SSDs - what's recommended?

[AtW]

We use SSD in SKA, 256 GB from Samsung, very good for read only index - exactly what SSD is meant for right now. I'd say stay away from them if you plan on putting swap files on them or anything, better buy more RAM if you swap - it will be cheaper and better. Defrag your main disk or get new one - high capacity disks have high transfer rates, even though seeks will still be slow but well designed apps designed to avoid such seeks.

[d000hg]

THat`s true but there is still a good advantage to having the swap file on the SSD, I wouldn`t want to put it on a slower drive.

Well yes I'd rather have everything on SSD, but that makes for an expensive PC. Probably, I'll have another new PC again in a couple of years, before the SSDs 'wear out', but keeping a swap file off the SSD is one thing I heard to maximise the life.

[VectraMan]

The Register has had quite a few reviews of SSDs of late. My impression is that the technology is evolving so fast it's almost better to wait, for now.

I know XP Embedded could be setup not to have a swap file and to cache writes in RAM for as long as possible to avoid using up the write lifetime of a flash drive. But perhaps it's less of an issue with much larger capacity drives. But where there's pleanty of RAM the OS ought to be able to avoid ever writing temporary files to the disk.

[SuperZ]

I had the same thoughts and the only advice I heard was not to have a swap file on an SSD - though apparently on W7 this is less of an issue too due to better caching.

THat`s true but there is still a good advantage to having the swap file on the SSD, I wouldn`t want to put it on a slower drive.

I just bought a new 160GB 7200RPM drive for £27 to plonk an OS on, much better value than paying £360+ for the same sized SSD that may slow down over time and where you have to worry about how often you write to it, and whether or not it has the latest firmware. And the £27 disk is plenty fast enough, I don`t see why people are willing to pay stupid prices for the SSD`s.

When the life of an SSD expires, in theory you should be able to read all of the data off of it because it is only writes that will no longer work, so that`s a good benefit.

[d000hg]

Modern SSDs do clever tricks to move data around to avoid such 'hotspots' as you refer to.
They also tend to have extra space... an 80Gb might actually have 85Gb space, and that allows the disk to swap out bits of the disk that 'die' without it becoming useless.

I had the same thoughts and the only advice I heard was not to have a swap file on an SSD - though apparently on W7 this is less of an issue too due to better caching.

[OwlHoot]

What slightly worries me about SSDs is that there's a limit (albeit large) on the number of writes before it goes kaput.

I know the same can be said for any disk in practice; but with SSDs it's a definite not-that-huge number, like 10,000 (pulling a figure out of my hat).

Can someone reassure me (and anyone else considering using one for a boot partition) that Windows doesn't write 100 times to the same location on each boot or something?

I wouldn't put that past it - What about temp directories for example?

[SuperZ]

I heard the Intel X-25 has a good rep, but there are others with much faster write speeds. Is there a good site to keep up with these, as I plan to have at least one SSD in my next PC?

Intel X-25 is widely known to be the best out there, the read write performance isn`t everything. FOr long term use I think the Intel`s keep good performance while some of the others slow down.
I think they are still in early development stage and I prefer to stick to the good old spinning disks for now. I might consider getting one when the next generation SSD`s hit the market.

SSD prices have also been going up recently - another reason not to buy. (£100 to £146 for one of the smaller drives)

Not all drives can have the firmware upgraded either. I don`t think Samsung release firmware upgrades but some of the others have recently release support for TRIM which is definately going to be a step forward

[d000hg]

I heard the Intel X-25 has a good rep, but there are others with much faster write speeds. Is there a good site to keep up with these, as I plan to have at least one SSD in my next PC?