Does Your Primary Linux Desktop Have An HDD or SSD?
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View Poll Results: Does Your Primary Linux Desktop Have An HDD or SSD?
As I use dual boot with Windows 8, and share the machine with another family member who uses a lot of disk space, I think SSDs are too expensive and have insufficient storage capacity for our needs at present.
Hi Everyone,
As additional information for the use of Ssd on a machine. Buy the Biggest Ssd you can afford and forget about buying more ram. Windows set up ram on the Ssd or the Hdd as additional ram for the machine, but the nice little part of this is that when using a Ssd the entire Ssd disk is made up on memory chips so when windows sets up the additional ram is the same as the memory you buy and you can go into the Windows program and increase the amount of ram for the machine at no additional cost to you.
Read this carefully since the Ssd is made of memory chips no need to buy more ram just increase in the program the amount of ram you wish the machine to have it is the same as the memory chips you buy and saves you money not having to purchase additional memory chips for the machine, nice little money saver. So again buy the largest Ssd you can afford. EdWh
As additional information for the use of Ssd on a machine. Buy the Biggest Ssd you can afford and forget about buying more ram. Windows set up ram on the Ssd or the Hdd as additional ram for the machine, but the nice little part of this is that when using a Ssd the entire Ssd disk is made up on memory chips so when windows sets up the additional ram is the same as the memory you buy and you can go into the Windows program and increase the amount of ram for the machine at no additional cost to you.
Read this carefully since the Ssd is made of memory chips no need to buy more ram just increase in the program the amount of ram you wish the machine to have it is the same as the memory chips you buy and saves you money not having to purchase additional memory chips for the machine, nice little money saver. So again buy the largest Ssd you can afford. EdWh
SSDs are nowhere near as fast as RAM, not even close. While sticking your swap on an SSD will be much faster than on an HDD, it will still be nowhere near as fast as actually having the proper amount of RAM installed in the machine.
While I love SSDs and feel they have a number of tremendous advantages over HDDs, this is NOT one of them.
Last edited by suicidaleggroll; 10-15-2013 at 03:27 PM.
An additional feature to using a Ssd instead of a mechanical Hdd is that if you buy a big enough Ssd you will not have to purchase memory for your machine. The Ssd's are made of memory chips and Windows sets up additional memory on the drive for the system to use. Since with a Ssd it is already made of memory chips it is the same as the purchased memory you buy.
You can go into the Windows system and change the amount of memory you want the machine to use so if you increase 'the sizes it is the same as adding memory chips to the board and at no additional cost. Just remember it comes out of the total amount of size that the Ssd is rated at. Can't have your cake and eat it to. EdWh
An additional feature to using a Ssd instead of a mechanical Hdd is that if you buy a big enough Ssd you will not have to purchase memory for your machine. The Ssd's are made of memory chips and Windows sets up additional memory on the drive for the system to use. Since with a Ssd it is already made of memory chips it is the same as the purchased memory you buy.
You can go into the Windows system and change the amount of memory you want the machine to use so if you increase 'the sizes it is the same as adding memory chips to the board and at no additional cost. Just remember it comes out of the total amount of size that the Ssd is rated at. Can't have your cake and eat it to. EdWh
Average read/write rate of modern SSDs 450-550MB/s. (Theoretical) throughput of DDR3-1333 RAM: 10666MB/s. You are at least a factor of 20 off, even with nowadays slow DDR3-1333 RAM.
All of my machines have HDDs. None have SSDs. SSDs havent become enonomically feasable for most of us yet. They are way expensive, and are not capable of holding even half the data a HDD could hold. I have yet to see a 1 TB SSD, even though the technology is old now (it's the same tech that makes up flash cards and usb sticks), and yet we have HDDs capable of holding 4TB of uncompressed data, and cheaper than the highest capacity ssd, which as I said, iI haven seen one of those that can even make the 1TB mark, let alone 4TB.
it's the same tech that makes up flash cards and usb sticks
Not really
Quote:
Originally Posted by CatMan3110
All of my machines have HDDs. None have SSDs. SSDs havent become enonomically feasable for most of us yet. They are way expensive, and are not capable of holding even half the data a HDD could hold.
...
and yet we have HDDs capable of holding 4TB of uncompressed data, and cheaper than the highest capacity ssd
If you think that SSDs will ever be as cheap as HDDs for bulk storage, you're wrong. That's not what they're built for...nobody buys an SSD so they can dump 2TB onto it and then let it sit there doing nothing for years, that's what cheap, slow HDDs are for. SSDs are for high throughput, and blazingly fast random read/write. They're ideal for loading an operating system on, which only needs a couple tens of GB, or for commercial database, etc. use where cost is no object.
As I've said a few times in this thread, spend $50-100 less on your proc, buy a small SSD for your OS, and leave your bulk storage on a secondary HDD. You will end up with a MUCH faster and more usable system for the exact same price, with no loss in storage.
Last edited by suicidaleggroll; 10-15-2013 at 05:44 PM.
My vote and explanation for it were disclosed in post #7 above, but for those that aren't all that familiar with SSDs, I have a number of them and all are faster than mechanical HDDs, but I recently purchased a couple of Samsung 840 Pro Series SSDs and they are without a doubt the most impressive upgrade I've ever made when it comes to adding easily noticeable speed to my system. These things are very thin, lightweight, and blazingly fast. Highly recommended for any of you that should decide to go the SSD route. I'm thinking now about trying one of their 840 EVO Series SSDs that are a bit less expensive, the warranty period two years shorter, but are advertised to be just about as fast as the 840 Pro Series. You can check out any hardware reviews that you find on the Pro Series or EVO Series for more details.
I'm getting ready to go to SSD exclusively on my desktop machine and the quality of some of the SSDs are suspect.
Yes, somewhere around 3000 for MLC. Given a write multiplier of about 3x and typical usage of maybe 5 GB/day, a 100 GB drive should last around 55 years before hitting that 3000 limit. And even that isn't a hard limit, just a recommendation, there are people out there who have been stress-testing their SSDs for years to test the longevity and are at over 50,000 write cycles without issue on MLC (or so I've heard).
Just as a reference, my home server that runs ssh, ftp, http, nfs, and samba servers writes around 1.6 GB/day to the SSD that houses the OS, the rest of the data goes onto the platters. Even though it's only a 40 GB drive, it shouldn't hit its write limit until somewhere around the year 2078.
If you're truly worried about it, the write limit of SLC is around 100,000 cycles, meaning that even under very heavy use, it will probably out-live you or I. It may even begin to approach the typical SSD's MTBF of about 130 years. SLC is quite a bit more expensive than MLC though.
Last edited by suicidaleggroll; 10-15-2013 at 08:05 PM.
I use many SSD's and even more HDD's. Running linux from an SSD is an awesome experience, I run many linux systems, all run on SSD's so came here to poll but no poll could be found
Ok I found the poll
Last edited by nuubie; 10-15-2013 at 08:38 PM.
Reason: update
If you hope to do anything with virtualization at all....
then an SSD is paramount for creating a useable solution. If you enjoy waiting and/or taking massive amounts of breaks while attempting to get anything done, stick with HDDs.
Yes, somewhere around 3000 for MLC. Given a write multiplier of about 3x and typical usage of maybe 5 GB/day, a 100 GB drive should last around 55 years before hitting that 3000 limit. And even that isn't a hard limit, just a recommendation, there are people out there who have been stress-testing their SSDs for years to test the longevity and are at over 50,000 write cycles without issue on MLC (or so I've heard).
Just as a reference, my home server that runs ssh, ftp, http, nfs, and samba servers writes around 1.6 GB/day to the SSD that houses the OS, the rest of the data goes onto the platters. Even though it's only a 40 GB drive, it shouldn't hit its write limit until somewhere around the year 2078.
If you're truly worried about it, the write limit of SLC is around 100,000 cycles, meaning that even under very heavy use, it will probably out-live you or I. It may even begin to approach the typical SSD's MTBF of about 130 years. SLC is quite a bit more expensive than MLC though.
Considering spinning disks have a life expectancy of 3-5 years, I'd say that this calculation FAR exceeds the negatives of any write limit associated with this type of media. Further, these calculations are purely based in the premise that there is no garbage collection or write leveling mechanisms being employed.
When presented with the choice between an SSD or a hard disk, the answer really depends on one real consideration, "Does the storage requirement need capacity or performance?" There are a limited number of drive ports available on the average machine and if the answer is capacity, spinning disks are the clear choice, where as if the answer is non-latent performance for databases transactions or for responsiveness/oversubscribed virtualization implementations, then using anything less than an SSD (or battery-backed DRAM) will ultimately cost you in ways that can't easily or readily be quantified.
So realistically, in the vast majority of typical implemtations, the answer will more than likely be a mix of both media types or complete solid state when considering life expectancies, power consumption, cost of real estate, latency requirements, man hour requirements, costs of storage administration and that of keeping the whole mess cool.
Finally, SSDs are just cool and allow an insane boost in performance and lift the bottlenecks which were previously associated with storage and place the burden back on switching speeds and bus rates rather than the traditional read/write mechanisms of spinning disk. They are a heck of a lot quieter as well, taking the whirring out of the datacenter or home office.
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