Experience with Solid State Hard Drives?

[Penguin]

Does anyone have any personal experience with solid state drives?
I use a laptop exclusively and this one has been around the world a few times.
As a result of rather tough usage, I find that I'm having to replace the hard drive every 1.5 to 2 years.
I'm okay with the laptop and really don't want to go to Windows 8 and help Microsoft debug their latest brain farts.
I'm considering going to about a 512GB SSD but want to hear more about reliability and power consumption.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!

 

[cluttonfred]

I have been using a MacBook Air with a 128GB flash drive in lieu of a traditional hard drive for about a year. Almost instant start up, fast response time, no noise, no heat, I love it. I don't think I'd ever go back to to conventional hard drive. I just bought a cheap Samsung Chromebook to add another internet surfing tool to the house--tired of fighting the kids for a computer. It also uses only a solid-state drive. Cheers, Matthew

 

[Stan V]

Larry, I just added a windows 8 laptop to my household. one click of the mouse and you can get rid of the default app page, it's no big deal. If your computer is more than just a few years old, I'd replace it. I found a Gateway 6g ram, 750g hard drive for $329. at Target. Plus my wife used her Target credit card for another 5% off. I like a new laptop also for the new battery. Although I was looking for an LED screen, I settled on the LCD just for the differance in $$$$$. My wife likes it. I'm stuck with the old windows 7. Stan V.

 

[GyroCFI]

Don't forget

Don't forget

Don't forget that the SSD's are still susceptible to failures just like conventional. Since they're basically high capacity/high speed memory chips they are very reliable under normal circumstances, however you mention that you are kind of rough with the laptop (didn't say how you are rough) which might not bode well for the SSD either.

Their specs and performance so far suggest that they are much better than conventional mechanical drives and when the price comes down to a reasonable level I'll be putting them in all our servers to boost performance and lower the carbon footprint/power consumption.

 

[brett s]

Fast for sure, but expensive - I've had one in my last couple of work laptops.

Keep in mind if a SSD fails the typical mode seems to be zero warning & everything gone with no chance of recovery. A conventional drive usually lets you know it's on the way out & gives you a chance to save stuff...

 

[Penguin]

Since apparently I wasn't clear, I'm not interested in a new laptop nor do I want to upgrade to Windows 8. And I don't want to run premix either. :argue:

Yes, I'm aware of the cost differential which appears to be 3:1 SSD:HD.

Good to know about no heat, Fred. Implies it is using less battery also. Is that consistent with your observations?

Thanks, Brett, that's useful information on the failure mode.
More than useful, perhaps decisive.

 

[WaspAir]

I'm typing this post on a 2008 vintage Sony super-thin laptop with all solid state memory. It has traveled all over with me (often bouncing around strapped on a rack on my bicycle) with no difficulties whatsoever. The only moving parts are the keys in the keyboard.

Battery life is excellent, but anything with a powerful processor will still consume power, make heat, and need cooling.

 

[brett s]

I don't trust any hard drive further than I can throw it - backups are your friend here regardless of what you use.

I haven't had any SSD's fail in my corporate environment yet but we don't have a ton & they haven't been around all that long either relatively speaking. With around 550 pc's of various flavors we see several conventional ones bite the dust a year, they tend to either be pretty early (less than a year) or pretty old (5+ years).

For a laptop one thing that is hard on conventional drives is moving it around or jarring it when they are spinning, the SSD's won't have this issue.

 

[Heather Poe]

I think that SSD disk (flash memory) technology is well proven. It is also used in digital cameras and smart phones. I am using a SSD in my Mac right now for the system ("C") disk. I know someone that ran some repeated write-read sequences and couldn't get them to fail, implying an unlimited service life.
Heather

 

[brett s]

I know someone that ran some repeated write-read sequences and couldn't get them to fail, implying an unlimited service life.
Heather

That's definitely not true - there's a write cycle limit, the type of memory used makes a difference on how high it is. These days SLC (expensive) is somewhere around 100,000 cycles, MLC in "enthusiast" drives (a lot cheaper) is maybe 3,000. But when you hit that limit those blocks should still be able to be read, just not erase & write anything new. For normal home use they should last several years.

That's not the kind of failure I was talking about earlier...

 

[n9gmr]

Since apparently I wasn't clear, I'm not interested in a new laptop nor do I want to upgrade to Windows 8. And I don't want to run premix either.

Keep in mind depending on the age of the computer other things can fail. You may end up putting more money into it than it's worth. I'm dealing with that situation with a desktop PC right now. When it works I use it, when it doesn't, I use another computer.
The Macbook Air is getting better and better, and will be my next computer purchase. The Mac OS is very stable, and if you really need to save something Dropbox and iCloud can be used for that purpose.

 

[RayPierce]

Since apparently I wasn't clear, I'm not interested in a new laptop nor do I want to upgrade to Windows 8. And I don't want to run premix either. :argue:

Yes, I'm aware of the cost differential which appears to be 3:1 SSD:HD.

Good to know about no heat, Fred. Implies it is using less battery also. Is that consistent with your observations?

Thanks, Brett, that's useful information on the failure mode.
More than useful, perhaps decisive.

How much capacity are you using now?
I would base my decision on how much I would typically use.
That might be a good way to lower your cost of obtaining one.
Why buy a 800 gig when you would never use more than 200 gigabytes?
Back up all your work files on thumb drives or use an on line backup service.
I am about to build myself a new computer and I plan on buying an SSD.

 

[Lee Scatt]

My hard drive is always in a solid state.

 

[Earthboundmisft]

:lol: That ain't what she said....