Sick of HDD's Dying So I Bit The Bullet
went and got me a SSD
Thursday, May 26, 2011 by starkers | Discussion: Personal Computing
I recently had to migrate my OS from one HDD to another due to the old one pretty much dying of old age [was probably close to 6 y/o], and now the drive I migrated to is playing up. The thing is, this newer drive isn't that old... probably 16 months and just out of warranty, so it is annoying. A lot of the time I can hear it thrashing and making unhealthy sounds, so I ducked out today and bought myself a 120gb OCZ Vertex 2 to house my main OS, which is Win 7 Home Premium x64.
Given the prices at local PC stores, I think that I got it at a pretty good price.... $229.00 AUD from an online trader who doesn't mind pickups. Yeah, I just rocked up at the warehouse, submitted my order via one of their terminals, and 5 minutes later I had the product in my hand. It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but I'm tired of the mechanical drives going guts up and hope this 'no moving parts' SSD is more durable
I haven't installed it as yet, being I have a few preliminaries to attend to first, but I shall be shutting down in the next few minutes to bung it in my tower. I plan to use Acronis to clone the OS over to its new home so I don't have to rewrite Windows or reinstall all my apps. Hopefully, it all goes smoothly and I save myself the time and pain of having to reinstall everything from scratch.
Anyhow, I'll post later to say how it all went. 
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Reply #42 Wednesday, June 22, 2011 10:13 AM
I've been thinking about doing that, though I'd probably get a couple of extra externals for backing up... in the event that if one goes the data on all of them goes.
Anyhow, I have 3 regular drives in my box and it's a thought... would speed up data transfers, etc.
Reply #43 Wednesday, June 22, 2011 10:16 AM
I'm not really seeing much improvement in boot-up either (maybe 5 seconds off ~20 seconds). More program starts and handling files, that's where I'm noticing a major improvement. Heck, even loading internet pages seem to go quicker, although that could just be imagination (it goes to ram, right?).
Reply #44 Thursday, June 23, 2011 12:00 AM
Win 7 on a regular HDD can take anywhere from 35 - 60 seconds to boot up, give or take, so if you're seeing boot times of 20 seconds or under with a SSD then you're laughing. That is a significant improvement. From the time I hit the power button to a usable desktop in Win 7, about 22 - 25 seconds... from the posting beep, about 17 - 18 seconds, give or take.
Yes, definitely, improved file handling and quicker response time for program loads, etc. I have a dual boot machine with Vista Home Premium x64 on a regular HDD, and I notice a distinct difference in speed between the two, whereas previously [to the SSD] there was little or no difference.
As for web pages loading faster, um, dunno about that one. Yes, the browser of choice would have quicker response times on a SSD, as do all programs.... and that is probably where you are seeing the improvement. Other than that, your ISP is generously chucking some extra speed your way.
Reply #45 Friday, July 15, 2011 9:14 PM
ocz vertex right up to the current models have know issues.
SSD drives should however last longer than mechanical drives and have the added benefit that if they die generally the cells still retain data. Like mechanical drives ssd drives will throughout their life write out bad cells.
The mechanical drive has a chance of working for 20yrs if your really lucky, an SSD will pretty much reach its read or write limit and die. SSD tech is more fallible than mechanical in theory. So plan to replace your SSD!!!! Raid 1 anyone?
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Reply #41 Wednesday, June 22, 2011 10:10 AM
I love my 180gb OCZ SSD as an OS boot drive
But I don't find it that much quicker on startup, only the shutdown seems faster (and I mean super speedy - only about 5 seconds!)