HDD system drives - SATA vs SSD

[wub]

Has anyone got any experience of the benefits of SATA vs SSD for the main system drive. At the moment I'm pricing up a new build, and a 500Gb SATA drive is still coming in cheaper than a 60Gb SSD, but I'm leaning toward the SSD more for the actual programs side of things.

(my data/media/etc will be stored on a seperate 1/2Tb SATA drive)

[Depone]

(my data/media/etc will be stored on a seperate 1/2Gb SATA drive)

your sample library must be huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge

sorry I have nothing to input, only used standard spinnin' HDs and not really ever felt like the need for SSD so far (until I build my hackintosh soon)

[wub]

(my data/media/etc will be stored on a seperate 1/2Gb SATA drive)

your sample library must be huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge

I just checked my sample drive space for the first time in ages, and have only got 4Gb free space

sorry I have nothing to input, only used standard spinnin' HDs and not really ever felt like the need for SSD so far (until I build my hackintosh soon)

I've had people quote me boot times of <30s for Windows 7 off a SATA, based on decent access speeds;

Technical Specifications

Sequential Read Speed: 550Mb/s
Sequential Write Speed: 490Mb/s
Max Random 4d Write: 80K IOPS
Interface: SATA 3 6Gb/s

[Depone]

Dunno if you noticed a typo there in your original post. my jibe went right over your head hahah

[wub]

Ah, no just clocked it now

[sargentpilcher]

I have an SSD on my build I just made a month ago, and everything loads up FAST! Like you I have all my samples on a seperate drive, even my song files. But All my programs, and VST's are installed on the SSD and songs load up much faster than twice as fast for me compared to a HDD.

[Eat Bass]

i have an ssd as my main drive and a 7200 rpm hdd as my secondary in my macbook pro (i took the optical drive out).

the speed increase in opening apps and just overall snappiness of the system is very noticeable. completely worth it to me.

[wormcode]

I had one but they still have short lifespans, I wouldn't recommend imo. There's 10k rpm hard drives too, I've had more luck with those.

I don't turn computers off though so boot time isn't an issue. The rare reboot only takes 20 second or so.

I think SSD will be better in a few years, but right now it's way too pricey for something that has read/write limits. I think Intel's new drives are rated for like 5 years, so I'd say that's optimal... More like 3. Depends how much data is written per day. I don't see the fuss though when talking about milliseconds of difference.

[deadly_habit]

SSD for your OS and programs, SATA for your samples etc
also DON'T defrag your SSDs
(just realized i need a new TB drive looking at how much space my movies, tv shows and steam folder are taking argh)

[VirtualMark]

i have a 2tb hdd for my samples and a 128gb ssd for my os and programs. system starts up fast, programs load fast etc. no reliability issues so far. i think ssd's have come a long way since the first generation.

theres another option available worth mentioning - hybrid drives. cheaper than ssd's, they have a hdd portion and a ssd portion. i believe the drive organizes itself so that your most frequently used programs get put on the ssd part. you get the speed benefit of ssd and the storage benefit of hdd.

you can also use ssd's as a cache drive, which again puts the most frequently used programs and files on the ssd. but you'd use 2 drives for this, one hdd and one ssd.

yeah and as deadly said, no need to defrag - it shortens the lifespan and doesn't give any performance benefit.

[wub]

Ok, thanks for the feedback everyone

[RandoRando]

SSD for your OS and programs, SATA for your samples etc
also DON'T defrag your SSDs
(just realized i need a new TB drive looking at how much space my movies, tv shows and steam folder are taking argh)

delete ones u already watched... i did.

[sunny_b_uk]

i partition my stuff on a sata drive, OS on the start of the drive then programs, data on the other partition. it really helps + its easier for when you need to reinstall windows if it gets problems.
apparently its meant to depend on the system with SSDs.. iv heard of incredibly slow results of things like file transfer and loading times on laptops. im not sure if this is true with pcs however.
id say its good enough using a sata drive and it doesnt seem a great deal faster with computers iv used with SSDs.
if you really need quicker loading & boot time speed etc id suggest using Glary Utilities to clean up your registry
http://download.cnet.com/Glary-Utilitie ... tag=button
and Auslogics Disk Defrag
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/di ... /download/
this defragger will automatically group all the files you use more often onto the earlier sectors of the HDD so everything runs smoother. they will help your computers performance better than most programs iv tried.

[render]

I've got an SSD in my system as well, and storing on an 1.5gb SATA drive.

The biggest difference between the SSD and a SATA drive is that SSD's data access is generally around 0.2-0.1ms, while the HDDs have around 15-20ms. Also the Read/Write speed ratio is often 5:1 (or even more).
I experience the faster boot up (~15 seconds from pushing the power button, to launch ableton). Please note that I only install the important stuff on my SSD (so windows/ableton and vsts), the samples and everything else stored on my HDD.

If you bought a 256gb SSD you could use it to store your favorite samples too, since the data access is so fast, you could instantly hear any samples you want to check (I dont know about other programs, but in Ableton, and Reason you have to wait 0.5 or 1 sec to hear a sample that isn't buffered in yet)

Please note that I'm using a Xeon e5630 processor at 4ghz/cores, so it may also fasten up things a bit, I built this rig and didn't test without SSD, but I had an i7 920 at 4ghz with HDD, and the boot time to reach ableton was around 30 seconds.

Hope that helped. Basically you have to decide, if it's worth the money for you, I don't know about the prices atm, all I know is HDDs price is like doubled at the moment due to some H2O..
Also 1 more thing, an SSD is not a HDD
Hope I could help, if you have any question let me know!