To SSD or not SSD.

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richard1980

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#61

Post by richard1980 » Wed Jan 04, 2012 5:48 am

IT Troll wrote:Scenarios such as; only ever watch Live TV, or Watch and delete all Recorded TV the same day (and never go on vacation) may support your recommendation but this is not how people typically use their HTPC.
I'm sure quite a few networked tuner owners would disagree with you. I can assure you, live TV and light recording clients are not as atypical as you make them out to be.
IT Troll wrote:As mentioned before, having separate physical drives reduces competition for disk access which improves the responsiness of the system - which is the whole purpose of recommending the SSD in the first place. Whilst a single drive can handle the task you will get a much snappier user experience from the two. Keeping the disk queue length low on the system drive results in a much more responsive Media Center interface. Again in real world usage, your HTPC is recording several things simultaneously and perhaps also streaming some media to other devices in your network. You then want to check your scheduled recordings or search the guide to add a new recording. Guess which request gets thrown to the back of the queue. In the eyes of the operating system your interaction can wait because it is not time critical.
That's a great theory on paper, but you might want to actually test it.

tommo

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#62

Post by tommo » Thu Jan 05, 2012 10:34 am

I can't even believe people are questioning whether an SSD would be better!

For a media center PC the advantage they give in the real world is access time improvements, no stuttering and random points or the guide spazing out when searching. Not to mention quicker loading of thumbnails and the guide popping open.

I have two clients both with 64GB SSDs and a server/workstation that is my workhouse (games, work, encoding, general tasks, storage), I just have a batch file on the clients that move the Recorded TV twice a week to the server. Simples.

The only problem with SSD drives is that when you use a another computer with a hard drive you think there is something wrong with it.

J3ff

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#63

Post by J3ff » Thu Jan 05, 2012 8:50 pm

tommo wrote:I can't even believe people are questioning whether an SSD would be better!

For a media center PC the advantage they give in the real world is access time improvements, no stuttering and random points or the guide spazing out when searching. Not to mention quicker loading of thumbnails and the guide popping open.

I have two clients both with 64GB SSDs and a server/workstation that is my workhouse (games, work, encoding, general tasks, storage), I just have a batch file on the clients that move the Recorded TV twice a week to the server. Simples.

The only problem with SSD drives is that when you use a another computer with a hard drive you think there is something wrong with it.
I got an SSD for my work laptop and after a week of using that, all of my home computers had been switched over. There is no going back.

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STC

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#64

Post by STC » Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:22 am

There can be only one.
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EmirOfGroofunkistan

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#65

Post by EmirOfGroofunkistan » Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:09 am

There can be only one.
unless you're running a RAID

J3ff

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#66

Post by J3ff » Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:16 am

stonethecrows wrote:There can be only one.
What are you talking about? There can be as many drives as you want...

and my work laptop has two internal drives...

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StumpyBloke

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#67

Post by StumpyBloke » Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:27 am

Sounds more like a quote to me from The Matrix!
Rich

richard1980

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#68

Post by richard1980 » Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:37 am

I thought it was Highlander...

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newfiend

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#69

Post by newfiend » Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:51 am

richard1980 wrote:I thought it was Highlander...
I thought he was refering to this guy... :D
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STC

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#70

Post by STC » Fri Jan 06, 2012 5:38 am

Highlander. I suppose that was confusing. I was reaffirming that an SSD is the way to go.
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#71

Post by STC » Fri Jan 06, 2012 5:39 am

newfiend wrote:
richard1980 wrote:I thought it was Highlander...
I thought he was refering to this guy... :D
Hah! Stay thirsty my friends...
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StumpyBloke

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#72

Post by StumpyBloke » Fri Jan 06, 2012 8:19 pm

The Matrix...Highlander...all the same to me...didn't understand either!! :)
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#73

Post by winterescape » Sat Jan 07, 2012 4:08 pm

J3ff wrote:There's also hybrid drives now, 8gb flash /500 gb conventional. I don't know if it'd be smart enough to keep all the WMC menu functions on the flash based part or not, but I have one of those in a laptop here and it's a bit snappier.
Anyone have firsthand experience with WMC on a newer hybrid drive? I ask because from what I have read they seem to give you most of the punch of the SSD without any hassle of doing a fresh install. Looking at something like this…. http://www.dailytech.com/Seagate+Ships+ ... e23385.htm

OR something like this to add to my existing HDD Synapse Cache SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 426ngkn9f9

Edit: and as of yesterday it looks like OCZ has some competition coming...
http://thessdreview.com/daily-news/cruc ... announced/

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#74

Post by J3ff » Sat Jan 07, 2012 11:46 pm

I do video editing......with a Hybrid drive as my secondary drive and a 120gb ssd as my primary drive....

I was using a standard drive as my secondary drive.... and I have noticed a good improvement when the file sizes I'm editing on the hybrid drive are under 5gb, however..when they get real big (as in bigger than the ssd part of the drive) of course it goes back to being a regular drive as far as speeds go.

I would think that as long as the drive monitors which files are used the most.....this could be a great solution for HTPC

richard1980

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#75

Post by richard1980 » Sun Jan 08, 2012 4:39 am

If you are considering getting an add-on cache drive (like the OCZ and Crucial drives you mentioned) or a hybrid drive (like the Seagate Momentus XT) for the OS in lieu of an SSD, don't do it. Using NAND as a cache should be reserved for secondary (non-OS) drives. NAND caches simply do not make sense for OS drives. As an example, why would you buy an SSD to use as a cache for a HDD that stores the OS? That makes no sense. If you are going to buy an SSD, it would make more sense to just put the OS directly on the SSD. And using a hybrid drive for the OS doesn't make sense either. A hybrid drive is going to cost more than buying an SSD, but it will perform worse than the SSD. It would make more sense to buy an SSD for the OS.

You mentioned not wanting the hassle of doing a fresh install. No matter what drive you buy, you are going to have to either reinstall the OS or create a system image and restore it to the new drive. Both can be done just as easily to an SSD as they can be done to any other drive. You just have to make a few OS tweaks after restoring the image to an SSD (there are plenty of threads/articles that tell you what tweaks to make, and it's very easy).

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#76

Post by winterescape » Sun Jan 08, 2012 3:28 pm

richard1980 wrote:If you are considering getting an add-on cache drive (like the OCZ and Crucial drives you mentioned) or a hybrid drive (like the Seagate Momentus XT) for the OS in lieu of an SSD, don't do it. Using NAND as a cache should be reserved for secondary (non-OS) drives. NAND caches simply do not make sense for OS drives. As an example, why would you buy an SSD to use as a cache for a HDD that stores the OS? That makes no sense. If you are going to buy an SSD, it would make more sense to just put the OS directly on the SSD. And using a hybrid drive for the OS doesn't make sense either. A hybrid drive is going to cost more than buying an SSD, but it will perform worse than the SSD. It would make more sense to buy an SSD for the OS.

You mentioned not wanting the hassle of doing a fresh install. No matter what drive you buy, you are going to have to either reinstall the OS or create a system image and restore it to the new drive. Both can be done just as easily to an SSD as they can be done to any other drive. You just have to make a few OS tweaks after restoring the image to an SSD (there are plenty of threads/articles that tell you what tweaks to make, and it's very easy).
Yea, I probably was not to clear in the hassle factor. My existing setup is just a single partition “C:” drive sooooo…. I would need to resize the partition, create a new “D” drive move my recording storage, etc, etc, etc… before installing a traditional SSD.

But I am curious why you say “Using NAND as a cache should be reserved for secondary (non-OS) drives” I thought, from what I had read, they were targeted for applications like mine? Take an existing system with standard HDD running win7, add the cache drive and the cache software and you get most of the performance benefit of a SSD? Sort of a "build your own hybrid drive" solution...

richard1980

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#77

Post by richard1980 » Mon Jan 09, 2012 5:15 am

You should NEVER keep your OS and your data files together. They should always be separated, either on different physical drives (the preferred method) or on separate partitions on the same physical drive. That means one drive/partition for the OS and installed programs, and a different drive/partition for your recorded TV, movies, music, pictures, etc.

Regarding the cache, just because something is marketed one way doesn't mean it actually makes sense to use it that way. Cache drives should only be used in scenarios where a performance increase is desired, but there is a large storage space requirement that makes an SSD cost-prohibitive. The key part of that statement is "there is a large storage space requirement". If there is no large storage space requirement, there is no reason to favor a HDD over an SSD, and thus there is no reason to have a cache. As I just stated above, the OS should always be kept separate from the data files. The OS does not require a large amount of storage space; you can fit the OS on any SSD you buy today. Therefore, there is no reason to have a cache for it. Just buy a regular SSD and put the OS on it. The benefit of doing so is two-fold. First, it's cheaper to buy a regular SSD than a cache drive (a lot cheaper...the 64GB OCZ Synapse Cache SSD (which only has 32GB of usable space) costs $155 at Newegg...for $10 less you can get a 90GB OCZ Vertex 3, and for $14 more you can get a 120GB OCZ Agility 3. That a big difference in cost/GB.) Second, you get a bigger performance boost by buying a regular SSD.

In short, when you buy a cache/hybrid drive for the OS, you end up paying more to get less. That does not make sense. What does make sense is using a hybrid/cache drive for your data files, if you need the performance boost on those files. Trying to replace a 1TB HDD with a 1TB SSD is going to cost quite a bit of money. Instead of buying the 1TB SSD, you either buy a 1TB HDD plus a cache drive, or you buy a 1TB hybrid drive (I'm not sure if that even exists).

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