Just fitted a solid state hard drive

[tonycollinet]

Reinstalled win7 (64 bit now) and it boots from end of post to being fully usable and responsive in about 20s.

Well impressed. Programs stored on it also load super fast.

And it is only connected to SATA2 as I don't have Sata3

[Polar Bear]

Which drive did you go for?

My laptop has space for a second drive.   I was mulling over installing a solid state and moving my win 7 install to that drive.   Speedy and quiet unless and until I seek data held on the main drive.

[David Martin]

I'm considering one. I do compute intesnive code that does random file access for lots of short reads - ideal SSD territory.

..d

[Euan Uzami]

I got them fitted at work and measured some compilation times (disk-intensive process)  before and after and they're only about 10% faster than good quality satas.

[DaveJ]

I got them fitted at work and measured some compilation times (disk-intensive process)  before and after and they're only about 10% faster than good quality satas.

It depends on the workload.  As David Martin said, SSDs are quick when doing lots of short random reads (no seek time).  This is why Windows machines with SSDs as the system disk start so quickly.  Doing longer reads, or sequential reads or writes, their performance advantage over good sata disks is less.

I've got the inexpensive and now obsolete 64Gb Crucial C300 in one of my machines, and it flies.  Startup is certainly much more than 10% quicker than the sata disk.  I didn't time it with the sata disk, but think two or three times as fast.

Dave

[frankly frankie]

I've had one for a while and like it, though I do have an ordinary hd running in the same PC (so don't get any noise benefit) and any areas that can have a lot of write activity such as browser cache, emails, windows swapfile etc, I've reallocated to the hd.

[ian]

All I can say is that my MacBook Air is – despite a modest spec – the fastest computer I have ever used. Boot is < 5s, and program opening is effectively instant. No more reading the splash screen credits as InDesign or Photoshop start up (sorry guys, your efforts are now unrecognised).

(Of course, I imagine the Air is optimised around the SSD.)

[Biggsy]

I'm using one right now: OCZ Vertex 2.

Low noise is the second advantage, after high speed.  Any HDDs that you have as well: set to go to sleep after x minutes of non-use.  I have the OS and all normal data on SSD, only big stuff on HDD.

[frankly frankie]

An interesting little item I recently bought in Maplin (but I can't find it on their website) - a small USB box which looks like a card reader, but actually has 4x SDHC slots and accepts 1 up to 4 32Gb SD cards and puts them into Raid-0.

So, fully populated, you have a 128Gb USB SSD drive, for little more than the cost of the SD cards.  Main downside as far as I can see, is the somewhat elevated risk of a single card failure (which will invalidate all the data).  Works fine on the PC, but I wanted it as local storage for the Squeezebox Touch, and it's not recognised - obviously needs a 'proper' OS ...

[dasmoth]

An interesting little item I recently bought in Maplin (but I can't find it on their website) - a small USB box which looks like a card reader, but actually has 4x SDHC slots and accepts 1 up to 4 32Gb SD cards and puts them into Raid-0.

So, fully populated, you have a 128Gb USB SSD drive, for little more than the cost of the SD cards.  Main downside as far as I can see, is the somewhat elevated risk of a single card failure (which will invalidate all the data).  Works fine on the PC, but I wanted it as local storage for the Squeezebox Touch, and it's not recognised - obviously needs a 'proper' OS ...

My understanding is that there is a huge difference between the 10 cent controller chips used in memory cards and thumb drives and the "serious" ones (with substantial processing power and megabytes of fast cache RAM) used in decent SSDs.  SSD performance isn't just about the flash devices.

[tonycollinet]

To answer the questoin above - it is a crucial M4 128GB

there is a morrass of benchmarking data here - though obviously with a better interface than mine.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18368624