[Abarbarian]

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/...wsletter220110

Patriot PS-100 32GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £58.74 inc vat.



Not a bad price to try out the latest technology. Shame I'm skint.

[V_R]

You get what you pay for.

http://www.servethehome.com/?p=206

[Abarbarian]

Originally Posted by V_R

You get what you pay for.

http://www.servethehome.com/?p=206

From your link,

"Also of note, the speed is substantially better than a 7,200rpm drive, and one gets all of the no-noise and vibration that comes along with a SSD."

[Ian]

The performance doesn't look great, but it's a good sign to see SSD prices being driven down. When I upgrade sometime in 2011/12 then I'd like to have an SSD for my boot drive and a silent mechanical SATA for storage.

Hmmm, I wonder if this 2.5" SSD will fit in my laptop. edit: Nope, 1.8", damn...

[V_R]

Originally Posted by Abarbarian

From your link,

"Also of note, the speed is substantially better than a 7,200rpm drive, and one gets all of the no-noise and vibration that comes along with a SSD."

Yes but the speeds are crap when put against any other SSD on the market, That is the point of an SSD is it not?

Both my (500gb's each) WD Caviar Black and my Samsung F3 are virtually inaudible. For the price per gig of that SSD and the (small) performance gain i'd have a large traditional HD all day. Regardless of the speed factor.

[Abarbarian]

Originally Posted by V_R

Yes but the speeds are crap when put against any other SSD on the market, That is the point of an SSD is it not?

Both my (500gb's each) WD Caviar Black and my Samsung F3 are virtually inaudible. For the price per gig of that SSD and the (small) performance gain i'd have a large traditional HD all day. Regardless of the speed factor.

Me too. If I had to replace a drive in me slow laptop however I might be tempted by one of these.

[floppybootstomp]

It is an encouraging sign but I have a feeling the reviewer was being charitable making those comments.

At the moment it looks as though Crucial and Corsair lead the market in SSD's, both respectable brands but neither are offering their products on the cheap.

If I were going to buy an SSD for my primary drive I wouldn't buy that. I'd have to have something that was worthwhile, not a compromise.

I don't always buy the best - although I try to - but what I do buy has to be quality.

And, quite frankly, that drive is not quality

Apart from that, it's only 32Gb which to my mind isn't big enough for even what I consider a basic install of Vista or Win 7.

My Media machine has a 74Gb Raptor as primary drive for the OS - Win Vista - and it only has a few other software apps installed - Winamp; MS Office 2007 basic; Photoshop; dbPowerAmp, the usual suspects

Yet the install totals 35Gb - too large for the featured SSD.

I recently changed to a pair of Velicoraptor 150Gb drives in a RAID 0 and that will probably be the last mechanical drives(s) I use as a primary hard disk, assuming they last me at least a couple of years.

Like Ian, 2011/2012 will be the year I consider using SSD's and hopefully prices will be more competitive then.

If money was no object however, I'd buy a pair of SSD's and RAID them right now

But money is an object atm unfortunately

Finally, HDD noise.

I've used a pair of Western Digital 10,000 rpm disks for a RAID 0 setup in all of their incarnations.

The first pair of 34Gb each were possibly the noisest hard disks I've ever heard.

The second pair of 74Gb each were quieter but still a helluva lot noisier than their 7200rpm Samsung, Seagate & Hitachi counterparts.

The third pair of 150Gb each - in use now - are as quiet as any other quality mechanical hard disk. In fact, I can't hear them.

But still not as quiet as an SSD eh?

For me, noise would not be the reason for an SSD purchase - speed would be the reason.

[muckshifter]

to hell with "fast" hard drives, when they gonna fix the "memory wall"