their laptop.

It's called the Western Digital Black 2.

It's a single 2 1/2 inch drive that contains BOTH a 120 gigabyte SSD AND a 1 terrabyte mechanical hard drive.

The computer sees the SSD as the C drive and the hard drive as the D drive.

Amazon is selling it right now for a little over $200.

Regards
John

 

[minimotos95]

those hybrid drives are a great option if you only have one drive bay or you want a ton of storage, i believe seagate makes one too.

in regards to linux on solid state drives you want a distro built on the 3.9 kernel or newer to take full advantage. from what i hear even the older kernels run very nice once you get it set up.
android is a linux OS that's designed for solid state storage.

if i had an i7 extreme and a couple nice GPUs i would get an SSD but my quad core and IGPU is my bottleneck. i'll wait until prices drop to dirt cheap or i have at least an FX8350. of course i care more about power than speed.

i like the program Clonezilla, but i have even done partition cloning with Gparted without issue

 

[kyonu]

Well, you don't need a super computer to benefit from an SSD. Anything that has to load on the PC utilizes the SSD, and that includes windows booting, shutting down, launching applications for the first time (to put them into Memory), etc. I have an SSD in my lady friend's laptop, and it's a basic A8 AMD CPU with 4GB memory and integrated graphics, and it nearly doubled her performance (offline--online is all bandwidth from your ISP.)

 

[minimotos95]

a SSD doesn't help me with editing and rendering HD video, transferring data from one HDD to another or multitasking, it helps a little on games if they are installed to the SSD. for the most part those tasks are all limited by my CPU, GPU, and 8gb of ram.
i don't need to boot in 3 seconds or for programs to open instantly. i can wait the extra few seconds for the hard drive to search and read.

SSDs do have advantages other than speed though, they are more shock resistant and draw significantly less power than even the WD green drives. for those reasons i will likely just pick up a 64gb when the price drops to about $25, just for my boot drive.

 

[offroad]

I use my computer as a DVR for various shows. The SSD improves it's performance for DVR activity significantly.

 

[Ballenxj]

I want to learn more about this! Thanks for bringing it up.