[Discuss] SSD

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 10:05:41AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> On 05/31/2012 08:03 AM, Stephen Adler wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm looking at upgrading my workstation by adding a couple SSDs as
> > system disks. I'm going to keep my regular drives (reconfigure them)
> > so that they are used for storage, backups etc. I've been reading some
> > reviews on newegg.com and there are a lot of postings about the drives
> > gone bad. Anyone have any advice, preference with SSDs? Any linux
> > specific advice?
> IMHO: I don't think it is a good idea. First, SSDs are much more costly
> per byte. AFAIK, their MTBF is much higher (eg better)  than standard
> hard drives.
> Today, I would only use an SSD in a netbook where it uses less power and
> is lighter.
> 

SSDs have much, much lower random access times than spinning
disks, and some have much better transfer rates.

They do use less power, but their weight is not noticeably
different in the context of a 2-5 lb notebook.

That said, on a desktop, I would increase RAM before I put in an
SSD. Most of the SSD advantage is completely overwhelmed by the
RAM cache. Boot time is a factor, but desktops tend to be
rebooted once a day at most.

Database servers and similar IO-bound services can benefit from
SSDs -- but again, RAM will make a bigger bang, up until the
point where you can't fit your data in it.

-dsr-