building a new pc

[steve_earwig]

Probably like my old work laptop - so many security measures functionality ends up in the toilet.

Oh, and I think it's seek times you need to look at (although I'm sure we'll be getting a lecture shortly )

[OdinEidolon]

what is a ssd ?

As said, solid state drive as opposed to hard disk drives. Think about them like a huge pen drive or memory card with loads of optimizations and science behind.
They are several times faster for most uses than a normal hd, and are much more rugged. And expensive
Wiki will help

[sirwiggum]

Do the SSDs not have a set limit on read / writes, giving them a limited lifespan?

[steve_earwig]

That's what I read and it made me think about all the times I've defragged this machine and all the temp files, cookies, caches, blah-de-blah and all that bollocks. I guess you could just have the OS on the SSD and put everything else on other drives but wouldn't that defeat the object?

Is this when someone says Windows 7 on don't work like that?

[gumby6371]

I believe that SSD's are quicker to boot and open apps but the performance advantage tails off dramatically under actual usage, you might save a few seconds when encoding video etc but the price and storage capacity makes them more of a bragging point than actual useful component with current technology.
A 120GB SSD or 2-3TB of reliable SATA storage for the same money, I know which one I'd choose.
Lag when booting and opening applications is usually down to 50 things trying to go through the CPU/RAM all at the same time in which case an SSD will make next to no difference as it was never the bottle neck in the first place.
I'd be interested to read a review of an SSD machine after 6 months usage and see how the crap slows it down, format any machine and see how amazingly fast it suddenly becomes with a shiny fresh OS install

[OdinEidolon]

Do the SSDs not have a set limit on read / writes, giving them a limited lifespan?

Not that I know. And if so still the lifespan will be several years.
Modern SSDs have special softwares (garbage collectores, TRIM) inside, written to prevent them from clogging with small files, which is something that seriously degrades performance.

If you buy a modern SSD and load it with a modern OS (anything Linux or Windows 7 or the latest versions of OSX) chances are you'll never find it has degradated in an appreciable way. They clean themselves.
Much like a FAP but with a lot less trouble!!!

It's best to install the OS and as much programs as possible on the SSD. The use a cheaper HDD for storage. You'll thus have lots of space and a very responsive system altogether.


By the way the OS crapping after some months of normal usage happens only on Windows since it isn't build up brilliantly. Try a Unix machine and you'll find performance stays the same no matter what.

[mjb]

I believe that SSD's are quicker to boot and open apps but the performance advantage tails off dramatically under actual usage, you might save a few seconds when encoding video etc but the price and storage capacity makes them more of a bragging point than actual useful component with current technology.
A 120GB SSD or 2-3TB of reliable SATA storage for the same money, I know which one I'd choose.
Lag when booting and opening applications is usually down to 50 things trying to go through the CPU/RAM all at the same time in which case an SSD will make next to no difference as it was never the bottle neck in the first place.

My netbook with 3 year 7 day old XP install has improved MASSIVELY since putting a slow cheapo SSD in (Kingston V-series). Completely silent when the fan's not running, battery life is longer, stuff starts up quicker and swapping is no longer a huge issue. I don't think boot time's been massively affected because I've got services waiting on the network stack being ready before explorer starts. Perhaps 40s with the HDD, 30s with the SSD?

My work desktop also improved MASSIVELY since putting a set of SSDs as ZFS L2ARC and ZIL over the 2TB hdds, as well as a couple of separate ZFS pools. That's heavy database churning, big compiles, multi-TB data processing, oh, and Firefox which is for some godforsaken reason one of the biggest disk hogs on my system (as well as taking almost 18GB of active RAM at the moment). Must get round to building chrome...

I've been so impressed I'll likely be getting a pair of Fusion-IO PCIe SSDs in the near future, or whatever's the fastest thing around at the time

I'd be interested to read a review of an SSD machine after 6 months usage and see how the crap slows it down, format any machine and see how amazingly fast it suddenly becomes with a shiny fresh OS install

MJB's review: SSDs are awesome and worth every penny if you use them right and don't have an install full of crap.

Fresh OS installs (going to presume you're talking about windows, linux or OSX) are typically slower to boot than my working installs because of the amount of crap I haven't disabled.

[OdinEidolon]

as well as taking almost 18GB of active RAM at the moment

Wait, what?
What do you use Firefox for, and do you have thousands of tabs? I've never had more than 147 tabs at a time on my system (which runs chromium tho) and that used less than 1GB of RAM.

[steve_earwig]

That is a bit extreme, perhaps that's watching 150 videos on, erm, Youtube at once... And how on earth do you keep track of 147 tabs?

[FarmerPug]

see this thing about a fresh os install is this supposed to be done regularly and how do you deal with installed programs reinstalling everything then putting all the settings right would be a bigger inconvenience than a few seconds now and then

[steve_earwig]

It's not supposed to be done as a matter of course, all that happens is the HDD fills up with junk and the registry fills with half-uninstalled programs, links for files you've deleted etc. You need to get a few programs and get inside there to get rid of them. A fresh install is easier but, as mjb says, you've then got to spend a while making it work. I don't know if this applies to OS though, and I seriously doubt Linux has this issue.

[lozz]

My o/s as been on a year or so,
no problems so far,

im using 7 every other o/s ive used ive had to reinstall in less than 6mths,
all tho i prefare vista than 7,

only problem ive had so far is 7 dosent like the drivers supplied with my mother board,
it will Read them but when it comes to install, spits dummy out,

the drivers supplied are for windows 7

[steve_earwig]

Is this another 32bit/64bit problem? I've seen a few of them on forums.

Excuse me, I'm off to be degaussed & electrocuted...

[OdinEidolon]

That is a bit extreme, perhaps that's watching 150 videos on, erm, Youtube at once... And how on earth do you keep track of 147 tabs?

Well I have a Chromium extension named FreshStart in which I used to store all the interesting pages regarding the 406 before buying one. Just before signing for mine I had a look at them all. And that was 147 tabs.

[mjb]

as well as taking almost 18GB of active RAM at the moment

Wait, what?
What do you use Firefox for, and do you have thousands of tabs? I've never had more than 147 tabs at a time on my system (which runs chromium tho) and that used less than 1GB of RAM.

My netbook running Chrome's got about 50 tabs open, but ram util's only 160M (350M virtual) and it's been running for a couple of weeks
My work desktop running FF has about 50 tabs too, using 5GB (26GB virtual) and only been running for a day

What are the tabs at the moment? Mostly coding reference with a few monitoring nms tabs, a window full of ebay tabs and one full of 406oc tabs. Firefox it stupidly bloated and leaks memory like a sieve