Xenimus Tales

Since it was on for a "low" price, I decided to treat myself to a 60g Vertex SSD.
I must say, it's pretty awesome. And I can't even use it to its fullest on this laptop, thanks to lenovo's crippling design (strike 2!)

The original 160gb Seagate (5400rpm)


Not the greatest, for sure.

Now the new vertex


Very nice. It would be double that if lenovo hadn't throttled the HDD connections to SATA1 speed like the douchebags that they are.
First, disabling stereo mix, then this. Wonder what their third strike will be.

Anywho, I love how responsive it is running w7. After post, it takes ~30s to load up entirely. For comparison, a similarly loaded w7 install on my desktop takes roughly 60s on a 7200rpm WD Black. I wonder how fast it would be if I actually had access to it's full speed..

It gets a thumbs up from me, but only because I got it on sale at ~$3/gb (after tax, shipping, rebate)
Otherwise I'd say SSDs are still a little pricy to get into mainstream. But it's definitely the best upgrade you can do to improve daily performance. I've yet to try a game, but I imagine load times would be excellent.

I'm not even sure what the point of this thread was any more, but if anyone's considering an SSD this might be of use.
And if someone's thinking of buying a lenovo computer, get it out of your mind and never consider it again. Kthx.

I've been considering getting a 64g intel SSD, We get them for about 120$ shipped cdn through work.. I'm just concerned it will crash and I will lose a bunch of shiet.

If it's the intel (new version), get it for sure.
There's the risk of any storage device crashing and losing data, so practice regular backing up

You can't beat that price, and you'll certainly notice a performance improvement.
If it's a desktop (or laptop with two drive slots)
Use the SSD for your OS, and a hdd for your storage of files. That way, even if the SSD dies (unlikely), you'll still get all of your files.

I was more concerned about lifespan?

And my board doesnt support SATA2 (lol i know)

I'm considering getting two for my zpool if I ever have the cash to spend. Wouldn't increase my capacity but it would definitely improve my performance.

Lifespan isn't really an issue unless you're doing server applications
Or you actually intend to keep a drive for like 10 years.
MLC has 10,000 write cycle rating at the low end of the spectrum.
So unless you're writing all 64gb of the drive from start to finish nonstop at max speed (I think it's rated at like 80MB/s?)
10000*64gb = 640 000 000 mb (base 10)
610351562.5 MB
7629394.53125 seconds @ 80MB/s
2119.2762 hours
88.30 days

So if you happen to be using the drive 24/7 at max write speed from empty to full and repeated, you'll get 88 days out of it.
The chances of a home user using it THAT intensively are ridiculous
I don't know what portion of a typical cycle is writes, but let's be pessimistic. 5% of the time you're writing your drive entirely from empty to full, that gives you a lifespan of 20x that 88.3 days or 5 years. And I'd say that's a very high usage rate.
If you're worried about lifespan, never use more than half the drive. You effectively double it's life

Some more perspective - my WD caviar black is rated at 750 000 MTBF
The ocz vertex is rated at double that.


The numbers you see are for SATA1, as my computer is throttled. Still faster than most hard drives, especially because of the seek times and the consistent read/write speeds over the entire drive.

In my pool lifespan won't matter. If a caching device dies, it can be dropped and replaced . I would use two because I'd probably chop off a gig slice on each of them and mirror those two slices to make them a dedicated slog.

if anyone's looking for one..
http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx
http://www.newegg.ca/Special/ShellShocker.aspx

Anyone considering lifespan, here's some numbers.
Even though I got this drive months ago, it's sat around until I was done with school-specific software for the year.
Anyway, I've used it for roughly a full month now and I've used 228 cycles. (There's a utility available to read the drive's data such as usage time, cycles, total amt read, total amt written, etc.)
At this rate (which is probably abnormally high due to the amount of programs installed in the first weeks of use)
The drive would last ~4 years (@10 000 cycles). If the max cycle number is higher, even better.

I would say this is a worst-case scenario for me, as i dont empty and refill drives all the time. And in 4 years we'll probably be able to get 1TB SSD's for cheap, lol.

I ordered one, still sitting on my desk because I haven't had time to install it.