Will a Solid State Hard Drive Change My Life?

[olasek]

In other words, moving to an SSD has a good potential of giving you a significant benefit.

Potential, yes, if he wants to gamble. From his description his PC may have other (software) issues, installing an SSD could be like putting a lipstick on a pig.

 

[EvoV98]

an SSD will let data be accesses much faster so boot time will be sorter, and loading files and things will also be quicker, I would throw some more RAM in there too.

 

[kayoh190]

Aren't you in the tech industry, 6PC? I've gotta be honest - I'm surprised you're even asking these kinds of questions.

Perhaps you're some ultra rare version of tech guy that's not much of a nerd otherwise. :wink2:

 

[eetrojan]

The key piece of information was when someone found the motherboard he's working with won't do 6GB/s only 3.

The SSD will help but not nearly as much as it could on a modern motherboard.

A fast SSD is reading or writing data at about 500 MB/s (i.e. about 0.5 GB /s)? Given the references to 3 GB/s or 6 GB/s, I thought there'd be plenty of excess capacity to move data to or from the SSD at its maximum speed in either case.

Then I saw your comment and found this on the web:

SATA I (revision 1.x) interface, formally known as SATA 1.5Gb/s, is the first generation SATA interface running at 1.5 Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 150MB/s.

SATA II (revision 2.x) interface, formally known as SATA 3Gb/s, is a second generation SATA interface running at 3.0 Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 300MB/s.

SATA III (revision 3.x) interface, formally known as SATA 6Gb/s, is a third generation SATA interface running at 6.0Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 600MB/s. This interface is backwards compatible with SATA 3 Gb/s interface.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i,-sata-ii-and-sata-iii



Whey do they call it SATA 3 GB/s (aka SATA II) or SATA 6 GB/s (aka SATA III), when they only provide a "bandwidth throughput" of 300 MB/s or 600MB/s, respectively?

Is it because you could have as many as ten SATA devices connected with each moving data over the SATA lines at 300 (or 600) MB/s?

 

[overdrive148]

A fast SSD is reading or writing data at about 500 MB/s (i.e. about 0.5 GB /s)? Given the references to 3 GB/s or 6 GB/s, I thought there'd be plenty of excess capacity to move data to or from the SSD at its maximum speed in either case.

Then I saw your comment and found this on the web:


http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i,-sata-ii-and-sata-iii



Whey do they call it SATA 3 GB/s (aka SATA II) or SATA 6 GB/s (aka SATA III), when they only provide a "bandwidth throughput" of 300 MB/s or 600MB/s, respectively?

Is it because you could have as many as ten SATA devices connected with each moving data over the SATA lines at 300 (or 600) MB/s?

Gb/s = gigabit per second
GB/s = gigabyte per second

Mb/s = megabit per second
MB/s = megabyte per second

At least I think.

 

[eetrojan]

Gb/s = gigabit per second
GB/s = gigabyte per second

Mb/s = megabit per second
MB/s = megabyte per second

At least I think.

Doh! Thanks.

 

[Ghery]

Dang....

Never realized POA was a bunch of computer geeks....

Since we are no longer talking about who's airplane is faster, then let's compare geek skills...

Anyone run a computer with a z80 and a 6502? The cool part was allocating your file manually. You added an entry to the catalog with a starting and ending points. Then the 8inch floppy did its thing for a minute or so and you hope the file was not bigger. Oh, don't forget to write the eof marker.

In redneck format, you ain't an old computer geek if you have not:
- written a file to cassette tape. (or remember cassette tape.)
- remember 3.5inch, 5 inch, 8inch, oh xxxx if you remember floppies.
- oh this Sucks.... Anyone remember CD. NO! NOT DVD! CD.??
- remember when you could read and understand the chip designations. 7400,74ls00....
- remember 24 bit computers? Ugh. That 16 bit conversion was a pain...
- remember when you could poke and peek into system memory? GPF? What's that?
- 4k BLL???
- TSR?

Ugh.. Time for some whiskey.... Have to figure out an html 5 script that will blow up Bryans little 4gb pc...

Noob. Try using punch cards (or dial-up on a 75 baud Teletype) into an IBM System 360/67. FORTRAN IV. My Senior year in high school (1969-1970).

And, 24 bit computers? Heck, the PDP-8 was a 12 bit machine. And, C is just a high level language for using PDP-11 Assembly.

I remember people complaining that MS-DOS was "user hostile". Oh, really? Try IBM JCL. Or the NOS operating system on a Cyber 176 (especially as administered by Martin Marietta Data Systems). Those were "user hostile". DOS was a piece of cake by comparison. And, I do miss the VMS OS on the VAX 11/780. That was a nice OS.

Oh, and if you really want old stuff, try paper tape. Thank goodness that digital/analog hybrid in the EE department had an optical reader.

 

[oldShar]

And not only USE punch cards, but take care not to drop the deck before it gets loaded into the reader.
(And remember, the output from the 1620s and the 1410s was also punch cards, that then had to be hand fed into printer readers).

And writing files to cassette tapes was a cinch, compared to having to write/punch them to paper tapes (as Bill Gates used to do when he was a Noob)

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

Aren't you in the tech industry, 6PC? I've gotta be honest - I'm surprised you're even asking these kinds of questions.

Perhaps you're some ultra rare version of tech guy that's not much of a nerd otherwise. :wink2:

I used to be big time. I gave up on this stuff years ago.
In college, I could tell you what every chip in the machine did.

Once I graduated, I became more software-centric and less hardware focused.

I recent years, I have moved into managing tech nerds.

I care less and less about technology every day.


No I'd rather do stuff with the tool rather than focus on the tool.

 

[kayoh190]

No I'd rather do stuff with the tool rather than focus on the tool.

I can understand that. I didn't mean any disrespect by my comment. I've also been moving more and more away from tech as I get older. It just doesn't excite me like it used to.

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

I can understand that. I didn't mean any disrespect by my comment. I've also been moving more and more away from tech as I get older. It just doesn't excite me like it used to.

I didn't feel disrespected I just wanted to work in the phrase
"Do stuff with the tool rather than focus on the tool"
sounds dirty.

 

[WBI Flyer]

Sitting on a tour bus as we speak w/ (2) SSD laptops and one with a flash drive. The difference in boot, write and read times is unreal. All we run are OWC mercury elite drives in our laptops. (Except the newer macs that are flash drives from the factory. With 64GB operating system, I would run 8 or 16GB of ram if you can (otherwise that extra 32bit of your OS does you no good).

SSD (not all are created equal), RAM upgrade, oh and maybe just clear all of your browser history and data.

 

[marcoseddi]

better off getting a 21.5 inch used iMac 2 -3 years old and you will see the difference u can get them for 3-600 on craigslist or eBay way worth it

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

better off getting a 21.5 inch used iMac 2 -3 years old and you will see the difference u can get them for 3-600 on craigslist or eBay way worth it

I had a mac mini a couple years ago.
It lasted 2 weeks before I put it on craigslist.

Wacky little thing that "computer" was.

 

[brian]]

Noob. Try using punch cards (or dial-up on a 75 baud Teletype) into an IBM System 360/67. FORTRAN IV. My Senior year in high school (1969-1970).

And, 24 bit computers? Heck, the PDP-8 was a 12 bit machine. And, C is just a high level language for using PDP-11 Assembly.

I remember people complaining that MS-DOS was "user hostile". Oh, really? Try IBM JCL. Or the NOS operating system on a Cyber 176 (especially as administered by Martin Marietta Data Systems). Those were "user hostile". DOS was a piece of cake by comparison. And, I do miss the VMS OS on the VAX 11/780. That was a nice OS.

Oh, and if you really want old stuff, try paper tape. Thank goodness that digital/analog hybrid in the EE department had an optical reader.

you got me on a couple of those. But I do remember IBM JCL - submitted from a TSO session? I remember submitting cobol compiles and running programs pulling from a flat file to load into a VSAM. GO SYSIN DD *, do dah, do dah ...

(Also ran CMS at a different job.)

The best part of the VAX os was the file versioning. Each save could create a different version of the file. Been a long time so I don't remember all the other details. First OS with a file "extension" as we know it now. (Ok, maybe the first one I ran into.)

PDP 11 - cool machine. Only ran one of them ... to load assembly into a micro controller back in the 80's. Had to compile stuff on the "big machine" and use a serial cable (what's that??)

Glad to know I'm not quite the oldest computer geek on POA ...

 

[docmirror]

Pfft, coders.

Real men worked on 1xxx series punch card machines. Wanna chad? How about a few million chads? Real men worked on printers that had hydraulic systems, and chain drives. Real men worked on 400 pound, 7 track open reel tape drives. However - I made my billions on check sorters and duplex laser printers with roll feed.

DEC - pfft, kids toys.

 

[txflyer]

Pfft, coders.

Real men worked on 1xxx series punch card machines. Wanna chad? How about a few million chads? Real men worked on printers that had hydraulic systems, and chain drives. Real men worked on 400 pound, 7 track open reel tape drives. However - I made my billions on check sorters and duplex laser printers with roll feed.

DEC - pfft, kids toys.

Real men started out with DOS, 8086 processors, and maybe 65K of RAM.

I remember when we were in awe of 1M of RAM.

 

[docmirror]

Real men started out with DOS, 8086 processors, and maybe 65K of RAM.

I remember when we were in awe of 1M of RAM.

Toys. My stuff weighed in the tons, and took kilowatts of power to run. A full 3090-600 complex with some IO and modest disk storage would fit in a tennis court, but just barely.

 

[brian]]

I came in at the end of the true "BIG IRON". What Cowboy describes as a printer is an understatement. those suckers came with role of printer paper you LITERALLY needed a fork lift to carry. Some printer setups had multiple roll readers so one role could feed while the other was being re-filled. That stuff was green bar (remember that). The printer type was literally a chain saw - but the chain was the breadth of a small tire. The noise was enough that you really didn't need to read the warning sign to keep clear.

Fast: no printer I know of today is faster. I've seen the equivalent of a box of printer paper come out of one of these printers in just a minute or so.

The system core was the size of a line of pop machines. The more power you had, the more pop machine chassis were pulled in.

Oh, and then you had the cooling system. To keep an IBM mainframe like this running, you had to have a cooling system. Some models the cooling system was actually liquid. All this plumbing went out to a cooling tower somewhere and if the cooling system failed - so did the mainframe.



When they shipped one of these things, a team of guys in white shirts and IBM ties stepped out of the box. I'm not entirely kidding on this one...

 

[silver-eagle]

Dang....

Never realized POA was a bunch of computer geeks....

Since we are no longer talking about who's airplane is faster, then let's compare geek skills...

Anyone run a computer with a z80 and a 6502? The cool part was allocating your file manually. You added an entry to the catalog with a starting and ending points. Then the 8inch floppy did its thing for a minute or so and you hope the file was not bigger. Oh, don't forget to write the eof marker.

In redneck format, you ain't an old computer geek if you have not:
- written a file to cassette tape. (or remember cassette tape.)
- remember 3.5inch, 5 inch, 8inch, oh xxxx if you remember floppies.
- oh this Sucks.... Anyone remember CD. NO! NOT DVD! CD.??
- remember when you could read and understand the chip designations. 7400,74ls00....
- remember 24 bit computers? Ugh. That 16 bit conversion was a pain...
- remember when you could poke and peek into system memory? GPF? What's that?
- 4k BLL???
- TSR?

Ugh.. Time for some whiskey.... Have to figure out an html 5 script that will blow up Bryans little 4gb pc...

You missed binary, octal, and hexidecimal math without the TI Programmers calculator.

 

[silver-eagle]

Noob. Try using punch cards (or dial-up on a 75 baud Teletype) into an IBM System 360/67. FORTRAN IV. My Senior year in high school (1969-1970).

And, 24 bit computers? Heck, the PDP-8 was a 12 bit machine. And, C is just a high level language for using PDP-11 Assembly.

I remember people complaining that MS-DOS was "user hostile". Oh, really? Try IBM JCL. Or the NOS operating system on a Cyber 176 (especially as administered by Martin Marietta Data Systems). Those were "user hostile". DOS was a piece of cake by comparison. And, I do miss the VMS OS on the VAX 11/780. That was a nice OS.

Oh, and if you really want old stuff, try paper tape. Thank goodness that digital/analog hybrid in the EE department had an optical reader.

Still in the middle of large mainframes... IBM jcl is even more user hostile. Added flexibility so we can access "unix" files. Still uses 8 character everything. Still require uppercase (except in named unix files which need to be in quotes). Failed jobs when lowercase is in "wrong" fields.
Geeking... punch machines that didn't have '=' signs requiring multipunch 6 and 8. Green cards that gave ebcdic and ascii codes, PUNCH CARD equivilents, instructions, condition codes. EXCP channel programs.
http://planetmvs.com/greencard/index.html
I need a vacation

 

[SCCutler]

We ran an office with 30-something users (including software development, parts department, tech support call tracking [and I wrote that app], administrative support) on a PDP-11/24, 2 RK07 Disk (the disk packs looked like the Enterprise's saucer-section), 2x tape drives (one, an STC 2920 6250/1600 BPI, the other an Aspen Peripherals 3480 clone), a monster Dataproducts line printer (the noisy, greenbar-paper beast), and a raft of VT-220 terminals (there were still some remaining VT-100s, too). Correspondence went out on daisywheel printers (for got DEC's number, they were all "DECwriters"). 8" floppies, RT-11XM OS, with TSX+ on top, CT*OS for word processing and I forget what the database program was - but I was hell on wheels with it.

I think my washing machine has more processing power.

 

[gkainz]

snip
Also switch to Linux Mint.

biggest performance boost setting right there ... and I don't even care what distro!

 

[Dr. O]

Wow, your CPU is getting hammered.
Before you spend money (as noted above)
1. Do a fresh install of Windows (right from scratch) to get rid of the garbage that has accumulated in the registry and hiding in there
2. Do not start any new programs, but go to the web and down load a performance checking app. Pick one, I don't care what.
What I use for basic hardware testing is
Hyper Pi
Speccy
Then one of the general testers that flogs file transfers, etc.
3. Test system performance with the internet unplugged - test again with it plugged in
4. Install Photoshop and test again - retest after you turn on each new background application
Somewhere along the line you will identify the worst of the performance vampires lurking in the background.

Now on hardware - an SSD bootdrive (C: )and full memory will be a real pep up (like a new cam for your motor) Do not waste money on fast memory chips. They are only a help on a gamers system.

cheers

 

[gkainz]

Noob. Try using punch cards (or dial-up on a 75 baud Teletype) into an IBM System 360/67. FORTRAN IV. My Senior year in high school (1969-1970).

And, 24 bit computers? Heck, the PDP-8 was a 12 bit machine. And, C is just a high level language for using PDP-11 Assembly.

I remember people complaining that MS-DOS was "user hostile". Oh, really? Try IBM JCL. Or the NOS operating system on a Cyber 176 (especially as administered by Martin Marietta Data Systems). Those were "user hostile". DOS was a piece of cake by comparison. And, I do miss the VMS OS on the VAX 11/780. That was a nice OS.

Oh, and if you really want old stuff, try paper tape. Thank goodness that digital/analog hybrid in the EE department had an optical reader.

I was waiting for this one! amen, brother!

Source code written in assembler on a VAX 11/780 then run a deck of punch cards, hand carry (and pity the poor sod that dropped his deck - that diagonal line across the top of the deck only gets you so close... and close is for horseshoes) to the PDP-11 to read, transform and write to paper tape, then hand-carried to the Sperry/Univac and Burroughs systems which was running the Litton L-304 simulation software to finally run the assembler code and test the application.

Oh and the Litton had a whopping 8 memory modules, each about the size of the C volume of Encyclopedia Brittanica (google prototype), containing a whopping 4k of physical core memory. The "disk" was a rotating magnetic drum, about the size of a small washing machine. Code optimization was timing the statement execution and ensuring the next instruction was physically placed on the drum just before the head got to that portion so it could be read with minimum rotation delay.

 

[denverpilot]

I care less and less about technology every day.

Amen. Same here. Just look at the thread to see all the stories of old dead hardware that's in a landfill somewhere that people still think was cool.

I had a mac mini a couple years ago.
It lasted 2 weeks before I put it on craigslist.

Wacky little thing that "computer" was.

???? It's just a laptop in a box. ????

those suckers came with role of printer paper you LITERALLY needed a fork lift to carry.

We have one of those. It's a laser printer in full color nowadays. Hauls ass too. Takes up an entire wall of a warehouse. Not cheap. Comes with a clown van full of Oce' techs that shows up weekly.

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

Added the SSD (C:\ drive). Samsung 500gb.
Windows 7 installed in ~ 10 minutes.

It seems to be going notably faster.
Worth noting a newly installed OS is going to run better than a 5 yr old install so that is certainly not hurting things.

FWIW Amazon Prime now is awesome.
First time using it and how nice to pick a hard drive and have it delivered to the house.

 

[overdrive148]

It seems to be going notably faster.
Worth noting a newly installed OS is going to run better than a 5 yr old install so that is certainly not hurting things.

Good to hear!

I tend to reinstall my OS at least once a year.

 

[denverpilot]

FWIW Amazon Prime now is awesome.

It's been awesome for years. Where have you been?

(It was slightly more awesome before it went up $20/year.)

Ain't no way I'd live this far out of town without it. It's awesome having desired "stuff" delivered to your doorstep.

Only cautionary tale is to double check pricing on stuff elsewhere. Sometimes the shipping charges on Prime really are baked into the price tag. And sometimes they over-bake it.

Have to do the math to see if it's still worth it not to pick it up in town on the way by a retail shop with the resulting waste of time...

But it's not that often Amazon doesn't beat the gas money to do that or at least equal it. They always beat the waste of time.

The video and audio freebies are just icing on the cake.

 

[FORANE]

Only cautionary tale is to double check pricing on stuff elsewhere.

If you use Firefox, install the add on priceblink. Priceblink will automatically scan for lower prices anytime you pull up an item on amazon or ebay or...
It will then list the lowest price and link the webpage location.