SSD drives in education

[googlemad]

Has anyone here made the jump to SSDs in class / staff rooms?

 

This year I have put a proposal forward that for one classroom which currently has Pentium D machines in (About 4/5 years old) rather than replace all the systems at a cost of around £300 each (15 PCs so £4500) we buy 64GB Crucial M4 SSD drives at a cost of approx £60 each (£900).

 

Theoretically this should extend the life of the base hardware by at least 2 years, just trying to see if anyone else has gone down a similar route!

[AndiMarv]

Not exactly the same route, but I have installed some of the Momentus XT Hybrid Hard Disks in one or two places and found them to be excellent.

 

Being hybrid you get the real speed for most frequently used files, on windows boot for example, but you also have 500GB of storage.

[Danp]

I have had demo units from Stone computers and RM, both with SSDs. They are very quick as standalone even with AV etc installed, but we don’t think the speed benefits of them are worth the extra premium when running on our RM network.

 

As for laptops, we are still in two minds, we have some older Acer machines that are still in use and I am sure they would benefit from SSD, but then again the laptops are 4.5 years old and I dont know if its worth throwing money at them.

[Greenbeast]

Theoretically this should extend the life of the base hardware by at least 2 years, just trying to see if anyone else has gone down a similar route!

 

Don't get this. On a usual machine replacement cycle the hard drives don't get faster, so why would buying smaller, faster drives extend life?

Unless i'm missing something.

If you were to be replacing the processors and upgrading RAM i might agree.

[JonWPS]

I've started buying them as replacements for knackered laptop HDs for staff laptops, and really want to stick them in a suite of Dell Optiplex's we have, alongside a RAM upgrade, to get a couple more years out of them.

[sonofsanta]

Don't get this. On a usual machine replacement cycle the hard drives don't get faster, so why would buying smaller, faster drives extend life?

Unless i'm missing something.

If you were to be replacing the processors and upgrading RAM i might agree.

 

The thinking is - at least, my thinking is - that the biggest difference in performance right now is to be gained from moving to SSDs. It will speed program loading times (which is really what people will judge machines on) much more than a processor upgrade from Pentium 4 > Ivy Bridge would do.

 

With school networks having most files stored on a server, small SSDs are actually perfect - I'd say 80% of available HDD space in this school is wasted because computers just came with 250/320Gb as a baseline, even though only 40-60 will ever be used.

 

 

To answer the OP: my plan this year is to get my new machines with SSDs in, then going forward, just to replace HDD with SSD in the Core 2 Duo machines that'll be the baseline spec. Some rooms need a bit more grunt than that for Photoshop etc., and they'll be the rooms with the more modern dual cores. For most needs, though, we really have hit "good enough" territory.

 

Crucial m4s are excellent as well

Edited May 9, 2012 by sonofsanta

[localzuk]

Your 4-5 year old computers will not had SATA3, so your M4 SSDs will still only connect at SATA2 (or even SATA1 if that's what they have). So, your speed increase may be limited significantly by this.

[sonofsanta]

Your 4-5 year old computers will not had SATA3, so your M4 SSDs will still only connect at SATA2 (or even SATA1 if that's what they have). So, your speed increase may be limited significantly by this.

 

Random IOPS will be the main benefit for loading random DLLs etc.; I wouldn't expect there to be many big file transfers in and out of the C drive for the SATA 3Gbps limit to be too significant, not on a networked school machine.

 

Certainly worth getting SATA 3 going forward, mind, and USB3.

Edited May 9, 2012 by sonofsanta
spleling

[difinity]

Intel SSDs will be far more reliable than the Crucial M4 SSD. The Intel 330 is 60Gb and is about the same price if not cheaper.

[steveg]

I'd say pentium D machines are just a little too old to benefit from this. We've put some in some earlier core 2 machines and noticed a considerable speed increase. (we even tried crippling one with only 256mb ram and it was still pleasant to use on xp. May be best to get one and try them side by side to gauge what sort of benefit they will have.

 

Steve

[localzuk]

What CPU is it in those machines? It might be worth looking at some refurb machines with C2D's in?

[glennda]

I bought 300 Stone Desktops with the Crucial M4 SSD's last summer - have to say they where very quick! Not a bad failure rate to be honest - may 2 in 9 months that i can recall.

[rich_tech]

have you considered recycled machines in your itsuite, I was a tiny bit sceptical at first but it turns out to be an excellent choice ?

 

Most places give decent warranties and the machines work very well, school I work in has some dealings with ict-direct who are also on here, it works out £180 a base station for a decent specced base unit.

[pete]

I'm strongly leaning towards SSD for staff laptops, for increasing responsiveness and because one less moving part reduces the scope for Jeff, Destroyer of Laptops.

 

Whether I push them across the board depends on cost/benefit and whether manufacturers are charging way over the odds for SSDs.

[SYNACK]

Yea, the P4 stuff is probaly just a bit old to really get the benifit from this and it would not be worth spending money on them that could be spent on newer machines.

 

You'll probably have an older SATA interface on the motherboards and slower memory, it may even be DDR1. If they were Dual core Core2 and had DDR2 then it may be more worth it as these will handle a lot more.

 

You will get a speed increase but I think you will be better off with newer hardware which will be less prone to breaking from old age too.

[tekins]

All of our future computers will have SSD's in, even in a single core atom netbook, the difference is fantastic.

 

For the price difference they are the way to go.

[jamesfed]

We are going solely with SSDs in all new PCs now - staff PCs get 120GB drives and students are getting 60GB.

 

We aren’t going to be doing any HDD - SSD swap outs as most of our kit (that it might be an idea to do it in) is just too old anyway and are moving to more energy efficient CPUs like the AMD E-350s.

 

Servers are getting a SSD boost as well using PCI-E OCZ RevoDrives.

 

The biggest reason for us doing it is making things faster, I'm of an opinion that IT should 'just work' for our users even if it means spending a little extra.

[zag]

We use 40gb Intel SSDs here in all desktop machines and have done for a few years now. They cost 70 quid I think for the upgrade.

 

Anyone who cares about cpu or memory specifications is deluded. It brings nothing to a machine compared to adding an SSD.

 

We have over 250 site wide, most over a year old now. 0% failure rate.

 

Only problem is all these 500gb hard drives I now have!! no idea what to do with them!

 

Edited May 9, 2012 by zag

[zag]

Also cant wait to put these bad boys in a couple of servers

 

Intel's PCI-E 910-Series SSD reviewed: blazing fast, even under pressure -- Engadget

[dave.81]

I'm going to have to invest in a few to see what the big deal is.... Never used a machine with one in to be able to understand the hype about them. Still not sure i could justify 1/2 pc's less in the renewal scheme to put in SSD's.

[SYNACK]

We use 40gb Intel SSDs here in all desktop machines and have done for a few years now. They cost 70 quid I think for the upgrade.

 

Anyone who cares about cpu or memory specifications is deluded. It brings nothing to a machine compared to adding an SSD.

 

We have over 250 site wide, most over a year old now. 0% failure rate.

 

Only problem is all these 500gb hard drives I now have I no idea what to do with!

 

 

Deluded is a tad strong, dual core vs single core still matters a lot and so does memory bandwidth for certain things, and CPU instructions, and cache. Yes a SSD makes a big difference but that is not a reason to use a crappy old power wasting CPU if you don't have to. CPU speed is not a major concern but instruction set is. A 1.6 GHz Atom will run Windows 7 much better than a 2.4GHz Pentium. DDR2 is way, way faster at things than DDR and those differences become huge when your using stuff that chews a little more CPU power than word processing. Video editing, CAD, etc. sure not everyone does that but some do.

 

SSDs are not the answer to everything, they are just the component that finally caught up. At a certain point, a machine is just old and not worth the investment, it is better to just get something a little more modern.

[JonWPS]

I'm strongly leaning towards SSD for staff laptops, for increasing responsiveness and because one less moving part reduces the scope for Jeff, Destroyer of Laptops.

 

Exactly my reasoning.

[glennda]

I'm going to have to invest in a few to see what the big deal is.... Never used a machine with one in to be able to understand the hype about them. Still not sure i could justify 1/2 pc's less in the renewal scheme to put in SSD's.

 

They are not that much more expensive unless you go to the Likes of HP/Dell who will happily double the price of a machine to put an SSD in

[jamesfed]

They are not that much more expensive unless you go to the Likes of HP/Dell who will happily double the price of a machine to put an SSD in

 

Buy your own SSDs, swap them out and keep a few hard drives lying around if you need to do a warranty replace

[SYNACK]

Buy your own SSDs, swap them out and keep a few hard drives lying around if you need to do a warranty replace

 

Or use them (the un-needed SATA HDs) in the old machines for a speed and reliability boost while getting the real performance out of the SSDs in a newer machine.