1492
Washington, DC
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Joined: 04/08/2005
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I'm curious as to those who are currently using or have recently upgraded to SSD drives over traditional hard drives, both on PC or MAC, what you're experience has been with them? I've been holding off installing them in my computers, due to the initial chip reliability and controller issues. But the latest generation of SSD drives appear to have solved many of the initial quality and configuration issues users most complain about?
I just recently acquired a MacBook Core2Duo dirt cheap on Ebay due to supposed issues, was actually advertised as a CoreDuo, but ended up being easy hardware fixes and runs perfectly. I'm in the process of upgrading it now, with the priority on the hard drive which S.M.A.R.T. indicates 14,000 power on hours. The HD still rates 100% health wise, no recorded errors, but reliability would be pushing it at this stage.
For about the same price, I can install an SSD but with 1/3 the capacity of a comparable HD. Don't need much space anyway, and my new ASUS WIN 7 notebook came with a 320G HD, but thinking of swapping that one out with a 120G SSD. Also considering using SSD for my WIN 7 boot and program drives. Data on a second much larger traditional HD.
So what's been your good, bad, or ugly experience with SSD?
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Kiwi_too
Western, WA
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Joined: 05/13/2003
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By them, other than the price.
May God bless your travels
Me, The Wonderful Wife 
and two Spastic Border Collies 
U.S. Army Retired 
2004 Coachmen Aurora, 3480DS
2007 Saturn Outlook, FROG
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downtheroad
Pacific Northwest
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Joined: 02/18/2003
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I really like mine...lightening fast and I mean lightening fast. I've had it for about 6 months and not a hiccup so far.
"If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane."
GMC Duramax LBZ
Komfort
Reese Dual Cam HP
Our Rig Picture...CLICK HERE
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troll3193
SouthWest, MI USA
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Joined: 07/07/2004
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I am on my second PC with an SSD and I swear by them... Much faster than a traditional drive.
Big challenge for some will be reduced size of drive, unless money is no issue.
I won't have another PC with a traditional drive ..
Bryan
2006 RAM 3500 MegaCab w/Cummins Turbo Diesel
Mopar Exhaust Brake
2004 Dutchemen 31BK
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jorn
Twin Cities
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Joined: 06/14/2005
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I recently used OWC's Data Doubler to swap out out the DVD drive in my Macbook Pro for second hard drive in the form of an SSD, and migrated critical system bits over for the purposes of making it my boot drive. It's noticeably faster. My only regret is not buying one with more capacity, as the 60 GB unit just barely handles the OS.
2001 Coachmen Leprechaun 314SS (Acquired in July 2008)
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carpetride
Mo
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Joined: 09/12/2009
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I had one with no issues but did have to swap out for a larger drive and went back to a traditional drive. Speed wise we couldn't really tell a big difference but we have always bought fast drives to begin with vs the 5,000 rpm drives.
Some of the current raid drives in the gaming laptops look speedy but maybe spendy if you don't have a need for them.
2011 F-250 6.7 Lariat CC SWB w/16K Superglide
Airlift 5000 bags with on board compressor
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fj12ryder
Platte City, MO
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Joined: 08/19/2003
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I love mine, it cut the boot time way down and game level load times are super quick. It's in a mainly gaming machine and it speeds things up considerably. If I were getting a laptop I wouldn't hesitate to install one, or buy one with an SSD already installed. It should help battery life quite a bit would be my thought.
Depending on the brand there are some issues, but even the ones that had problems are getting their stuff together.
Howard and Peggy
"Don't Panic"
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strollin
San Martin, CA
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I've been using them in various machines for about a year and have not had a single hiccup.
I have them in 2 netbooks and a new desktop machine I just built.
The netbooks performance improved significantly, both boot and app load performance improved. Battery life also improved since ssds draw less power. The ssds are less prone to damage from being jostled about and they are silent with no vibration.
The desktop uses a 128G ssd mainly as a boot/OS drive, all data is stored on a 1.5G hdd. I have quite a few apps installed and still have 80G free on my ssd. The desktop boots very quickly and apps load instantly.
I believe the hdd is living on borrowed time. If they ever get the per Gig price for an ssd down to the same level as an hdd there won't be any reason to buy an hdd over an ssd.
One note: You need to make sure that whatever OS you use, it needs to support the TRIM command.
Windows 7 does but XP doesn't so an ssd isn't the best choice for a machine running XP.
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1492
Washington, DC
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Joined: 04/08/2005
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I've decided to swap out the MacBook's current HD with a 120G SSD. I tend to set my notebooks on standby mode to keep access time to a minimum. I'm not completely familiar with MAC OS X, but last night rebooted my MacBook which seemed to take forever, but likely just a couple of minutes. In fact, I thought there was something wrong with it. I upgraded my old Toshiba Vista notebook to WIN 7 which boots in 1/3 the time, despite being a slower CoreDuo(32-bit) processor. It looks as if the MacBook would definitely benefit from a much faster SSD.
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burlmart
Baton Rouge
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Joined: 03/28/2005
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I think strollin addressed a point I was gonna make. If I understand the link he made to TRIM...
You better not use disk defrag on SSDs because it'll wear them out quickly.
2005 Trail Lite 213 B-Plus w/ 6.0 Chevy
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