30GB SSD - getting to a reasonable price?

[Audigex]

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Hard+Drives/Solid+State/OCZ+Core+V2+30GB+2.5%22+Solid+State+Disk+?productI d=33316

At a smidgen under £100 before VAT, that's starting to look quite attractive as a windows and games/performance programs drive - what will the performance be like compared to two 80gb drives in raid0 (assuming I've got my RAID right - the performance one)?

[marsey99]

that 1 drive is about as fast as my 2 in raid but iirc it has slightly worse write times.

[wonderlust]

My concern at this time is what is the longevity on these early generation drives going to be?

[marsey99]

i read a thing on the intel ones and they said 25years+ of normal use, how much truth is in that i dont know but i cant see it being an unfounded claim.

they have a chip on the pcb that makes it write the data to every sector before overwriting the 1st again to prolong the life.

biggest issue(concern) i see is data recovery tbh.

[mac124]

What i find weird is they reckon defragging an SSD drive could damage them, how ?

[wonderlust]

I can only assume that it could be the intensive re-writing of data into the cells.

[marsey99]

yes and no, its to do with where the data is written, if its not being spread out across the sectors you may end up rewriting it all in the same place which is what does the damage.

who defraggs nowadays? i aint in......pass.....ntfs makes it almost pointless anyway.

[Monkey]

Thats not true atall, its quite important to defrag atleast once a week (depending on how much date is being moved and programs installed)

NTFS format still scatters one file all over your harddrive, I use JKdefrag on all my computers, its quick, works really well and you can set it to your screensaver, also when its done you can choose to make it go to another screensaver... avast anti virus screensaver perhaps? :P

[marsey99]

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

its a good read on it, with ssd and ntfs defrag will be pointless.

[Monkey]

Oh your talking about a SSD drive in NTFS format?

[alexnifty]

Off the top of my head, fragmentation only affects normal hard drives because the reader arm has to dash about all over the place to recover a file.

With SSD this just doesn't happen as theres no moving parts.

[wonderlust]

Makes sense to me. but if the drive also has said chip to spread the use of the cells out that too may help to reduce fragmentation

[Monkey]

Makes sense to me also

[coiler]

i defrag once a month or so, without having time to read that link, is this now a bad idea?

Raptor Sata 150gb drive.

[jonwoad]

its a bad idea on a SSD drive :)

[wonderlust]

I leave vista upto it's own thing. on my pvr Pc vista wakes it up to defrag ;)

[Monkey]

vista defrag is ****e! It takes far too long and it doesnt do half the work, JKdefrag all the way, It goes until its all at the begining of the drive, on all drives, not just the one you select. Even USB flash drives

[marsey99]

i was talking about any drive, but with ssd it is not needed as nifty pointed out the only reason you need to now.

me i dont and wont waste my time as tbh i am happy with my hd's performance/load times.



Part 2. Features of NTFS defragmentatoin

Let's return to one interesting enough and important moment - NTFS fragmentation and defragmentation. The situation with these two concepts at the moment can not be called satisfactory in any way. At the very beginning it was said that NTFS is not subject to file fragmentation. It is not exactly so and the statement was changed - NTFS prevents fragmentation. It is not exactly so either. That is it certainly prevents but... It is already clear that NTFS is a system which is predisposed to fragmentation inspite of official statements. But it doesn't suffer from it. All internal structures are constructed in such way that fragmentation does not hinder to find data fragments fast. But it doesn't save from the physical effect of fragmentation - waste disk heads motions.


if you have slow drives or pwer saving is high in your list of good things then do it everyday, if you like to burn crude oil while your super fast drives deafen small animals i think you could live with out defragging :)

[mac124]

i use auslogics defrag at least once a week on most of my pc's, it seems quick and does a reasonable job, better than windoze defrag anyway.

[Biodoid]

I use diskeeper 2008

[Monkey]

Jk defrag is quicker than any i have used, its simple, it does all drives just by opening the file it starts automatically defragging all your drives

And you can set it as your screensaver :P

Has anyone actually used it?

[Biodoid]

screensaver? whats that lol..I'm never away from pc long enough for that to kick in

[Monkey]

http://www.kessels.com/Jkdefrag/

Thats what it looks like, and when its on a screensaver its the same but with no window around it as its in fullscreen, and when its finnished you can set it to goto whatever screenshot you want