Processing Speed, Solid State Drives

[Larry Metzler]

Morning All, Looking for input on the processing speed diffrence between a standard hard drive and a solid state. Also you opinions on the pros and cons of either.

Thanks

[crazy^millman]

Solid State is the only way to go for your primary drive. I have Raptor 15k drives on my tower at home and Solid State on my laptop. The Laptop fires up quicker and processes files quicker. With the prices falling everyday it is almost not even worth worrying about. However I do run into those companies where management it worried about pennies while throwing out $1000 bills. If you gained 30 minute a day using Solid State over regular hard drive you would gain 100 hours on an average year. That is really 200 hours since that was 100 hours you were putting toward your next jobd. Take $50/hr as your programming rate in your company really really cheap, but that would be $10k in savings spending maybe an extra $200 on the Solid State hard drive. Yet those penny wise people worry about the extra $200 now. You can get Acronis or Norton Ghost and clone your regular hard drive you have now over to a solid state pretty easily.

 

Do a Google search about pros and cons Solid State drives and millions of hits you shall receive.

[GoetzInd]

Been running SSD's since '05 and have had no problems. Way faster launch and processing. All our files are kept on a server so storage isn't an issue.

 

Mike

[Jayson Kramer]

I run the SSD's on all my computers these days. still need to update two of my Laptops over but my main laptops and all of the main desktop in our home start with SSD's makes a huge difference on performance all around.

 

I am with Goetzlnd in the office run of the servers on the road SSD.

 

Also when selling to the company reread what Crazy stated allot of truth there.

[Larry Metzler]

Thanks for the input gentlemen. I will no approach the powers that be with a request. Crazy, I am fowarding your reply as I recieved it, I could not have stateted the position better

than you just did. Thanks all

[Larry Metzler]

1. I ment to say NOW approach the powerers that be. Whoops!
   

[crazy^millman]

Larry, I have run companies and dealt with my share of bean counters( not meaning to be disrespectful to those that do count beans ) so sometimes you need to state a business case for the business people and they get it finally.

[TK-32™]

Ron, you're the best @ putting wasted time into perspective.

I still remember when you said that a minute lost is actually two minutes lost because you could be doing something with the minute you lost in the first place.

[Guest]

It's insane to not be running SSD's for your boot drive at a minimum and at $600-ish for a 960GB SSD, capacity is not problem if you only have 1 drive bay and need a lot of storage..

 

My work rig has a 256GB SSD and the 3 laptops we have at home all have SSD's. 128's. They were like $95 at MicroCenter. COuld have probably got em for $80 if I bought 'em online. But the convenience was worth a few extra bucks.

 

There's 2 pieces of hardware that if my company were to not have bought for me (which they did) I would buy for myself - yes they is that critical and they are that good 1) SSD 2) 3D Connexion Space Navigator. I can put up with a lot, but I cannot put up with not having those 2 items.

 

JM2CFWIW

[Darin]

Important things to know about SSD drives. The main one is it will not make any programs run faster. So Mastercam will run the same as regular hard drive. It is all in boot up times. You want faster Mastercam get better (more) processors better (more) ram better video card. I heard X7 has better processing features now that use the new technology.

 

 

 

 

Cost vs performance.

As All Have indicated, the SSD is About 40-> 80 Times faster than a HDD.

However; That said, and SSD will:

.. Considerably improve boot time - that is going from "start loading OS" -> able to open first program. Also shortens shut down time.

.. Speed up program load times - How noticeable depends on program.

.. Will load any files much faster than a HDD, providing the file is on the SSD.

Will NOT:

.. Speed up web surfing, downloading files from the web, nor speed up email

.. Will Not make programs RUN faster. Does not improve FPS in games (Will speed up map loading providing the map is on the SSD.

.. Will NOT speed up file load times if file is on HDD

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

It can speed up certain things in Mastercam, if Mastercam's temp and swap files are on the SSD. Also if you have anything exceed your RAM and page to disk it upgrades the impractical to merely slow. Given the large sizes available now in a reasonably priced SSD I'd really hesitate to buy a spinning platter these days.

 

There's some interesting discussion here about thoretical storage limits:

 

http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec14.html

 

My favorite line:

A black hole should not be one's first choice for a hard disk.‏

[mkd]

solidworks FEA uses hard drive almost exclusively. i think the algorithms were designed for a circa1995 90Mhz Pentium with 8megs of ram.