Solid State Drives

[Ramsay]

So my laptop has been getting a bit slow recently so I though I'd reinstall windows and all my software. It's a pretty decent spec Lenovo Thinkpad W520, but the drive in it seems to be really slow and fairly noisy. I've been hearing a lot about SSD's recently but hadn't bought one due to hearing a couple of people saying they aren't too reliable. Can anybody confirm if this is the case or not? If not, would it be a good idea to replace the boot drive in the laptop with an SSD and then use the old regular drive for file storage?

I'd also be really interested to hear what drives you guys would recommend and what ones I should be avoiding.

[joconnell]

The samsung 830 drives are the kings at the mo - no reliability issues and they're bugger fast. The 128gb version has a brilliant price / performance ratio too.

[vlado]

I'm curious to see how that goes; I have ThinkPad W520 too

Best regards,
Vlado

[andybot_cg]

I upgraded to an SSD (OCZ agility 64gb) a few months back. (Wish I hadn't seen the prices now, I could get 128GB for the same price!) I have a 3yr old HP laptop with win7, and its made a world of difference. Things just load a lot quicker and startup is many times increased. Highly recommend it. I did keep my old 500GB drive as secondary to keep local files. Seems to work fine, as it's still faster than the network.

[Morbid Angel]

I think it will depend on your laptop. I tried upgrading my HP laptop which was fairly old, 4-5 years old (mostly wife uses it), to an ssd drive and it just would not accept it. Windows installation just failed halfway through and the drive became really really hot. I had to replace the old drive back (it was running vista) so if you try to place this newer hardware into older models it may not take it.

[MoonDoggie]

The idea that they aren't as reliable is odd. SSD drives are much more reliable because there are no moving parts, which means they're resistant to shock and impact (dropping your laptop). I have one of the first SSDs made and I'll never go back for my main drive. Love it, can't recommend it enough.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

SSD drive will degrade to 30% of its performance or less after 2-3.5 years of heavy 20h a day use. Just so u know it ain't like HDD that can run same performance until it explode.

[MoonDoggie]

This is good to know, thanks Dadal, I had no idea. Do you have a source? Just curious.

SSD drive will degrade to 30% of its performance or less after 2-3.5 years of heavy 20h a day use. Just so u know it ain't like HDD that can run same performance until it explode.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

This is good to know, thanks Dadal, I had no idea. Do you have a source? Just curious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSMZ7...eature=related enjoy.

[Morbid Angel]

Well, I would rather have the drive live for 2-3 years...then replace one every year, which was the case for my raptor\veloci raptor drives. Literally once a year in 3 of my systems the drives just dropped, and I sent them back for warranty and got new ones from the manufacturer, only to have them fail a year after!

I guess we will wait and see, I am approaching that time frame for my ssd drive

[MoonDoggie]

Cheers!

Wow, can't deal with that treated audio. This is horrible to listen to, but I get the point. I've had nothing but great success with my SSD for the past 3 years, but I'll keep that in my mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSMZ7...eature=related enjoy.