SSD V HDD

[MattDLEA]

For normal primary school use, with the main bulk of stuff been saved on the server and nothing to demanding been done on the pc is it worth upgrading to a SSD or should we save money and stick to a HDD?

[ICTDirect_Dave]

SSDs are pretty cheap now and you'll get a decent speed bump on load times. Probably worth looking into. Give me a shout

[PotNoodleTech]

A 6 year old PC with an SSD will seem faster to use than a new PC with HDD.

[3s-gtech]

We made the switch a couple of years back, so all new PCs came with SSDs only (self fitted to save money). The difference was tremendous, and worth it. This is on older PCs too - refurbs. Modern i3 laptops here with SSDs are blazing fast.

 

I'm playing with some old convertible tablets at the moment, with a mix of HDD and SSD. The older ones with SSD (with a Core 2 Duo T5500 @1.66GHz) blow away the newer with HDD (with a Core 2 Duo P8600 @2.4GHz).

[zag]

Been using SSDs exclusively on Clients and Servers for a few years as well.

 

Couldn't ever imagine going back to unreliable mechanical disks again.

 

It is important you pick good SSD's though. They are not all the same for reliability.

[sparkeh]

Primary here and with our latest batch of PCs I decided to go SSD and its well worth the extra cash.

[zag]

Primary here and with our latest batch of PCs I decided to go SSD and its well worth the extra cash.

 

They shouldnt even be any more expensive these days.

 

We get them from verypc and the prices are similar to mechanical disks, although only 120gb insead of 500gb but who really needs that much on a client in reality?

[sparkeh]

They shouldnt even be any more expensive these days.

 

We get them from verypc and the prices are similar to mechanical disks, although only 120gb insead of 500gb but who really needs that much on a client in reality?

Yeah ours our @VeryPC machines as well

Perhaps I should have mentioned that the extra was peanuts really, yeah the capacity is less but I took a look at the disk usage of the machines that were being replaced and the 120gb was plenty.

[nicholab]

So would you upgrade a 3Ghz 1GB or RAM machine to a SSD and 2GB of RAM to run 7?

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I'd say 3GB RAM minimum really, especially as it's not that expensive.

[Danp]

SSDs all the way. I bought an average speed Intel 40gb on Friday for £19.98! That is silly money. More than enough space for a basic W7 machine.

[sonofsanta]

SSD SSD SSD

 

Makes a massive subjective difference in day to day use, for you and your users. Doesn't cost that much more on new build (all our new machines are bought with them now). It's cheaper to upgrade old PCs with an SSD than it is to replace them - we upgraded 150 machines this last summer for a total cost of ~£10k, instead of replacing only 100 of them for ~£40k. We're happy running 6-7 year old machines with SSDs in as they're that much faster and reliable.

 

2GB RAM minimum, as @ICTDirect_Dave says it's not that expensive, but then once you have an SSD in it's also not as great a tragedy if you run short as virtual memory on an SSD is worlds apart from virtual memory on a HDD, so if you can't get the extra RAM in it's not the end of the world (especially as DDR2 RAM for older machines is useless once that machine goes out, whereas you can scavenge and re-use the SSD).

 

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB drives here.

[visioN]

Got some Samsung 840 EVO's 120GBs and they're really good.

[3s-gtech]

So would you upgrade a 3Ghz 1GB or RAM machine to a SSD and 2GB of RAM to run 7?

 

P4 or AMD 64 or older? Nope. Core 2 Duo or AMD 64 x2 or newer? Yup. As Dave said, go for 3GB of RAM - if you have onboard graphics they'll take a chunk of that 2GB too.

[mac_shinobi]

I'd say 3GB RAM minimum really, especially as it's not that expensive.

 

SSD's for sure !!

 

why not just get 4gb for 32 bit builds and depending on what 64 bit machines are being used for either 8gb or 16gb with regards to RAM ??

 

Also on older machines I would say only suitable for machines with at least SATA 2 so 3gbps

 

The original revision of SATA was only about 1.5gbps so not sure how much of a benefit an SSD will give to a machine that only has the original version of SATA so SATA 1

Edited May 21, 2014 by mac_shinobi

[3s-gtech]

The original revision of SATA was only about 1.5gbps so not sure how much of a benefit an SSD will give to a machine that only has the original version of SATA so SATA 1

 

From experience, a massive amount. It's not the throughput that's most noticeable, after all. I have SSDs in several early C2D laptops with the ICH7 southbridge, where only SATA 1 was ever enabled. They still speed up considerably with an SSD, especially where the BIOS will allow AHCI mode.

[zag]

Yes the SATA connection speed is irrelevant in real world SSD usage.

 

Its all about the 0.1 second response time. Those transfer bandwidth graphs you see on benchmark tests are totally pointless metric in a normal computer use situation.

[Arthur]

The original revision of SATA was only about 1.5gbps so not sure how much of a benefit an SSD will give to a machine that only has the original version of SATA so SATA 1

From experience, a massive amount. It's not the throughput that's most noticeable, after all. I have SSDs in several early C2D laptops with the ICH7 southbridge, where only SATA 1 was ever enabled. They still speed up considerably with an SSD, especially where the BIOS will allow AHCI mode.

What @3s-gtech said!

 

We have some very old laptops that have an SSD inside a PATA to SATA adapter (so ~100MB/s max) and there is still a noticeable difference in terms of speed compared to a HDD. Most I/O is random reads/writes which is where SSDs excel.

[ericdano]

SSD put into a 2010 or 2011 MacBook Pro. Boot up time was 1:10.......now the boot up time is 10 seconds. Flat. After logging in, everything (Dropbox and other programs) load in about 2 seconds.

 

Cost? 256gigs for $100. Well worth it.

 

 

For normal primary school use, with the main bulk of stuff been saved on the server and nothing to demanding been done on the pc is it worth upgrading to a SSD or should we save money and stick to a HDD?

[mac_shinobi]

What @3s-gtech said!

 

We have some very old laptops that have an SSD inside a PATA to SATA adapter (so ~100MB/s max) and there is still a noticeable difference in terms of speed compared to a HDD. Most I/O is random reads/writes which is where SSDs excel.

 

That's good - although when I had a SATA 3 SSD ( 6gbs ) and was using it on a SATA 2 connection, I was only getting about 270mbps read / write ( give or take a bit ) and wasn't getting as much IOPS as I could have done had it been a SATA 3 Port / chipset that I was using it with.

 

Think it was advertised about 550 mbps read / write roughly, would love to get another SSD such as the 840 evo or pro and stick that in my 2011 mac mini which has SATA 3, I bet that would make it fly !!

 

I originally had an OWC 240 Gb Mercury Extreme Pro 6G similar to this ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/OWC-OWCSSDMX6G240T-Mercury-Extreme-Internal/dp/B0052UN7TY#productDetails )

 

Which I believe was only a 60k IOPS drive and was using it in a 2008 Mac Pro as my boot drive

Edited May 23, 2014 by mac_shinobi

[timbo343]

I did some testing with the Samsung 840 Evo SSD drives against the original hard drives in our machines and here are the results:

 

*Note.. the login times are low as we tested an account that had already created the local profile on the machine unless stated in a test. We do not use Roaming or mandatory profiles for the account which was tested.

 

HP 8000 (Intel Core2Duo E8400 3.0Ghz | 4Gb)

Power on to Log-in Screen:

HDD: 1m 34sec

SSD: 20 seconds

Login to Desktop:

HDD: 12 seconds

SSD: 5 seconds

 

Dell 755 (Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.20Ghz | 2Gb)

Power on to Login Screen:

HDD: 1m 19sec

SSD: 30 Seconds

A new user to logon to the machine (creates local profile): 40 seconds

Login to Desktop:

HDD: 10 seconds

SSD: 4 seconds

A new user to logon to the machine (creates local profile): 20 seconds

 

Dell GX520 (P4 3.00Ghz | 2Gb)

Power on to login Screen:

HDD: 1m 38sec

SSD: 43 sec

Login to Desktop:

HDD: 25 sec

SSD: 5 sec

Login to SIMS:

HDD: 1m 10sec

SSD: 16sec

 

Dell 390 (i3-2120 3.30Ghz | 4Gb)

Power on to login screen:

HDD: 56 secs

SSD: 19 secs

Login to desktop:

HDD: 11 secs

SSD: 2 secs

Login to SIMs

HDD: 13 sec

SDD: 6 secs

 

Lenovo M58e (Dual Core E5200 2.5ghz | 3Gb)

Power on to login screen:

HDD: 1 minute

SSD: 20 sec

Login to desktop:

HDD: 20 secs

SSD: 6 secs

 

Dell Sx280 (P4 2.8Ghz | 2Gb)

Power on to login screen:

HDD: 1m 47 secs

SSD: 45 secs

Login to desktop:

HDD: 25 secs

SSD: 13 secs

 

Gateway DC10 (Intel Core2Duo E7600 3.0Ghz | 4Gb)

Power on to login screen:

HDD: 56 secs

SSD: 24 secs

Login to desktop:

HDD: 12 secs

SSD: 8 secs

Login to SIMs

HDD: 15 sec

SDD: 8 secs

 

HP DC5100 (Intel P4 3.2Ghz | 1.5Gb)

Power on to login screen:

HDD: 1m 24 secs

SSD: 45 secs

Login to desktop:

HDD: 22 secs

SSD: 11 secs

Edited May 23, 2014 by timbo343

[zag]

That's good - although when I had a SATA 3 SSD ( 6gbs ) and was using it on a SATA 2 connection, I was only getting about 270mbps read / write ( give or take a bit ) and wasn't getting as much IOPS as I could have done had it been a SATA 3 Port / chipset that I was using it with.

 

The transfer speed (benchmark of copying a large 4gb file from SSD to SSD usually) is a pointless metric in the real world. Ask yourself how many times that would happen in day to day usage.

 

Its all about the random access file response time really, which is the same no matter what interface you use.

[mac_shinobi]

The transfer speed (benchmark of copying a large 4gb file from SSD to SSD usually) is a pointless metric in the real world. Ask yourself how many times that would happen in day to day usage.

 

Its all about the random access file response time really, which is the same no matter what interface you use.

 

I was using handbrake to convert MKV 1080P HD video to MP4 etc so reading / transcoding from original 10gb or more file size to an MP4 that I could use on my phone so I was effectivly copying from SSD to SSD

 

It mattered to me ...............

 

Haven't had an SSD for a long time now - which is a shame as it did make a big difference between a mechanical HDD and an SSD in terms of speed and responsiveness