Anybody use Solid State Drives yet?

[RSchmitz]

Was thinking about using one for my computer but the technology is fairly new and expensive.

[Hoek]

I don't. Most of the appeal is in using it to store your OS on to make it boot up and run programs faster (because they are limited in size compared to the terabyte hard drives). That and it's safer on laptops since it fewer mechanical parts and uses less battery to boot. For the average home user it's not worth the cost yet. Many of the early SSD's actually have slower write times than regular hard drives. It's a problem that's only been solved recently.

[RSchmitz]

Yep, I was thinking about using it for my OS. First I heard that they are slower than HHD though, definitely not worth the money if that is the case.

[Hoek]

Only in random writes. It's mainly an issue if you're working with and saving large files, which if you're just using it for the OS isn't a problem.

[the_narrow_way]

They are also said to be good for running games from, due to the rapid access to the files and the lack of file fragmentation.

[RSchmitz]

Went ahead and ordered an 80 gig one. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

[RSchmitz]

So after having issues putting computer together (first motherboard was DOA), finally got everything up and running.

SSD is pretty neat. I haven't noticed much in the way of system performance, but load times are just incredible. After initial install, my computer boots in about 5-10 seconds. Basically everything that I have on my hard drive loads about 6x as fast including game maps and photoshop files. Of course the issue is space, so it is important to default everything that you deem unimportant onto another HD. The drive itself is also super quiet, in another year or so this will definitely be the way to go. If you can get a 40 gb HD for 60ish bucks definitely do it. Then you can just put all your data/video/songs on an HDD drive.

[Sotnos]

Originally Posted by RSchmitz

After initial install, my computer boots in about 5-10 seconds.

I'm up to 3 minutes plus for my computer to boot, so this sounds very intriguing.

[Hoek]

3 minutes? Ouch. Defragged and uninstalled/turned off stuff you don't use/need at startup?

[Sotnos]

I'm sure I need a defrag again, I think iTunes dumped some extra stuff on there, seems to go back to when I installed it.

I'd love more details about the setup of this computer with an SSD, it sounds interesting.