What do I need to know about SSD HDDs?

VincentAC

I've not been paying too much attention to the complexities of building a PC for about 10 years so I've got no idea what the standards are now.

I'm thinking of getting a new HDD as a main drive in the desktop PC to replace the old SATA one. Is there anything I need to know before getting one?

Do they work with all motherboards (I'll be looking at the mobo serials etc when I power down later tonight just to be sure)? Are there any drivers or anything to worry about? Or is it just a case of unplugging the old SATA and plugging in the new SSD and booting into a Windows 10 DVD to install everything?

I know the price and capacity are a big difference but as I'm currently only using a 250Gb as the Windows/Progs drive I won't notice a difference.

Daren

I recently installed an SSD on a 6 year old PC without problem. Just switched over the old SATA HDD for a new SSD. No installing of drivers or owt. Restored a cloned image of the old drive on to the SSD and bingo! It's like a brand new PC. Fast as fook at booting up and loading applications.

Persuaded work to get me one for my newer office PC. Again did the same thing, swapped the drives over and restored a cloned image.

RetroTechie

Well it's almost all SATA these days except a few plug-in-extension-port style interfaces like mSATA. Which I'd stay away from unless you have a specific / good reason to use that.

Plain SATA comes in different speeds (1.5 / 3 / 6 Gbps), but most HDD's aren't fast enough that the interface they come with makes much difference. So it's a good way to save some € there - good / fast HDD with 'slower' interface.

SSD prices have dropped enough that even for low-end PC's they're often recommended as an easy speed boost. But when price is a concern (and you've already got an older / bigger HDD), common practice is to use a smaller SSD (like 64 / 128 / 250 GB) as boot drive to install the OS on, and keep data (music / photos / video etc) on a 2nd, larger, 'slow' HDD.

That OS / data separation is good practice anyway. Easier for backups / OS re-installs.

It's been said in many places that when they die, SSD's tend to die 'unanounced' (total controller board failure), whereas gold old magnetic platter HDD's tend to develop issues gradually, with more chance of winding up in read-only but still accessible state. If you don't bother with backups (like so many people :P ), something to keep in mind. OTOH if you have a good backup procedure, then if someone comes along and tosses your HDD in the Thames you shouldn't suffer any data loss, and this shouldn't matter. :)

Or that SSD's tend to become unreadable if data isn't accessed for a long time (especially with MLC based flash). Meaning that for uses where a HDD spends most of its time on a shelf for the next 10 years or so, good old spinning magnetic disk might be a better choice. But maybe that's more hearsay than reality, and a non-issue for current SSD's.

What's your main reason(s) to look for a new drive? More storage space? Have some backup? Faster boot times? Shorter wait between levels in games? Noise reduction? Current HDD acting up?

Grunaki

They cost M-O-N-E-Y! :P

Arjun

When I built my PC, I used a Transcend 128GB SSD as my primary drive and a 1TB 7200 WD hard disk as my secondary drive. Windows, development tools and some frequently used programs like Visual Studio etc are on the SSD. Games, data, and some odds and stuff that I seem to like lying around (no, not pr0n) etc are on the HD. It's been more than a year and the combination has worked very well for me so far. A 256GB SSD isn't a bad option nowadays.

jonesypeter

Go for the Samsung Pro range of SSDs. Always top of the reviews and around £100 for a 256GB on Amazon or eBuyer. Like Arjun I twin mine with a WD Hard Disk (4TB). Windows is on the SSD along with commonly used programs. Media is on the HD. Windows 10 and new Linux distros auto detect SSDs and change the appropriate settings. Just a reminder that they don't need a defrag.

Worth backing up as well. I choose WD again and back up to a WD myCloud device so I can access files whilst on site with clients. Then once a month I backup to a portable disk which stays with our neighbours.

VincentAC

RetroTechie wrote: »

SSD prices have dropped enough that even for low-end PC's they're often recommended as an easy speed boost. But when price is a concern (and you've already got an older / bigger HDD), common practice is to use a smaller SSD (like 64 / 128 / 250 GB) as boot drive to install the OS on, and keep data (music / photos / video etc) on a 2nd, larger, 'slow' HDD.

I've been doing that since XP 250GB Win/prog drive and a 1TB data drive. I'll be doing the same with the SSD one. I see no need to increase the Win drive size either as everything installed (well, except for steam games I'm not currently playing) is still leaving ~100GB free.

It's been said in many places that when they die, SSD's tend to die 'unanounced' (total controller board failure), whereas gold old magnetic platter HDD's tend to develop issues gradually, with more chance of winding up in read-only but still accessible state. If you don't bother with backups (like so many people :P ), something to keep in mind. OTOH if you have a good backup procedure, then if someone comes along and tosses your HDD in the Thames you shouldn't suffer any data loss, and this shouldn't matter. :)

Since having 2 drives I rarely bother with backups as most of my stuff is either easily reaquired, saved in the cloud or stuff that I haven't looked at in years so probably wouldn't miss. The only backup I can think of at the moment is all the game saves. ~400MB. I do have media on 2 drives already (one in the PC and another USB HDD purely for connecting to the Xbox so I can listen to tunes while playing and not get the messages about streaming music and playing online being a bad idea) so I don't have to bother ripping all the music again. 190GB worth of mp3s takes ages to rip from audio CDs :))

What's your main reason(s) to look for a new drive? More storage space? Have some backup? Faster boot times? Shorter wait between levels in games? Noise reduction? Current HDD acting up?

Main reason is to get faster load times on Windows and games. Noise reduction is a bonus but I think the main CPU fan is causing most of the noise. It's also to see how good they are before buying a new PC (something I've been wanting to do for about a year). If it's worthwhile getting a bigger one for data aswell or just stick with it for the root drive.

So it looks like I'll be ordering one next week. Thanks guys.

ewgf

SSD's are fantastic, and we seem to be long past the time when they were early, unreliable technology. But since price is still a factor with them, then for most people it makes sense to just have one SSD in their drive, and use that for Windows, and maybe some modern-ish games (since older games have much smaller files, and so load quickly enough anyway).

Then have one or more HDDs for all of your data and other games and stuff, since the HDD's are still much more cheaper per capacity. And video files especially are pointless to store on an SSD, since 99.9% of the time you'd be playing back a video (as opposed to fast forward or quickly rewinding it), and an HDD is fast enough to play the video, so an SSD's extra speed would be wasted in that case.

The difference an SSD drive makes to the Windows startup speed alone is worth the cost, I think.

I've not tried an SSD on a Windows XP system, but Windows 7 onwards knows whatever is necessary to use the SSD properly (TRIM and stuff, to lengthen the SSD's life-span). Oh, and don't defrag an SSD drive, as an SSD can't get fragmented, so de-fragging simply wastes time and adds wear and tear to the SDD drive. Well, technically an SDD drive does get fragmented, but it has zero affect on the speed, so it's a non-problem on an SDD, unlike with a HDD.


Edit: The reduced power consumption of an SSD vs a HDD is another factor in the SSD's favour, but it's only really relevant in a laptop, and since most laptops only support one hard drive (unless you can replace the laptop's optical drive with a second hard drive, kits do exist to make this easy, specific to laptop types), then unless you can afford to pay for a large capacity SDD drive then you'll have to settle for a lost in hard drive space if you do decide to replace the HDD with an SDD.

guesser

Saying Windows 7 knows what to do to use the SSD properly is a bit of an overstatement. Windows 7 supports TRIM and usually turns it on automatically for SSDs.

It doesn't seem to care about writing gigabytes of unnecessary data and mysterious temp files that have to be manually expunged though. To the point that this machine came to a grinding halt a few months back when the winsxs directory had ballooned to consume all the free space filling up the entire 59.6 gigs of C:\ ~X(

Bermondsey Bob

I seem to remember reading about a hybrid drive that sounded interesting. It's like a normal HDD, but has an SSD part (possibly as a partition) that worked out what programs and files were the most accessed and stored those on the SSD part for faster access. So, Wi n does boot files would be on there and say you used MAME, or Steam constantly, then the drive would move those to the SSD as well.

Also, because it was a hybrid drive, you could still have a massive amount of storage (2gb etc) without the need to run separate drives.

I'm sure that's how I understood it anyway. Sounds expensive too ;)

Winston

I built a new PC just over a year ago with an SSD. They just work like a spinning disc but are faster from your point of view. Plug in and go.

My machine is a dual-boot machine with the primary OS being Debian Linux for development and day to day stuff, and I have this nifty videogame launcher on the other partition called Microsoft Windows. Neither wanted anything special to run on an SSD. And I'm usually the first to to finish loading on a multiplayer Starcraft 2 session.

guesser

Bermondsey Bob wrote: »

you could still have a massive amount of storage (2gb etc)

2 GB? My speccy has more than that! :p

guesser

Winston wrote: »

I built a new PC just over a year ago with an SSD. They just work like a spinning disc but are faster from your point of view. Plug in and go.

Hmm. You forgot the part about checking the mount options so that every time a file is accessed it doesn't result in a write to the drive, and turning off all the pointless logging.
I think Debian 8 does set the noatime option automatically on SSDs now, but that's rather cancelled out by bloody systemd writing reams and reams of unnecessary debugging output to the syslog at the wrong log level and with no prefix so it can't be simply matched by rsyslogd either grrrrr.

dm_boozefreek

This thread made me laugh, not because it's actually funny, but because it actually reminded me just how out of touch I am with modern PC type tech. When I thought about it I realized I know nothing anymore. 15 years ago I could've got a pile of junk parts screwed and plugged it together and voila brand new PC. Now I'm scared to open mine up incase I can't remember how to put it back together.

I know nothing about motherboard and component requirements anymore, I have no idea how to replace any parts, I now know nothing about memory, or what I'd be looking for. I remember when I got my first PC you had to know the parity of your DIMM's and SIMM's. Do they even make DIMM's and SIMM's anymore? Is parity even relevant at all these days? I'm assuming no as I've not heard anybody mention it since about 1999 (not that I paid much attention then anyway)? :))

Everything I learned in College is almost completely out of date, I'm no longer comfortable with the PC I own, it stares at me menacingly mocking my cluelessness. Sometimes I think to myself why can't you just be an old Daewoo or Compaq with a 2.1 GB Hardrive, a Rockwell 56k dial-up modem, and 32 MB of RAM running windows 98? Then I'd own you like a boss bitch!

Also CAD terrifies me, not that I ever use it, or will ever need to use it again, but I got a Distinction in my CAD unit at college and to this day I still don't really know if I ever knew how to use it?....Or more to the fact how the hell I got such a high grade for CAD? Most of the time in the CAD Suite in college was sneakily playing deathmatches on Blood over the network when the lecturer had his back turned :))

Bermondsey Bob

guesser wrote: »

Bermondsey Bob wrote: »

you could still have a massive amount of storage (2gb etc)

2 GB? My speccy has more than that! :p

OK, massive storage when compared to standard SSD's ;)

Lee Fogarty

jonesypeter wrote: »

Worth backing up as well. I choose WD again and back up to a WD myCloud device so I can access files whilst on site with clients. Then once a month I backup to a portable disk which stays with our neighbours.

Although when they pack up within warranty, you have to either bite the bullet and lose the data or break the warranty so you can take the drive out to fix it. I had to do that within months of getting mine - although it's worked for years since then...

RetroTechie

@ dm_boozefreek:

Hehe, I feel you. But to summarize: details have changed immensely, overall process is still the same. Pick a set of constraints / requirements, select a set of components that work together & fit within those constraints, assemble, and then most work is ahead of you: software issues in whatever of 1001 shapes they come.

I put together a new PC about a year and a half ago to replace an aging laptop. Decided I wanted a current-socket AMD system, somewhat useable for light gaming, modular & expandable like a regular 'white box' PC, but otherwise as compact & low-noise as my budget allowed.

So I picked mini-ITX as case size vs. micro-ATX or baby-AT (loooonng ago ;-) ) I might have used before. And then researched what I could squeeze in there while not blowing my budget or requiring excessive amount of cooling (read: noise). Ended up picking an AMD A8-7600 "APU" (= CPU + graphics combined), 4 GB RAM, 1 TB 2.5" laptop HDD (the spinning kind :-) ), slimline Blu-Ray drive, a low profile CPU cooler (Scythe Kozuti), and -beside the one in psu- a single 12 cm. fan to double as system/CPU cooler. For reference: overall result has ~6.5 liters volume. Compare with size of whatever old PC you've got around... CPU is configured in the BIOS for 45W TDP to keep cooling requirements down.

Like it's been forever with PC's: assembling a set of parts is easy. The 'art' is in selecting a set of parts that works well together & makes optimal use of your budget to do what you use the PC for. Which (imho) really is an art of sorts, always has been, and includes software choices, physics (heat / noise), cost, and ergonomics.

guesser

Bermondsey Bob wrote: »

guesser wrote: »

Bermondsey Bob wrote: »

you could still have a massive amount of storage (2gb etc)

2 GB? My speccy has more than that! :p

OK, massive storage when compared to standard SSD's ;)

I still think you missed my point :p

VincentAC

dm_boozefreek wrote: »

I know nothing about motherboard and component requirements anymore, I have no idea how to replace any parts, I now know nothing about memory, or what I'd be looking for. I remember when I got my first PC you had to know the parity of your DIMM's and SIMM's. Do they even make DIMM's and SIMM's anymore? Is parity even relevant at all these days? I'm assuming no as I've not heard anybody mention it since about 1999 (not that I paid much attention then anyway)? :))

The last time I remember reading about paired simms was about 12 years ago when I was upgrading my A1200 :))