Crucial SSD Drives

[Mick]

Anyone used one (or more) of these SSD (solid-state drive) http://www.mymemory.co.uk/Crucial/SSD-Drives

Seems like the technology is moving on pretty fast now, and with no moving parts I can see these catching on.  I'm yet to see a laptop or PC with one fitted as standard, but from a laptop point of view, it should survive being dropped. (well at least your data should).   

[Oldboy]

There are quite a few laptops with one fitted but the price is double or more. 

http://www.dabs.com/products/acer-aspire-s3-951-2464g24iss---corei5-2467m---ram-4-gb---hdd-240-gb-ssd---w7hp-64-bit-13-3--7SY7.html?src=3

[Jonathan]

I've tried an OCZ Agility - these are available a little cheaper than Crucial.  (As far as I can work out it's like processors - the best ones get a Vertex label and the Agility are second division - some excellent, some not so)

Boot times were very good and so was program launch - probably halved.  I used it as scratch drive for PS and it was barely noticeable (presumably because my computer has plenty of memory so doesn't swap so often).  I tested as a library drive for Lightroom and it was about 10% quicker than a spinning metal drive.  Not enough to put up with the hassle of the small size.

Then Drive Genius started beeping and I sent it back to eBuyer.  They refunded because it was faulty.

Replaced it with a Seagate Hybrid drive - well worth checking out.  It guesses what you will need next and copies it from spinning metal to an SSD cache.  Boot times are up there with SSD after the first few boots.

If I was speccing a laptop right now I'd have either an SSD or hybrid in it for sure.  In a year or so I doubt you'll see laptops without them.

[Mick]

I've tried an OCZ Agility - these are available a little cheaper than Crucial.  (As far as I can work out it's like processors - the best ones get a Vertex label and the Agility are second division - some excellent, some not so)

Boot times were very good and so was program launch - probably halved.  I used it as scratch drive for PS and it was barely noticeable (presumably because my computer has plenty of memory so doesn't swap so often).  I tested as a library drive for Lightroom and it was about 10% quicker than a spinning metal drive.  Not enough to put up with the hassle of the small size.

Then Drive Genius started beeping and I sent it back to eBuyer.  They refunded because it was faulty.

Replaced it with a Seagate Hybrid drive - well worth checking out.  It guesses what you will need next and copies it from spinning metal to an SSD cache.  Boot times are up there with SSD after the first few boots.

If I was speccing a laptop right now I'd have either an SSD or hybrid in it for sure.  In a year or so I doubt you'll see laptops without them.

Thanks for the info Jonathan, not seen those hybrid drives before you mentioned them. http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/laptop-hard-drives/momentus-xt-hybrid/   

So what are they, SSD, or conventional magnetic, or a combination of both?  I'll have a better read up later.

[Jonathan]

So what are they, SSD, or conventional magnetic, or a combination of both?

A combination.  Or if you prefer "hybrid"

MacPro's boot drive is now a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT.  Very fast and stable.  Drive Genius is keeping an eye on it and it's been great for a month.  Not sure I could easily live with a 128 / 256 GB drive as boot.

[Oldboy]

Like most things it depends on price per Mb. As more and more are rolled out the price will fall. I remember been quoted £300 plus for a 30mb, yes 30mb, hard drive in 1990. 

[Jonathan]

Good price on OCZ drives if you're still looking.... http://www.ebuyer.com/268244-ocz-120gb-agility-3-ssd-agt3-25sat3-120g-agt3-25sat3-120g

[Oldboy]

Dabs have the Sandisk 120gb SSD for £67.99. http://www.dabs.com/products/sandisk-120gb-ultra-sata-3gb-s-2-5--solid-state-drive--read-280mb-s--write-270mb-s--7N6G.html?src=2 

[Colin]

If you are a regular user of your PC and you are using it as your boot drive don't expect it to last more than about a year. There have been several threads on techie boards about this problem. Like a USB pendrive and a camera memory card they have a finite number of write cycles and by having your o/s on one this can be quickly reached. If you don't have your o/s on one why would you need one?

[spinner]

If you are a regular user of your PC and you are using it as your boot drive don't expect it to last more than about a year. There have been several threads on techie boards about this problem. Like a USB pendrive and a camera memory card they have a finite number of write cycles and by having your o/s on one this can be quickly reached. If you don't have your o/s on one why would you need one?

Wonder what the Gamers think of this? That's what they seem to be pushing in those circles. Talk about reduced life cycles. I hope it's wrong though, I finally got a Hackintosh running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 off one of these drives, none of my Sata's seemed satisfactory to the system.

[Paul Montgomery]

I'm afraid its not wrong...
The solid state logic gates only have a finite number of write cycles and so capacity will be reduced with use. Thinking about it a bit more, the OS might be O.K. if any swap files are on a different disk - I guess if they are moved, the system disk won't be written to very often.

[Jonathan]

OK.

Just shoehorned a Crucial M4 into the Macbook Pro.  I was going to get an OCZ but the Vertex is about 40 quid more than the Crucial and the Agility isn't as fast.  I went for the 256 GB - I'll live with that until 512 come down in price a lot which should save a little money and get me a fresh drive when this one wears out

First impressions:

1. Apple are idiots.  Swapping a hard drive for a SMALLER hard drive isn't that easy because Time Machine keeps some secret files on your Lion machine.  You can't see them and you can't delete them.  It took some terminal commands to sort it...

2. Yeah, it's pretty fast   From a cold booted machine, Photoshop CS5 takes about 4 seconds to launch.  Second launch is about 2 seconds.  Which is kind of OK.  Beachball pretty much never appears.

I took the advantage of having the machine in bits to whack in some extra memory too as it's dirt cheap ATM.  I'm now maxed out at 8GB which is kind of on the low side

Oh and the machine is now silent.  Fans never seem to come on at all.

[Oldboy]

1. Apple are idiots. 

Surely not! 

[Jonathan]

1. Apple are idiots. 

Surely not! 

Well, yes and no.

What they have done is incredibly clever.  If your computer can't contact the Time Machine drive it makes secret TM backups in a  locked off area of the disk.  When it sees the drive it copies them on there.  If you need a backup that's local it serves them up from the secret area seamlessly.  It also manages the disk really well, deleting backups when you need more space so you never have les than you expect.

Basically it's a very clever invisible add on to Time Machine.  Worst case you only have the backups you would have had anyway but likely you have extra data robustness.

Since it's on a secret area of the drive, most tools can't see it.  I had the finder, disk utility and What Size all telling me I had 50 gig on the drive.  In fact the only time you'd ever know about it is if you try to swap the hard drive for a smaller one.  And as we know, in all of history nobody has ever done this.  Until people started swapping their drives for SSDs...

Wonder what the Gamers think of this? That's what they seem to be pushing in those circles. Talk about reduced life cycles. I hope it's wrong though, I finally got a Hackintosh running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 off one of these drives, none of my Sata's seemed satisfactory to the system.

I'm going to guess they aren't too worried.  Lots of hard core gamers upgrade graphics cards very frequently.  An extra £150 every 12 months when your SSD wears out doesn't seem too bad in context.