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Chuck Wintle
02-04-2011, 5:02 PM
I finally decided to buy a solid state drive to see what they are like. Hopefully it will be as fast as all the hype! :D

Matt Meiser
02-04-2011, 5:23 PM
Just make sure you use it right as they do have limited write cycles. Generally you don't want data files or swap files on them.

That said, I've got a customer using one as the only drive in a computer that has a SQL Server database on it that we use to store data for every unit that comes down their their assembly line that has been working for 2 years now.

Chuck Wintle
02-04-2011, 5:28 PM
Just make sure you use it right as they do have limited write cycles. Generally you don't want data files or swap files on them.

That said, I've got a customer using one as the only drive in a computer that has a SQL Server database on it that we use to store data for every unit that comes down their their assembly line that has been working for 2 years now.

matt,

i hope this drive lives up to the hype...that said i plan to use it as my main boot drive. I want to experince a 15 second boot into windows 7....which I have been led to understand has been optimized fotr this type of drive.

John Coloccia
02-04-2011, 6:09 PM
Just make sure you use it right as they do have limited write cycles. Generally you don't want data files or swap files on them.

That said, I've got a customer using one as the only drive in a computer that has a SQL Server database on it that we use to store data for every unit that comes down their their assembly line that has been working for 2 years now.

They do load leveling nowadays. I was worried about it once too, but now I wouldn't hesitate to use one. I just spec it out larger much larger than it needs to be. That gives me even more leeway. Now the dive outlasts the device :)

Bryan Morgan
02-04-2011, 10:23 PM
matt,

i hope this drive lives up to the hype...that said i plan to use it as my main boot drive. I want to experince a 15 second boot into windows 7....which I have been led to understand has been optimized fotr this type of drive.

My brother put one into his gaming machine. I think it boots faster than that. I think its around 10 seconds or less if you turn off all the startup checks. He presses the power button and it seems like you just look up and you are at the desktop already.

Bryan Morgan
02-04-2011, 10:28 PM
Just make sure you use it right as they do have limited write cycles. Generally you don't want data files or swap files on them.

That said, I've got a customer using one as the only drive in a computer that has a SQL Server database on it that we use to store data for every unit that comes down their their assembly line that has been working for 2 years now.


I'm still paranoid of them because of this. I've read whitepapers and have talked to engineers, they assure me I'm full of it. Their MTBF is more than a mechanical disk. Still, I'm just not ready to trust them yet. I read a great article that basically explained that if you filled up the drive every day the drive would still last over 5 years or something like that. I follow my gut with these things and the gut says wait. My brain says I'm lame and I should just go get a few. :)

Matt Meiser
02-05-2011, 6:35 AM
In this case I'm not too worried because we replicate the data to a server in the data center and the application can automatically fail over to the other database.

If I could get a drive that lasted 5 years I'd be happy. Seems like modern drives have a pretty high failure rate after just a couple years. I know 2 of my computers got new drives before the warranty on the computer ran out.

Chuck Wintle
02-05-2011, 6:49 AM
In this case I'm not too worried because we replicate the data to a server in the data center and the application can automatically fail over to the other database.

If I could get a drive that lasted 5 years I'd be happy. Seems like modern drives have a pretty high failure rate after just a couple years. I know 2 of my computers got new drives before the warranty on the computer ran out.

What is a typical life of a hard drive? Once they fail is it possible to recover data inexpensively? Some companies will charge upwards of $1000 to do the job....probably worth it if the data is valuable. And an SSD drive can suffer catastrophic failure with no chance of data recovery. Isn't technology great sometimes?

David Cefai
02-05-2011, 1:16 PM
Hard Drives are CHEAP. In1981 a 5MB drive cost about $3000. Today a 500GB drive costs less than $50. High production volumes and lack of testing have made this possible. I have found that usually when a new drive fails the entire batch will fail. OTOH once a drive makes it past 6 months of regular use it will go on for years.

Givne the price of drives and the value of data there is really no excuse not to back up. Either have 2 drives in the one PC and use one for backups (or mirror the drives) or else back up one PC onto another.

Tip for Windows users: Partition the hard disc and save your data on another partition, not C. C is the one that gets most easily corrupted 'cos Windows puts the swap file there and is always writing to the registry.

Other operating systems are built more intelligently so that this problem does not arise.

My 2 cents.

Matt Meiser
02-05-2011, 7:56 PM
What is a typical life of a hard drive? Once they fail is it possible to recover data inexpensively? Some companies will charge upwards of $1000 to do the job....probably worth it if the data is valuable. And an SSD drive can suffer catastrophic failure with no chance of data recovery. Isn't technology great sometimes?

I don't know what the advertised life is but I've had a fairly high failure rate. Anymore if I'm doing something like upgrading the OS I just buy a new drive. I have a fairly complex backup strategy at home which includes the ability to restore any PC to a backup within the last couple days on a fresh drive.

Work related, its usually not my responsibility.

Bryan Morgan
02-06-2011, 7:33 PM
What is a typical life of a hard drive? Once they fail is it possible to recover data inexpensively? Some companies will charge upwards of $1000 to do the job....probably worth it if the data is valuable. And an SSD drive can suffer catastrophic failure with no chance of data recovery. Isn't technology great sometimes?


Depends on the drive. Brand loyalty is like a religion but for me Maxtors, Seagates, and IBM Deskstars (we call them deathstars) seem to fail regularly. We get maybe a year or two out of them. WDs seem to last awhile depending on the model. We do however have some old NetApp SAN boxes (circa 2002/3) that have some old Seagate drives that still work fine today. One of our main iSCSI clusters has 1 bank of 12x300 GB Maxtors and 1 bank of 12x??? something. They've been there since at least 2005 if I remember. The only reason I know the older bank has Maxtors is because one failed. Once. A couple years ago. If you keep them cool and don't spin them up and down all the time they seem to last quite awhile.

Jim Becker
02-06-2011, 9:01 PM
I'm thinking that current generations of SSD drives may be better at some things than earlier generations including cycles, but I could be wrong. The Macbook Air, for example, ships with them exclusively and they are an option on the Macbook Pro. Folks tend to use these particular machines for a long time, so I wonder if the manufacturer would make them standard (on the Air) if there was concern.

Michael Peet
02-10-2011, 2:21 PM
I have an SSD as the boot drive in my desktop. Data is stored on an external RAID enclosure. In addition to the speed, the SSD will be quieter, use less power, and generate less heat compared to a mechanical disk.

Do your research though - not all SSDs are created equal.

Mike

Eric DeSilva
02-10-2011, 4:52 PM
You should never trust your data to a single drive. Not if you care about it, anyway.

I use an SSD as the main drive in my desktop running WIN7. I just bought a 64GB one, and it has plenty of space to hold the OS, the full Office Suite, and the major components of Adobe's CS5 Master Suite. The funny thing is that I really can't comment about speed--I swapped it out when I went to WIN7, so I have no basis to compare. It does come up pretty fast, and my Adobe launches are a lot faster, but it isn't instant.

I store my data on a NAS running RAID 5, with some critical bits sync'd to a non-SSD drive on the computer and backed up to Mozy. But, now that Mozy is changing its pricing structure, I may switch to something else. Non-uber-critical data is stored on a collection of other small NAS and portable drives...

Chuck Wintle
02-10-2011, 5:43 PM
You should never trust your data to a single drive. Not if you care about it, anyway.

I use an SSD as the main drive in my desktop running WIN7. I just bought a 64GB one, and it has plenty of space to hold the OS, the full Office Suite, and the major components of Adobe's CS5 Master Suite. The funny thing is that I really can't comment about speed--I swapped it out when I went to WIN7, so I have no basis to compare. It does come up pretty fast, and my Adobe launches are a lot faster, but it isn't instant.

I store my data on a NAS running RAID 5, with some critical bits sync'd to a non-SSD drive on the computer and backed up to Mozy. But, now that Mozy is changing its pricing structure, I may switch to something else. Non-uber-critical data is stored on a collection of other small NAS and portable drives...

Possibly SSD still have a way to go based on my initial impressions.

Rich Konopka
02-14-2011, 9:08 AM
In this case I'm not too worried because we replicate the data to a server in the data center and the application can automatically fail over to the other database.


I had a customer doing this and they were wondering why their primary database was slow. As it turned out they were using synchronous replication which cause the primary database server to wait for the write/acknowledgment on the secondary site. The moral of the story is SSD will only get you so far.

I have a SSD as a primary and a 2TB as my main drive and my workstation boots up in 15 seconds. I try to keep the write activity on the 2TB drive and keep OS related on the SSD drive with the exception of the page file and Temp directories which are on the 2TB drive. The Windows experience rating has stayed consistent in the 8 months since I bulit the configuration.

Dave Johnson29
02-15-2011, 12:13 PM
If the drive crashes, you just go back to your previous-day image back up. You do, do them don't you??? LOL

I use a Rosewill docking station that takes bare drives and image my entire drive daily. It takes about 15 minutes.