Ideal Cost/Storage For SSD's?

[Trixter]

What's considered a good deal on an SSD for the amount it costs? I'm doing some video work on my build and so regular spinning drives are going to be more practical with my storage but I'd still like to get a solid slate to improve boot time and get into some of my apps a bit quicker.


I found this sale going on at Newegg and would like to know if it's a good deal or if I should for some reason try and get a bigger drive for little bit more.

And if there are any other people who work with video and think I should go bigger, please tell me why because I'm still new to figuring out improving performance on my editing programs with storage devices(like would a large SSD be better as a scratch disk than an HDD for example). Thanks in advance

 

[mucksavage]

I would just keep your SSD for your boot drive and apps, and a platter drive for your scratch disk. I've only used an OCZ Vertex 4 256 SSD, so I can't really comment on good versus bad drives. I love the OCZ, and the prices have been dropping like crazy lately. I could probably have gotten away with the 128gb size, as right now with all of my apps I am only using about 80 gigs on it. I have my data drive with my music and movies (about 900 gigs). There are lots of drives on sale right now, so pick one that is highly rated. I think the intel 880 series, as well as the samsung drives are all highly rated. That being said, I'm a huge fan of my OCZ.

 

[Going Bald]

I have been reading some posts regarding problems with OCZ drives lately. I would go with the Samsung 830 for just a little more - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147163

 

[ggeorge]

What's considered a good deal on an SSD for the amount it costs? I'm doing some video work on my build and so regular spinning drives are going to be more practical with my storage but I'd still like to get a solid slate to improve boot time and get into some of my apps a bit quicker.

120gb - Under $80 is a very good price. $100 is about the max you should probably pay, though you might need to wait for a sale on a particular drive.

240gb - Under $180 is a very good price. $200 is about the max you should probably pay, though you might need to wait for a sale on a particular drive.

Be careful though. A particularly cheap SSD may well be an older model and/or have less desirable characteristics.

I found this sale going on at Newegg and would like to know if it's a good deal or if I should for some reason try and get a bigger drive for little bit more.

The Solid is a strictly second rate drive. Also there's a mail in rebate, which are notoriously unreliable and take an excessively long period of time to arrive.

For compressed files like video, GB's suggestion is basically considered the best. Crucial's M4 is also a good choice. The OCZ Vertex 4 is also highly rated, but has some serious quirks and questions about how it works. So either the Samsung or Crucial is the smart choice.

The sandforce drives (which are what most of the SSDs you'll see are based on) rely on compressing the data before it is written to the flash memory chips. Since obviously, less data is quicker to write than more, they do poorly with data that is already heavily compressed and thus can't be compressed further.

And if there are any other people who work with video and think I should go bigger, please tell me why because I'm still new to figuring out improving performance on my editing programs with storage devices(like would a large SSD be better as a scratch disk than an HDD for example). Thanks in advance

SSDs are superior to HDDs in essentially every possible way except for Price per gigabyte. Their biggest advantage is in seek times. Since it takes place at the speed of circuits vs having to wait for a physical head to get to a spot on the disk as it rotates and moving physically up or down the disk, especially with fragemented files. Where as with a flash memory chip, essentially there is no difference with regards to "where" a piece of data is in the flash memory.