Are SSDs the new RAM for boosting system performance?

RAM was once the king of the system performance boost. Now, there's a new kid in town that's usurping the throne: SSDs.

SSDs are the new performance panacea. But, when SSDs first hit the scene a few years ago, we hated them. They were small--too small to be useful and too slow for anything but Netbooks. Technology took hold and now SSDs are our new heroes. They are the new RAM. Still a little pricey for widespread consumer use; servers, high-end laptops and ultrabooks come equipped with them. And, they're fast. They're cool. Sure, they're cool in the vernacular sense of the word but they're also cool in the Fahrenheit/Celsius sense too. No moving parts means cooler temps and cooler laps under them. My favorite thing to say about SSDs is that, "They toil not and neither do they spin."

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Are SSDs the new RAM for boosting system performance? | ZDNet

 

[LovingWindows]

I'll stick to my HDD thank you very much. Cold boot to start 2 seconds and all the programs I use load instantly, so why would I waste my money on an SSD when I get the same performance and higher storage space out of a HDD?

 

[jbfoster]

No drive is reliable. You will always need some form of backup. I learned the hard way. When my kids were small and I switched from a film camera to digital, I lost about 3 years or so of pictures when my hard drive crashed. I always planned on getting another drive for backup but never got around to it. I now buy another backup drive every two years no matter what. I actually have two drives for back up so I have my data in 3 places. I feel the odds of all 3 going bad at once is small other than the house burning down. Im looking into online backup also for $5 a month for unlimited space.

 

[jbfoster]

I'll stick to my HDD thank you very much. Cold boot to start 2 seconds and all the programs I use load instantly, so why would I waste my money on an SSD when I get the same performance and higher storage space out of a HDD?

What PC do you have that boots in 2 seconds from a spinner hard drive?

 

[dirtyvu]

@Ray8... I read in another thread the guy did a secure erase and it improved his performance a lot. he said his performance was lousy for an SSD before he did the secure erase. maybe you can try that.

I'm not giving up on improving your SSD performance. we'll figure out what's wrong with your system.

 

[Ray8]

@Ray8... I read in another thread the guy did a secure erase and it improved his performance a lot. he said his performance was lousy for an SSD before he did the secure erase. maybe you can try that.

I'm not giving up on improving your SSD performance. we'll figure out what's wrong with your system.

I'm not sure there's a lot to gain. When I got the SSD, it was fully formattted and then I copied an image of the HDD on to the SSD, so that I didn't have to load all my programs etc on to the SSD. I bought the SSD so that I could explore its features vs that of a HDD. I calculated that I didn't need the 320GB that the HDD had, so went for a smaller 128GB SSD that was equally priced.

The SSD isn't slow, but it's not blisteringly fast, but for a relatively low power system, it's not bad. When I had the HDD, I was also using Ready Boost and that's supposed to give HDDs a bit of an edge, a bit like having a cache drive. Now reading about SSDs, all the speed comparisons are done with ones that are at least 256GB, as there seems to be a fair leap in performance when you go to the larger drives.

When I do a performance test using SSD Magician, this is what I get:

 

[dirtyvu]

in the last msg I wrote, I said not to just pull your HDD image to the SSD and you said you didn't and that you installed fresh. so what is it?

 

[Ray8]

in the last msg I wrote, I said not to just pull your HDD image to the SSD and you said you didn't and that you installed fresh. so what is it?

There must have been some mixed messages here, as I did an image copy of the HDD to the SSD.

 

[Dave76]

This usually results in bad alignment which will kill performance.

Download AS SSD, don't run the benchmark, as we know it's bad, in the upper left corner it will give some details. Post a snip here.
Brand
Firmware version
Controller driver
Alignment, red font mean bad alignment
Usable size

Example:
Bad


Good

 

[Ray8]

I've updated the charts to include the AS SSD results.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
how do I download the utility -- everything just takes you round in circles -- I can't get to an actual LINK to a download -- unless it's the DONATE link.

If that's the only proper link then it's NOT FREEWARE.

The article says FREEWARE -- so anybody got a link to the actual DOWNLOAD for the utility.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Dave76]

It's aligned correctly, 4k and access times are low.
Is the tablet SATA2?
It's got the Intel controller, what RST version is it running?


Jimbo, bottom of the page, below the donate button it says 'Download'.


Or 'Downloads' under the 'Navigation' box on the top left.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Thanks

The Icon didn't show on my screen but I downloaded in the space below download.

Didn't get a bad result -- was running this on a fairly modest laptop with only an I3 processor --still yielded acceptable result -- SAMSING 830 series SSD.

Screenshots enc.

cheers
jimbo

 

[Ray8]

It's right down at the bottom of the page.

 

[gazz9496]

and just picked up an ocz vertex 4 to replace a 64gb ssd i already had which has found a new home in my netbook...though doesn't really change it's performance sadly.

in my win 7 install it capped at 7.9 in wei, think the read/write speeds can be improved on it as well just not sure how yet:/

 

[shakennstirred]

Probably the single best noticeable thing you can do to your system is install an ssd.

In terms of reliability ssd wins hands down, no heat or moving parts.

No one says you have to use one, but your loss if you do not.

not true on the heat part of you're post, they in fact run hotter and there always on so don't run cooler if not used like spinners do.
as I write this my ssd is at 30c and my 500gb hdd is 25c

I'll stick to my HDD thank you very much. Cold boot to start 2 seconds and all the programs I use load instantly, so why would I waste my money on an SSD when I get the same performance and higher storage space out of a HDD?

you will never get the same performance out of an hdd that you will get out of an ssd and that is fact.
even a clean installed os wont boot from cold boot to usable pc in 2s so one with installed programs definitely wont
you clearly have not used one or you would have never posted you're statement

 

[azasadny]

Both of my SSD's have 3 year warranties and run at ambient temps, no heat, noise or moving parts... I like that!

 

[gazz9496]

Both of my SSD's have 3 year warranties and run at ambient temps, no heat, noise or moving parts... I like that!

well there is some heat...like everything that has an electric current going through it does.

no noise and no moving parts, and the warranty period is longer than some current hdd's to hit the market of late, 3yr compared to some mech drives with 1yr.

 

[azasadny]

I should have clarified that to say "no heat in excess of ambient temps". In other words, if it's in the 70's in the den/basement, the hard drive doesn't get any warmer than about 88 degrees... The older hard drives typically are at 105 degrees...

 

[koymik]

Ssd was the best upgrade i ever made with my nearly 3 year old pc. The speed improvement was night and day vs spinners with startup and ordinary use. With spinners i had to wait around 2 sec to access it again when it goes standby . Rams doesnt impact speed that much on daily home pc use. When i use revit photoshop etc then rams amount and speed would come into play.

 

[pparks1]

and just picked up an ocz vertex 4 to replace a 64gb ssd i already had which has found a new home in my netbook...though doesn't really change it's performance sadly.

Of course it doesn't improve performance. the "real" benefit of an SSD is the ultra low random access times. This hasn't improved between new and old models of SSD. In benchmarks your overall throughput speed should increase a lot, but that doesn't usually amount to much from a tangible performance standpoint.