What damages ssds. The role of the SSD drive in games and how important it is. Fast Loading Textures
Hard Drives vs. SSDs
The choice is obvious. Computer enthusiasts who have already tried SSD drives in their work have felt the difference and do not want to go back to using a mechanical drive as a system drive. Cons SSD - a significantly higher price, small capacity - as technology develops, gradually disappear.
The benefits of flash storage cannot be ignored: fast access times, high data transfer rates, and superior I/O performance. We also note the mechanical reliability, low power consumption and silent operation.
With so many manufacturers offering SSDs at the moment, it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you go directly to the test charts page, you can see just how much SSDs outperform hard drives. Even if you do not look for the fastest solid state drive, but take the performance of the most inexpensive model as a starting point, even such a drive will be many times faster than any hard drive!
Pros and cons of SSD
It is difficult to assess the benefits of an SSD based on tests that are designed to compare different drives with each other, relative to other upgrade methods (new processor, graphics card).
As a result, ordinary users seeking to build a modern high-performance PC can be advised to buy a small SSD drive and store most of the files on the hard drive, spending the bulk of the funds on updating other PC components.
If you ask a few ordinary users what kind of computer they would like to have, then the answers are likely to be similar. Sandy Bridge processor, at least 4 GB of RAM, good graphics card. The "default" set includes a hard drive, but SSD drives are usually out of the question. It is not right.
It would be appropriate to sacrifice a couple of hundred gigahertz of processor clock speed by supplementing the hard drive with a system SSD of about 60 GB. So you can get almost all the benefits of SSD technology without going broke on a large-capacity solid-state drive.
The Superficial Look Isn't Always Right
Our opinion is generally based on real, comparable data. The 2TB 7200RPM drive looks no doubt more attractive than the old 120GB 5400RPM model. If earlier the throughput of the SATA interface was 300 MB / s, now it has reached 600 MB / s. As you can see, the evolution is obvious, but for many such figures mean more than real results.
In this case, we have two problems at once. First, too few users know that using a solid state drive can really speed up applications significantly. The second problem is the small volume and high cost of SSDs.
But it’s worth repeating again: any modern SSD, regardless of model, is an order of magnitude faster than any hard drive. Let's illustrate this fact by comparing a simple SSD with one of the most powerful magnetic platter drives.
Samsung 470 Series vs. Seagate Barracuda XT
HDD: Seagate Barracuda XT, 3TB
We opted for a hi-end hard drive that combines high performance for an HDD with a large capacity. The Seagate drive is quite capable of representing the HDD as a class in this comparison. This is a modern hard drive with a capacity of 3 TB - not the maximum today, but this volume is enough for almost any PC.
Spindle speed - 7200 rpm. As the latest generation drive, Seagate Barracuda XT combines high sequential read and write speeds, decent - for a hard drive - response time, relatively high I / O performance. The drive is equipped with the latest SATA 6Gb/s interface. However, given the real peak performance of 160 MB / s, this is clearly just an advertising ploy: it was enough to limit ourselves to the previous version of the SATA interface.
Seagate XT belongs to the upper price bracket (about $250). It will appeal to those users who prefer modern hardware, but so far are cautiously looking towards the SSD. The drive is backed by a five-year Seagate warranty.
As an alternative, there are Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 and 7K3000 hard drives (both 3 TB), Western Digital Black Edition 2 TB. You can learn more about modern "heavyweights" from the world of HDD in the material on our website. "Four 3TB HDDs" .
SSD: Samsung 470 Series, 128 GB
Representatives of this Samsung line have previously been repeatedly used by us as reference drives in various tests, but today these drives are no longer the newest and best (see our material Samsung SSD 830 series dedicated to the new line of Korean solid-state drives).
The 470th series is represented by 64, 128 and 256 GB drives equipped with a morally obsolete SATA 3 Gb / s interface. If we compare the Samsung 470-series drive with the latest models of Crucial, Intel and numerous drives based on the second generation SandForce controller, then it does not look so modern.
Ultimately, the Samsung 470 Series SSD delivers data transfer speeds of up to 260 MB/s. Some of the latest SATA 6 Gb / s SSD models are capable of going over 500 MB / s in serial data transfer operations. The difference is significant. Our position in this case is that even the previous generation of solid state drives is far ahead of any hard drives, including the most modern models.
Samsung, Intel, and Toshiba design and manufacture SSD components in-house (the only exception is the Intel SSD 510 series, which uses a Marvell controller). All three vendors have released enough firmware to fix firmware issues, so none of them are perfect. The bottom line is that even if the Samsung 470-series drive is not exactly what computer enthusiasts dream of, this drive is quite consistent in terms of characteristics with a standard "middle class" SSD, and in this sense its choice is justified taking into account the purpose of this review. If you are interested in the question of comparing the performance of more recent SSD models, you can familiarize yourself with the results of the corresponding tests on the pages of our website.
Feature Comparison
Performance
As you can see in the video at the end of this article, an SSD can significantly speed up a modern computer - whether it's the speed of launching applications, loading levels in games, or importing a large amount of data. Why is this happening?
First of all, the success of SSDs is due to significantly higher data transfer rates. 2.5" hard drives reach 60-100 MB/s, 3.5" - 100-150 MB/s. Moreover, these figures reflect the performance of the HDD in the most favorable conditions for them. Characteristics that vendors like to cite in specifications for a particular HDD model relate to sequential data read / write operations - here the hard drive lag is manifested to the least extent. When the hard disk head moves to another partition / sector of the disk, the speed of operations is rapidly reduced.
Disk usage modes that prioritize I/O performance are not HDD-friendly. An example is Windows boot, which involves reading a huge amount of small blocks of data. Here, when comparing a hard drive with an SSD, the picture is even more sad.
The data transfer rate in such modes drops to a few MB/s. This applies even to the newest and most productive HDD models. Thus, hard drives do a good job of sequentially copying large files, but their use as a system drive is not optimal.
An SSD uses flash memory to store data. Such drives consist of many memory cells that are used in parallel to each other and interact with the controller through several data transmission channels. Such an architecture is capable of providing sequential read speeds from a couple of hundred MB / s to record values - more than 550 MB / s. However, as we have already noted, hard drives also perform well in serial data transfer.
The critical mode for SSDs is data write operations, since only blocks of data of a certain size can be written. If you need to write only a few bits to the disk, you will need a whole series of operations - reading, erasing and finally overwriting one or two blocks.
Thus, it is not uncommon for hundreds of MB / s to turn into only a few tens in practice. But while we are talking about blocks of about 4 KB in size, which are used by modern file systems, SSDs are still 10-20 times faster than HDDs, providing performance at the level of tens of MB / s, while in the case of hard drives it drops to KB /s due to delays in head positioning. In real work, such a difference is not only noticeable, but striking.
Energy consumption and heating
SSDs consume, at most, a few watts. Hard drives can use up to 10 watts per hour or more if files are actively copied. Modern SSDs don't get hot at all. Hard drives, on the other hand, often need cooling. The usual air circulation inside your computer case is most likely enough, but the issue of competent cooling of the disk system is still worth considering when assembling a PC yourself.
Design features and reliability
SSDs have no moving parts, which makes them very reliable. Theoretically, there is a possibility that you will subject the SSD to extremely high vibration or shock, so that the chip soldering is broken. In practice, this situation is unlikely.
The exact same tiny chance of soldering failure exists with hard drives, but the real danger lies in the presence of moving elements - magnetic platters that rotate at high speed, and read / write heads. The principle of operation of a modern HDD resembles an old-fashioned gramophone.
Mechanical parts have a certain resource and, in general, the reliability of a hard drive is lower. Any strong shake can turn a working hard drive into a piece of useless hardware. Modern HDDs have a certain "margin of safety" in relation to shock loads (which is especially true for 2.5 ”drives for laptops), but in terms of mechanical reliability, they are still significantly inferior to SSDs.
Whether an SSD drive will outlive a hard drive is impossible to say with accuracy. It is known that HDDs are more prone to failure, as their design combines electronics and mechanical elements. On the other hand, SSDs are more sensitive to firmware and we know of cases where a solid state drive has become unusable due to firmware failure. Potential reliability issues for SSDs and HDDs are different, but exist in both cases. You can learn more about the issue of comparing the reliability of SSD and magnetic platter drives in the article. "Which is more reliable: SSD or HDD?" .
Test bench configuration
| Performance Test Bench | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-2500K (Sandy Bridge): LGA 1155, 32 nm process technology, D2 stepping, 4 cores/4 threads, 3.3 GHz, 6 MB shared L3 cache, HD Graphics 3000, TDP 95 W, Turbo Boost max. frequency 3.7 GHz |
| Motherboard (LGA 1155) | Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3, rev. 0.2, Intel Z68 Express chipset, BIOS version F3 |
| RAM | 2 x 2 GB DDR3-1333, Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D |
| System SSD | Intel X25-M G1 80GB Firmware 0701 SATA 3Gb/s |
| SATA controller | Intel PCH Z68 SATA 6Gb/s |
| Power Supply | |
| Benchmarks | |
| Performance measurements | h2benchw 3.16 PC Mark 7 1.0.4 |
| Iometer 2006.07.27 File Server Benchmark Web Server Benchmark Database Benchmark Workstation Benchmark Streaming Reads Streaming Writes 4K Random Reads 4K Random Writes |
|
| System software and drivers | |
| Operating system | Windows 7 x64 Ultimate SP1 |
| Intel Inf Driver | 9.2.0.1030 |
| Intel Rapid Storage Driver | 10.5.0.1026 |
| SSD Power Consumption Test Bench | |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme X7800 (Merom), 65 nm, E1 stepping, 2 cores/2 threads, 2.6 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 44 W TDP |
| Motherboard (Socket 478) | MSI Fuzzy GM965, revision 1.0, Intel GM965 chipset, BIOS version A9803IMS.220 |
| RAM | 2 x 1 GB DDR2-666, Crucial BallistiX CM128M6416U27AD2F-3VX |
| System HDD | Western Digital WD3200BEVT 320GB SATA 3Gb/s 5400rpm |
| SATA controller | Intel ICH8-ME |
| Power Supply | Seasonic X-760 760 W, SS-760KM Active PFC F3 |
| Benchmarks | |
| Video playback | VLC 1.1.1 Big_Buck_Bunny_1080p |
| I/O performance | Iometer 2006.07.27 Database Benchmark Streaming Writes |
| System software and drivers | |
| Operating system | Windows 7 x64 Ultimate SP1 |
| Intel Inf Driver | 9.2.0.1021 |
| Intel Rapid Storage Driver | 15.12.75.4.64 |
| Benchmark for evaluating performance in real applications | |
| CPU | Intel Core i3-530 (Clarkdale) 32 nm, C2 stepping, 2 cores/4 threads, 2.93 GHz, 256 KB L2 cache, 4 MB L3 cache, HD Graphics, TDP 73 W |
| Motherboard (LGA 1155) | MSI H57M-ED65, revision 1.0, Intel H57 chipset, BIOS version 1.5 |
| RAM | 2 x 4 GB DDR3-1333, Kingston KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX |
| Controller | Intel PCH H57 SATA 3Gb/s |
| Power Supply | Seasonic X-760 760W, SS-760KM Active PFC F3 |
| Test software | |
| Performance Measurements | SYSmark 2012 |
| Operating system and drivers | |
| Operating system | Windows 7 x64 Ultimate SP1 (updated on 2011-08-10) |
| Intel Inf Driver | 9.2.0.1030 |
| Intel Rapid Storage Driver | 10.6.0.1002 |
The results of these tests are indicative for most models of SSDs and hard drives. The components under test are selected to provide the best comparison for both configuration options. The drives are tested on very similar systems. The purpose of this review is to evaluate the benefits of using an SSD as a system drive. We do not seek to prove that SSDs have advantages in all forms (in fact, we do not recommend using them for data storage).
Test results
Sequential Read/Write
CrystalDiskMark and Iometer clearly show significantly higher data transfer rates compared to a high-end hard drive. If you regularly read reviews, this fact is unlikely to be news to you.
Random Read/Write
The following results are very revealing in terms of booting the Windows operating system. When it comes to the real difference in everyday use, the gap between SSD and HDD may not be that significant, but in a synthetic test, the difference is striking.
According to CrystalDiskMark, the hard drive runs at 4K blocks in random read mode at 1.6MB/s and writes at 0.7MB/s. Similar indicators for SSDs are an order of magnitude higher: 19.7 MB / s for write operations, 70.6 MB / s for reading.
As the queue depth increases, the performance of the SSD increases even more, which is explained by the fuller use of its multi-channel architecture: 129.4 MB / s for write operations and 70.5 for reading. For the HDD, we also see a 3x increase in random write speed (up to 2.1 MB/s) thanks to NCQ support. However, the gap to the solid state drive is further widening.
In the case of larger blocks (in this test, 512 KB), the hard disk can provide much better speed than we just saw. However, SSD and here retains the lead. A modern 6 Gb/s solid state drive would provide a more serious break from the HDD.
The alignment of forces is obvious: in a random search test using blocks of 4 KB, the HDD provided a result of about 700 KB / s, SSD - 18.4 MB / s.
At a high queue depth (64 commands), the SSD outperforms the hard drive in the random search test by 40-50 times.
In the Iometer read performance test, the Samsung 470 128 GB achieves a performance of 28,000 IOPS. The hard drive shows a result of 102 operations per second.
When writing, the SSD operates on blocks of data: writing even just a few bytes requires a full cycle of rewriting the entire block. Therefore, in write operations, the SSD gap is not so blatant, but we are still talking about an order of magnitude difference. Iometer shows a result of 1343.5 I / O operations for SSD and 132.5 for HDD.
I/O performance and access time
The "Database" boot script paints a clear picture: SSDs are 12 times faster than HDDs.
In the "Web server" scenario, the SSD's superiority is even more significant, since read operations in this test account for the bulk of the load.
In the workstation performance test, the alignment of forces does not change.
Access time
Unlike a hard drive, access time on an SSD is hardly measurable.
PC Mark 7
Futuremark PCMark 7 simulates a typical PC experience. With rare exceptions, an SSD outperforms a hard drive by 2-4 times. Note that in these tests the overall performance of the system changes, taking into account the influence of the CPU and video card. Thus, here we see a picture close to that which takes place in everyday use of a PC.
Exceptions include video processing in Windows Movie Maker and the Windows Media Center download script. In these tests, SSD and hard drive provide close results.
Energy consumption
The smallest difference between an SSD and a hard drive in terms of power consumption is seen in the streaming write stress test. But even in this test, one hard drive consumes about the same amount of power as three SSDs.
Energy efficiency: performance per watt
In database applications, the Samsung 470 outperforms a Seagate hard drive by 476 times (I/O per watt).
In the test for streaming efficiency, the SSD outperformed the hard drive by 7 times.
Here it is necessary to briefly highlight the issue of measuring "capacity per watt", since SSDs are inferior to hard drives in this indicator. To provide the amount of disk space corresponding to the Seagate Barracuda XT 3 TB, you will need to build an array of fifteen SSDs. In this context, discussing "capacity per watt" is only theoretical. If you need a lot of storage space, HDDs currently have no alternative.
SYSmark 2012
The benchmark developed by BARCo is not often used in tests. The fact is that some companies, including AMD and nVidia, do not trust this test package, which is explained by the specific composition of the package: it focuses on boot scenarios that have little to do with everyday PC use. A significant percentage of the overall performance rating is given to OCR or archiving operations. It is worth noting that AMD indicates the presence in SYSMark of some optimizations for the Intel architecture.
Please note that in the tests from the SYSMark package, the SSD is very slightly ahead of the hard drive. We can say that the results are the same. The reason is that in this case it is not possible to isolate the impact of other computer subsystems on the final result.
Windows boot speed
A computer with a system SSD is also turned off faster - in five seconds instead of eight in the case of an HDD.
Application launch
We use a script that opens four applications at the same time. As in the case of OS boot, the speed advantage of launching applications on a system with an SSD drive is quite significant. How it looks in practice, you can see in the video.
Run applications on SSD and hard drive
So, we used a script that opens several applications at the same time and captures the difference in the form of a short video. The script runs immediately after Windows boots, after which it waits 30 seconds for all processes to complete. The script launches Internet Explorer 9 (an offline version of the THG site), Microsoft Outlook (the same set of custom folders as in SYSmark 2012), a "heavy" PowerPoint presentation, and a large image in Adobe Photoshop.
We missed this test four times in a row. File caching slightly reduces the load time for the fourth "run", but this can only be noticed in relation to the HDD. Let's watch a video:
Run multiple applications on hard drive and SSD
Our test simulates the scenario when you turn on your computer and open several applications at once - for example, an office program, a web browser, a messenger, an image editor. As long as the system has enough RAM (that is, at least 4 GB at the moment), CPU performance is in second place after the disk subsystem. In other words, plus or minus 500 MHz of the processor frequency is not so significant, but replacing the hard drive with an SSD, on the contrary, fundamentally affects the result.
Here the question arises - is the choice of a specific SSD model important? In our opinion, this issue is not so fundamental. Even if you choose the latest SandForce SF-2200 controller drive that goes over 500 MB/s in sequential read, the difference compared to the older SSD model we used in this test will not be too noticeable. If this is your first time trying to use an SSD as a system drive, then you definitely won't want to go back to hard drives.
Any modern SSD improves system responsiveness
For those computer enthusiasts who have not yet tried using an SSD, we can safely advise this upgrade option. Undoubtedly, the game is worth the candle. Although not every benchmark reflects the benefits of using an SSD as a system drive (in particular, in SYSMark we do not see a significant gap), the real difference in performance is striking.
We compared one of the largest, fastest and most expensive hard drives on the market - Seagate Barracuda XT - with a modest, not the newest Samsung 470 solid state drive. Of course, you can opt for a more "advanced" model, but even if you choose relatively budget model, you can get all the benefits of SSD.
At the same time, we are not at all trying to retire hard drives. When it comes to file storage, there is no alternative to this type of drive. SSD should be used to install the operating system, place executable program files, application caches on it.
For most cases, the ideal configuration of a modern PC includes a system SSD drive and a large hard drive that stores movies, music, images, documents. Non-SSD systems are budget options, and SSD-only computers are almost never found in nature.
How important is an SSD drive for games, what does it affect and what is the usefulness of this technology - this is what we will discuss in our article. A solid state drive has a number of significant advantages over a conventional hard drive. One of the most valuable among them is the ability to instantly download files written to it. This is because this type of device has no moving parts, so no time is wasted moving the disk head.
In addition, SSD drives are lightweight, extremely low power consumption, high write speed, no noise and the ability to fully function with the fastest interfaces. With their help, any files are read much faster than on conventional HDDs, while the operating system itself becomes more efficient.
We’ll talk more about all this, as well as whether an SSD is needed for games and why it’s worth installing it, we’ll talk further.
Operating environment
Let's start with the fact that solid-state drives significantly speed up the loading of programs. For example, the operating system is loaded in just up to 13 seconds.
If we talk about games that have an old architecture, where resources are arranged as a huge number of small files, then a regular hard drive processes them incredibly slowly. As an example, we can take the well-known World of Tanks. Even on the most powerful PCs, a significant drop in performance becomes noticeable during mass skirmishes, in company battles and battles on the global map.
Using a gaming SSD, you can eliminate the existing drawback and maintain the required speed of the game. As for the increase in frames per second, it is quite insignificant. Developers are well aware that the drive is the weakest link in the computer, so it should not be overloaded. Basically, the performance in games is affected by the processor and video card.
Fast loading levels
One of the most important factors that distinguishes a solid state drive from a conventional device. Games weigh 50 GB for a reason, and they constantly use the necessary information, throwing it into RAM. In this case, booting from the SSD is much faster. Moreover, the worse the optimization of the application, the more noticeable the difference between the drives. Therefore, when wondering if it is possible to install games on an SSD, know that this must be done to improve performance.
If you look at the load time using the example of Battlefield 3, you can see that the Crucial MX 255 GB SSD significantly outperforms (almost 3 times) the regular Seagate 3TB HDD, despite the fact that they both work on a faster SATAIII interface .
Basically, this feature manifests itself in offline games, although many users say that loading from a solid-state hard drive in online battles is also quite fast and you have to constantly wait for "slow" players. In this case, SSD PC owners can discuss tactics ahead of time while the rest of us are still admiring the loading screen and drinking tea.
It is also important to say about multiple windows of the same game (applies to MMORPG gamers), which is torture for the HDD, while the SSD can easily endure such loads. Do not forget about mods, which are often "screwed" to the engine using third-party scripts and libraries. That is, they are loaded into memory in an abnormal way. Ordinary drives don't like this kind of activity, while there is no difference at all for SSDs in games.
Stable FPS
A solid state drive is especially useful when the user is playing games with a vast open world. No matter how much RAM and video memory the PC would have in this case, the application constantly loads the memory with new areas on the map and its details, which heavily loads the system and squanders FPS. In this case, the SSD does its job much better, working with a minimum number of delays, than a mechanical drive, the reading head of which must move to the desired area and read the information.
youtube.be/9dEsTiOeMQ4
In addition, if you put an SSD for a gaming computer, you can compensate for the lack of RAM in cases where the game turns out to be excessively voracious. The Windows operating system likes to use the paging file "on business and without it", while most games do not work at all without an activated swap, which takes up gigabytes of hard drive memory to use as RAM.
HDD devices are significantly inferior to solid state drives in terms of data access speed. Therefore, if a “slideshow” awaits you with the first one, then in the case of an SSD, a PC or laptop will pull out the game even “through I can’t”.
Fast Loading Textures
Basically, in online games, textures and other objects are loaded when the character approaches them, and not during entry. In view of this, it becomes possible to significantly reduce performance if you move through terrain with complex design and architecture.
A standard drive will not be able to load 3D textures in real time, and because of this, it will slow down a lot, which will certainly affect your efficiency and enjoyment of the game. Therefore, if you decide to buy an SSD for games, then this is definitely the right decision.
Silence and reliability
As we said earlier, solid state devices have no moving parts. Therefore, computers equipped with them do not make noise and do not make strange sounds even under heavy load. Given the modern technologies used in the production of computer components, you can assemble an absolutely silent device. Moreover, the absence of moving parts makes the drive itself more reliable and minimizes the likelihood of it breaking.
It must also be said that an SSD is worth buying and installing for the reason that it will ensure the complete safety of information where a conventional magnetic drive will lose it. In standard hard drives, memory sectors “die” without the possibility of recovery, and in SSD information simply goes into read mode. That is, the saved gameplay can be transferred to another drive.
Dispelling some myths
Summarizing
Given the above information, we can now answer the question of whether an SSD is needed for a gaming PC. For the average user, it will not be something revolutionary and will most likely act as a nice addition. But if you are a gamer, then if possible, this device should be taken and installed on a computer without a doubt. Especially if you like demanding games with good graphics.
The solid state hard drive will make your PC more productive in both online and offline games. You can easily play team games with a large number of participants and extensive maps. With an SSD, you will not only get maximum comfort, but also gain superiority over other players.
I found a good picture showing the strengths and weaknesses of each device.
Speaking of SSD or HDD - which is better for gaming, it is enough to mention the fact that having a solid state drive is a mandatory requirement for all participants in eSports competitions. Without this component, you would simply not be allowed to compete.
However, if you have a limited budget and have a choice, buy an SSD or invest in a powerful processor or video card, then in this case it is better to resort to the second option to maximize performance.
Also, with a limited amount of funds, you can limit yourself to a regular hard drive if you have enough RAM.
Now you know whether it is possible to put games on an SSD and what is its main advantage over conventional drives. The choice of SSD drive is entirely up to you. Consider your financial capabilities, as well as the features and benefits of modern hard drives.
Comparison video
youtube.be/sZFMXCYJhOM
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Now the main distinguishing features of a fast computer are a powerful processor, a large amount of RAM and a solid state drive. However, many users, when choosing components for their new computer, find it difficult to choose: should I buy an SSD drive or should I still take a regular HDD? A vivid example from life: a company and a system administrator ordered a batch of computers from one of my comrades, replacing a classic hard drive with a solid-state SSD. The question arose - did the system administrator make the right choice in this situation ?!
Yes! The choice was made correctly and now I will explain why.
What is an SSD?!
Speaking in a simple and understandable language for the average user, then a typical SSD drive is essentially a large-capacity flash drive that uses NAND non-volatile memory modules and is connected via a high-speed SATA or PCE-Express interface.
Here are the main comparative characteristics of an SSD SSD and a classic hard drive:
| parametR | SSD (Solid State Drive) | HDD (normal hard disk) |
| Power Consumption / Laptop Battery Life | Less power consumption - an average of 2 - 3 watts. Due to this, the battery lasts at least 30 minutes longer. | More power consumption, averaging 6 - 15 W, consumes more battery power |
| Price | Expensive, approximately $0.20 per gigabyte (based on 1TB purchase) | Only about $0.03 per gigabyte, very cheap (buy the 4TB model) |
| Capacity | Usually no more than 1 TB for laptops; 4TB desktop | Usually about 500 GB and 2 TB for laptops; 10TB desktop |
| Operating system boot time | About 10-13 seconds average load time | Average loading time is about 30-40 seconds |
| Noise | No moving parts and as such no sound | Sound clicks and turn can be heard |
| vibration | No vibration as there are no moving parts | Plate rotation can sometimes cause vibration |
| Heating capacity | Lower power consumption and no moving parts so the SSD stays cool | Rigid heats up noticeably more due to moving parts and higher power |
| Failure rate | Mean time between failure rates 2.0 million hours | Mean time between failure rates 1.5 million hours |
| File copy/write speed | Typically over 200MB/s and up to 550MB/s for cutting discs | The range can be from 50 to 120MB/s |
| Encryption | Full Disk Encryption (FDE) Supported on select models | |
| File opening speed | Up to 30% faster than hard drive | Slower than SSD |
| Impact of a magnetic field | SSD is safe from any effects of magnetism | Strong magnets can erase data |
To summarize the table briefly, the SSD is light, fast, with low consumption, but at the same time expensive and still has a smaller volume for a similar price.
Does it make sense to buy an SSD?
To give an accurate answer to this, you first need to decide what the user wants to receive from the purchase?!
Amount of information. Of particular relevance to the topic is the fact that now at the price of a solid-state drive with a volume of 240-260 Gigabytes, you can buy a regular hard drive for 1-2 Terabytes. Is it just that such a volume is needed now for a computer or laptop? For an office PC, where work is mainly done with documents and projects, and everything important is stored on a network drive, Terabytes are not needed in principle. It's more about speed.
For home use, they usually buy two devices at once: an SSD drive to use it as a system drive, and a separate large hard drive for file storage. Instead of the latter, removable external hard drives connected via USB are often used now. This option is especially relevant for a laptop. And if we take into account that the era of cloud storage has come, then there is simply no point in storing such volumes of information on your PC or laptop.
The speed of working with data. Now separately let's talk about speed. Due to the use of a solid state drive, your laptop or computer will load the operating system in a few seconds, launch programs and applications much faster, saving files and projects will be done instantly!
SSD for gaming But do not expect that using an SSD drive will make games “fly”, as many novice users think. Using it will not increase the number of FPS in the game and the quality of the graphics will not improve. He is absolutely in no way able to influence this! Network games will not be accelerated either, since the speed there depends mainly on the Internet access channel. But cached files and data stored locally will load much faster.
Reliability. Some time ago, solid state drives were considered unreliable and there was information that they quickly failed, literally just having worked out the warranty period. Now the situation has changed for the better! SSD failures happen much less frequently than conventional hard drives. But the nature of these failures is much more insidious due to the fact that the SSD has a much higher number of uncorrectable errors and the data cannot be recovered in the future. By the way, these errors practically do not depend on the number of read and write cycles that used to frighten users. In practice, I have yet to come across a disk that runs out of cycles. So we can assume that they are quite reliable.
Summary
So, if you have not yet decided for yourself whether to buy an SSD or not, then my verdict is unequivocal - it's worth it. These devices are fast and reliable, and the volume of 240-520 GB, in principle, is enough for any task. Yes, a little expensive, but the effect on the face! They are the future. The era of conventional hard drives is gradually passing away and the day is not far off when they will simply cease to be manufactured!
When the entire Internet is full of holivars on the topic "SSDs are unreliable" and "SSDs are so fast that I will never work with HDDs again", I think it's time to clear up a little bit of conflicting information about SSDs themselves and about configuring Windows to work with them .
Who is interested, please under the cat.
So I became the happy owner of this miracle of modern technology: OCZ Vertex 3 120 Gb. I first booted into the old system and updated the SSD firmware as The OCZ firmware program does not allow you to update the firmware when the drive is a system drive. I think updating the firmware is the first thing to do after purchasing an SSD, because. as practice shows, there are plenty of errors in microprograms, especially in new SSD models (compared to which Vertex 3 is no longer the newest :)).
Next, I decided to put a clean system on the SSD. Installing Windows 7 from a flash drive (USB 2.0) took about 10 minutes. Wow, I thought, it used to take much longer to install some heavy programs, not to mention the operating system!
From that moment on, you could just start using a super fast drive and enjoy life, but I did not leave the paranoid feeling that my SSD would quickly break down due to frequent overwrites. Indeed, the limited number of SSD write cycles is not yet a myth. But everyone already knows that even a resource of 10,000 overwrites is a very, very much with a disk size of 120 Gb. Depending on the controller, the SSD can also use various internal wear leveling technologies, relocation of data from one place to another, compression of written data (relevant for SandForce controllers) - the disk tries its best to work fast and for a long time :) How to influence this internal logic is almost impossible (except perhaps by updating the firmware), so when choosing an SSD for some special tasks, you need to look for information on the logic of its controller.
For those who take special care of the disk and protect it, there are a lot of tips on the Internet on how to reduce the write load on the disk from the operating system. These tips can be divided into useful, harmful and controversial.
1) Transferring the directory for temporary files to a regular (HDD) disk
The paths to the TEMP directories are here:Computer - Properties - Advanced system settings - Advanced tab - Environment variables - TMP and TEMP (for the current user and general).
Someone advises moving Temp to RAMDisk, but this is rather bad advice. This is due to the fact that some programs (including updates) write data to a temporary directory, then send the computer to reboot, and then expect that the data has not gone away during this time. And RAMDisk is cleared on reboot by default. But even if your RAMDisk supports saving data to an image and restoring after a reboot, this is also not a panacea, because. a situation is possible in which the RAMDisk service simply does not have time to start and initialize by the time programs start accessing the temporary directory.
2) Disable hibernation
This is pretty strange advice. On the one hand, disabling hibernation allows you to get rid of the hiberfil.sys file, the size of which is equal to the amount of RAM, and SSD space is especially expensive for us. Also, with each hibernation, a relatively large amount of data is written to the SSD, which “leads to wear and tear and blah blah blah blah” ... The apologists of this advice say “why do you need hibernation, because with an SSD the system already starts in a few seconds.” But personally, I need hibernation not for the sake of a quick start, but in order not to close (and not reopen later) a damn bunch of applications that I constantly use, so the expediency of disabling hibernation is a big question.I would love to move the hiberfil.sys file to another drive (on the HDD), but due to system limitations, this is not possible.
3) Disable system protection.
Computer - Properties - System protection - System protection tab - Configure - Disable system protection.You can do this if you use at least some other system backup tools. Otherwise, there is a big risk of getting a non-working system in case of some failures.
4) Disabling the paging file.
This advice causes the most heated debate, and even from Microsoft it was not possible to achieve intelligible explanations.I consider this advice harmful and recommend moving the paging file to a regular (HDD) disk (but in no case to a RAMDisk :), I won’t even explain why - this information is easy to find on the net).
Disabling the paging file completely is harmful from the following point of view. Some "very smart" programs (for example, MS SQL Server) reserve virtual address space for themselves in very large quantities (in reserve). The reserved memory is not shown in the task manager, it can be seen, for example, in Process Explorer by turning on the display of the "Process Memory - Virtual Size" column. If there is a swap file, the system reserves memory in it (that is, a certain range is declared unavailable for use by other applications). In the absence of a paging file, the backup occurs directly in RAM. If someone can clarify in the comments (with links to reliable sources) exactly how this affects the operation of other programs and performance, I will be very grateful.
5) Disable Prefetch, ReadyBoot, and Superfetch.
5.1. Prefetch is a technology to speed up system and application loading by proactively reading data from disk. It is relevant only for slow media. Since the SSD is fine with Random reads, Prefetch can be safely disabled.Service data Prefetcher stores in C:\Windows\Prefetch.
To disable Prefetch, change the value of the Enable Prefetcher parameter in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters registry key to 0.
5.2 ReadyBoot (not to be confused with ReadyBoost) is an add-on to Prefetch that logs the boot process to determine the order and composition of the data required during boot and, based on these logs, prepares the required data to speed up the boot process.
The logs themselves are in C:\Windows\Prefetch\ReadyBoot. Disabling Prefetcher does not stop recording these logs. To stop logging, set the Start parameter of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger\ReadyBoot key to 0
Disabling ReadyBoot in general is a relatively useless piece of advice. this will not give any increase in speed, except slightly reduce the writes to the disk, tk. download logs (which are quite small, on the order of a few megabytes) will not be kept.
5.3 Superfetch is a technology for preloading frequently executed programs into RAM. Disabling it does not make sense, because. Superfetch does not write to disk.
6) Disabling indexing
In the properties of the disk, you can uncheck the box "Allow the contents of files on this disk to be indexed in addition to file properties." This can reduce the size of the indexes that the Windows indexer builds, i.e. reduce the write load on the SSD.The indexes themselves are in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search
You can also disable the indexer entirely by disabling the Windows Search service.
7) Transferring application caches to RAMDisk.
By applications, here we mean mainly browsers, because they are the ones who actively use the cache of visited pages. Moving this cache to the HDD would be pretty stupid, because. we need to speed up! Therefore, it is quite a good solution to move these caches to a small (for example, 1 GB) RAMDisk (I personally use AMD Radeon RAMDisk, although despite the loud name, this is a Dataram product).Each browser has its own way of specifying the location of the cache, this information is easy to find on the web.
8) Disable usn NTFS journal.
One of the controversial and controversial advice. On the one hand, I could not disable the usn journal for the system partition. The usn log is also used by some programs (eg Everything) to keep track of changed files. If someone can comment on the usefulness of disabling usn, I would be very grateful.UPD 9) Disable disk defragmentation
Windows 7 should itself disable defragmentation for SSD drives, so you don't need to manually configure anything.Conclusions:
1. Even if you do not resort to any advice on configuring the system to work with an SSD, Windows 7 will work on an SSD a little less than excellent.
2. Some tips will allow you to reduce the number of writes to the SSD drive, which can extend its already relatively long life.
3. Many tips will allow you to change some parameters without killing the system performance, but without giving any practical benefit :)
Other ideas and advice are highly welcome! I hope that together we will be able to distinguish between useful and harmful :)
Until recently, data storage media were used, operating on the principle of magnetic recording. In the 70s and 80s of the past century, they were floppy disks, which then gave way to more reliable and capacious hard drives. This state of affairs was observed until the end of the last decade, until SSDs appeared on the market - solid-state electronic media, devoid of moving mechanical parts and characterized by high speed.
At first, they were distinguished by small capacity and high price. The service life of these devices also left much to be desired. Therefore, there was no clear answer to the question of why an SSD drive is needed. At 32 or 64 GB and costing several hundred dollars, these media seemed like an expensive toy to most. And a slight advantage in write / read speed (up to 1.5-2 times) made SSD interesting only for "geeks" who wanted to squeeze the maximum performance out of their PC.
But progress does not stand still, and soon more capacious and affordable solid state drives went on sale, which attracted the attention of a wide audience. The question of why you need an SSD hard drive has become more relevant than ever.
Design features, advantages of SSD drives
To understand why installing an SSD drive, you need to understand the main advantages of such drives. It does not hurt to know the main disadvantages of these gadgets.
HDD and SSD drive design
The most important difference between SSD and traditional hard drives is a different principle of construction and operation. Unlike a hard drive, there are no mechanical components in the design of solid state media. Data is recorded using arrays of high-speed flash memory, access to which is provided by an internal controller. This design gives the SSD a number of advantages that are not available with a classic HDD.
- Noiselessness. Due to the absence of moving parts, the SSD does not make sounds during operation.
- Shake resistance. Unlike HDDs, where the magnetic head can scratch the surface of the disk (thus damaging it and the stored data) during the process of moving the device or dropping it, the SSD is less vulnerable. Of course, as a result of a blow to the case, contact between the components may be broken, but the drive hidden inside a computer or laptop is sufficiently protected from this.
- Low power consumption. The main consumer of energy in a railway is the motor that drives the disks. It rotates at a speed of 5, 7 or 10 thousand revolutions per minute and consumes up to 95% of all electricity supplied to the drive. Thus, the SSD is up to 10 times more economical, which is especially true for thin laptops.
- High read/write speed. The magnetic data recording method has reached the limit of perfection. More than 100-200 Mb / s in sequential write mode, without reducing the service life, increasing the size, increasing power consumption and increasing the price, it is impossible to get from a hard disk. SSD flash memory does not have this disadvantage and is up to 10 times faster.
- Stable working speed. If information on a traditional hard drive is written to physically different disks (their HDD designs are 2 or more) or their sections, there is a delay caused by the need to move the reading head. Because of this, the speed of work is significantly reduced. A similar latency when reading cells in an SSD flash array is millionths of a second and does not significantly affect overall performance.
Disadvantages of SSD
With all the advantages, it's too early to talk about the perfection of SSD technology. The disadvantages of such drives are insufficiently low cost (3-10 times more expensive than HDD in terms of 1 GB of memory) and limited service life (from 10 thousand to 1 million rewrite cycles per cell). This indicator for HDD is theoretically unlimited, but in practice it reaches tens of millions of cycles.
Another disadvantage of solid-state drives is electrical vulnerability: when high voltage is applied, caused by a malfunction of the power supply, both the controller and the flash drive burn out.
SSD drives - why you need them
Knowing the main advantages of solid state drives, answer the question "Why do I need an SSD drive in a computer?" much easier. The purchase of this gadget will, first of all, increase the comfort of using the gadget and extend its battery life (if it is a portable PC). The high speed of work will positively affect the boot time of the OS, opening documents and performance in games.
Why is an SSD drive needed in a laptop
If it comes to a laptop, then here the question “why do we need an SSD” can generally not be discussed. In any case, it will not get worse from buying a solid-state drive. Energy-efficient technology will allow you to achieve more time from a single charge, the absence of high voltage in the supply circuits minimizes the risk of permanent drive failure in the event of a power supply failure, and the amount of memory in a portable PC does not play such an important role as in a desktop one.
As for the shorter resource of work, the experience of service centers shows that a laptop hard drive fails and undergoes premature wear several times more often and faster than in a desktop computer. This is due, first of all, to a significantly large number of dynamic loads that the device is subjected to during transportation and operation. If you accidentally drop a laptop from your knees at the moment when data is being written to the HDD, there is a high risk of damaging the drive, even if the computer is not visually damaged. Therefore, it is highly likely that an SSD will last even longer than a hard drive. 
Why an SSD drive in a gaming PC
Gamers are the main, at the moment, part of SSD buyers. The use of a solid state drive allows them to achieve better performance in 3D games by reducing their startup time. Loading levels, inventory, surrounding objects and other elements of the game world from files stored on disk is also much (up to 10 times) faster.
There is a noticeable difference in "seamless" games such as Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto or Fallout. The inner world in them is located on one huge map, and to reduce the load on hardware, only a part of it is stored in RAM. This can be a situation, for example, within a radius of 200 meters around the character. As you move through the terrain, moving away objects from the RAM are removed, and in their place are recorded the objects towards which the player is approaching. Thus, reading from the hard disk occurs constantly and it is easy to guess that SSD will allow data to be fed to the processor much faster and more efficiently than hard disk drives.
For gamers, the high cost of a gigabyte in a solid state drive is not critical, since games take up relatively little space. If a collection of 100 films in FullHD quality weighs about 1 TB, the same Fallout 4 requires less than 50 GB of free space.
Why you need an SSD hard drive in a multimedia computer
In a home PC used for web surfing and multimedia tasks (watching movies, listening to music), an SSD drive is the least needed. Only connoisseurs of content in Blue-Ray quality can feel the need for such a disc. Waiting for a 40 GB movie to be written to the PC's memory is quite a long time (about 10 minutes). But to store a selection of your favorite movies in FullHD, QHD or 4K UHD, you need a capacious SSD of 500, 1000 or 2000 GB. The cost of such drives exceeds a thousand dollars, and not everyone can afford such an acquisition.
For undemanding PC users, a large SSD in a multimedia computer without much need. The capabilities of classic (magnetic) hard drives are enough to meet the needs of 99% of users. However, a small (64 - 128 GB) solid state drive used as system media (for installing Windows) will not be superfluous. It will significantly increase the overall performance of the PC, reduce the noise level of the system unit and save energy.
A big fan of high-quality Chinese technology, a lover of clear screens. A supporter of healthy competition between manufacturers. He closely follows the news in the world of smartphones, processors, video cards and other hardware.
