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Dan Hintz
04-06-2014, 8:17 PM
Built a new computer this past week in an attempt to get some more horsepower for some upcoming design work. I decided to go for an SSD for the OS drive this time around... absolutely amazing. After POST, I'm at the login screen in under 3 seconds. Simply amazing.

Here's what I have (not a huge powerhouse, but pretty snappy overall):
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 MB
Intel i5-3570K
2x Kingston HyperX 8GB RAM
2x Western Digital Black 1TB HDD (in RAID1 mode)
Samsung 840 Pro SSD - 256GB
GeForce GTX 750 Ti video
Other bits/baubles (cooler, SeaSonic power supply, etc.)

It has taken me several days to set it up to run off of the SSD properly (to avoid early death), latest drivers loaded, etc., and I'm just now getting some of my favorite programs loaded up. Other than missing a letter in the model number and receiving laptop memory initially, the total is around $1,300. Next up will be a second 24" PixelPerfect monitor from Dell and a dual-monitor arm. All in, it looks like a $2k haul.

Matt Meiser
04-06-2014, 8:22 PM
I have that same drive in this machine and not only does it scream but I can sit in front of the TV all evening surfing on one charge. I like it so much I also installed one in my shop machine. I don't have another drive as I use network storage, or increasingly, OneDrive.

Bruce Page
04-06-2014, 8:30 PM
I'm looking forward to it! I'll be ordering a new Win7 machine with SSD in the next few weeks.

Brian Elfert
04-06-2014, 9:17 PM
I love the SSD I put in my laptop. With Windows 7 I didn't have to make any changes for the SSD. It automatically detected the SSD and did the optimizations automatically. I checked and everything was set as it should be.

Mike Henderson
04-06-2014, 10:34 PM
I have an SSD in my laptop and it made a world of difference in the speed of the unit. Boot up is fast.

Mike

Steve Rozmiarek
04-06-2014, 10:40 PM
Ok, I'll ask, what's SSD?

Dave Bonde
04-06-2014, 10:49 PM
solid-state drive

Chris Parks
04-07-2014, 1:18 AM
I had one crash a few weeks ago which surprised me as it is in my car and only gets read with very few writes after all the music was put on it. The car came with a 30 gig HD standard in the head unit and I replaced it with the 126gig SSD some years ago. My desktop has one as well but it takes about ten seconds to boot even though it has only the OS on it. I should have put one in my laptop to extend the battery life but I had never thought about it in those terms.

Michael Mahan
04-07-2014, 1:19 AM
+1 on SSD
my PC's are blazingly Fast booting up & just about everything I do with the SSD's on board :)
I do my builds with a SSD as the "C" drive & then just have the O/S on it , all saved files & working files go to "D" & "E" drives that are 3TB drives . those are easily backed on my 3TB external drives .
all software I back up 1st before installing on the SSD or I have the install disks

Michael Mahan
04-07-2014, 1:27 AM
I don't have another drive as I use network storage, or increasingly, OneDrive.
I'm not a fan of the "Cloud" for my important files , as soon as your connection is lost then no access
And the idea that someone else has my files & I don't have complete control over them is disturbing to me
You my feel different but I'm funny about my privacy & who can access my files
I like the new mini servers that act as a the "Cloud" in your own house that has personal encryption that you are the only one with the key
I'm gonna be getting one soon

Chris Parks
04-07-2014, 2:14 AM
I have taken the opposite view I suppose. The safety of having my most important files off the premises is more important than the risk of someone somewhere reading the files. I have found one glitch with G Drive though and it is a definite gotcha. I set up a G Drive with an email address as you must but then both the domain and the email address were done away with and it was then impossible to download and read the files which was a bit of a pain. I never found a fix for that but luckily I had local copies.

Brian Elfert
04-07-2014, 7:36 AM
I'm not using cloud now, but I want to use a cloud service to keep off-site backups on. If my house burns down or something like that I don't want to lose everything on my PC. There are some services with encryption.

Matt Meiser
04-07-2014, 8:34 AM
We use Windows Home Server which acts as a NAS as well as some other functions including daily PC backups. I back the WHS up to a NAS in my shop 125' from the house. Looking to back up irreplaceable files as well to the cloud now that I have the bandwidth to do it.

I wouldn't keep ultra sensitive information in files in the cloud without at least encrypting it but most of our sensitive information is already "out there" on the bank's web site. All I might back up to the cloud that's sensitive would be old tax returns and if that was stored in an encrypted file, those with the will and resources to break it are probably the ones making me supply that information to start with.

The stuff I'm putting in the cloud now are pictures, sketchup drawings, non-financial spreadsheets, etc. Worst case someone can figure out how many vacation hours I've got saved up if they hack my OneDrive.

Curt Harms
04-07-2014, 8:38 AM
I have taken the opposite view I suppose. The safety of having my most important files off the premises is more important than the risk of someone somewhere reading the files. I have found one glitch with G Drive though and it is a definite gotcha. I set up a G Drive with an email address as you must but then both the domain and the email address were done away with and it was then impossible to download and read the files which was a bit of a pain. I never found a fix for that but luckily I had local copies.

I'm of a similar opinion. I had a Lavabit email account (http://lavabit.com/) - until one day I didn't. I used it with Thunderbird so had a local copy but that illustrated the risk of relying on 3rd parties for data storage. Not to mention the Snowden revelations and there's no certainty he knows and is telling the whole story.

Prashun Patel
04-07-2014, 8:43 AM
With the cheap price of HD storage, I've taken to just buying a few TB hard drives and doing periodic redundant backups. I keep one of the hd's at work and one at home at all times.

Brian Elfert
04-07-2014, 9:36 AM
I believe Google allows one to have a backup email address in case of issues with your primary email address. If you're concerned about a service going away sign up for multiple free cloud accounts and keep your documents in multiple locations. I use Norton Ghost to make a nightly backup of the SSD in my laptop to an external drive. Unfortunately this does not protect me in case of fire or other disaster.

Chuck Wintle
04-07-2014, 4:08 PM
I'm not a fan of the "Cloud" for my important files , as soon as your connection is lost then no access
And the idea that someone else has my files & I don't have complete control over them is disturbing to me
You my feel different but I'm funny about my privacy & who can access my files
I like the new mini servers that act as a the "Cloud" in your own house that has personal encryption that you are the only one with the key
I'm gonna be getting one soon
The idea that any of my files are stored on a server somewhere in cyberspace makes me cringe, as I also do not like the cloud for the possible privacy infringement that it may allow. As you said, if the network goes down so does access to these files.

Chuck Wintle
04-07-2014, 4:10 PM
Built a new computer this past week in an attempt to get some more horsepower for some upcoming design work. I decided to go for an SSD for the OS drive this time around... absolutely amazing. After POST, I'm at the login screen in under 3 seconds. Simply amazing.

Here's what I have (not a huge powerhouse, but pretty snappy overall):
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 MB
Intel i5-3570K
2x Kingston HyperX 8GB RAM
2x Western Digital Black 1TB HDD (in RAID1 mode)
Samsung 840 Pro SSD - 256GB
GeForce GTX 750 Ti video
Other bits/baubles (cooler, SeaSonic power supply, etc.)

It has taken me several days to set it up to run off of the SSD properly (to avoid early death), latest drivers loaded, etc., and I'm just now getting some of my favorite programs loaded up. Other than missing a letter in the model number and receiving laptop memory initially, the total is around $1,300. Next up will be a second 24" PixelPerfect monitor from Dell and a dual-monitor arm. All in, it looks like a $2k haul.
they will replace regular hard d rives in the near future in my opinion.

Howard Garner
04-07-2014, 5:52 PM
The idea that any of my files are stored on a server somewhere in cyberspace makes me cringe, as I also do not like the cloud for the possible privacy infringement that it may allow. As you said, if the network goes down so does access to these files.

And just think what "joys" you can have if your using software based on the cloud. Or software that MUST verify every time before it can be used.

Howard Garner

Michael Mahan
04-07-2014, 7:38 PM
And just think what "joys" you can have if your using software based on the cloud. Or software that MUST verify every time before it can be used.

Howard Garner Yeah ,think that New Google laptop for one IIRC it only has a 16Gb drive :eek:

Tom Stenzel
04-08-2014, 1:45 PM
I thought I read about drives that were part magnetic part solid state and gave the benefits of both. Does anyone have one of those or are those enterprise type gear?

-Tom

Brett Luna
04-08-2014, 2:27 PM
Built a new computer this past week in an attempt to get some more horsepower for some upcoming design work. I decided to go for an SSD for the OS drive this time around... absolutely amazing. After POST, I'm at the login screen in under 3 seconds. Simply amazing.

That does look like a snappy system. I recently built a new system myself with the same SSD you have but in the 500GB flavor and a 4770 (non-K) CPU. Between that the the 16GB of RAM, Sketchup sure behaves a lot better than on my 5-year-old system. I also do a bit of flight simming and the SSD sure helps with that, too.


I thought I read about drives that were part magnetic part solid state and gave the benefits of both. Does anyone have one of those or are those enterprise type gear?

They're called hybrid hard drives or SSHDs and as the name suggests, they include the guts of a traditional hard drive, plus a small capacity SSD (4 or 8GB is pretty common) that's kind of a drive cache on steroids. Frequently used data gets stored on the SSD resulting in better speed, while less frequently used (and new) data is accessed at typical HDD speeds. I wouldn't consider them enterprise gear at all. SSHDs cost a bit more than traditional HDDs but much less than SSDs.

Matt Meiser
04-08-2014, 4:47 PM
We had a customer who insisted on using an SSD in a PC that was running SQL Server. Everything about that screamed big problems but it did have transnational replication with a server-class backup machine and the application would automatic failover to the backup so we reluctantly agreed. This was on a refrigerator assembly line and we were storing a bunch of data about every refrigerator down the line which got built upon at numerous stations. The data was stored until the unit was shipped then moved elsewhere. Last I heard, about 2 years after we put it in, it was still running.