How do you choose a SSD?

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barnabas1969

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#41

Post by barnabas1969 » Fri May 18, 2012 4:29 am

Hmmm... I've installed Windows 7 on 32GB (on my desktop PC... not an SSD) and it worked fine. However, I must say that I disabled hibernate on my HTPC when I first built it (60GB SSD) to save the extra space required by the hibernation file. But... if you have a small UPS (or none), hybrid sleep might be desirable.

To be fair... I live in Florida, where the power fluctuates even when there is no storm (our local power company has a nickname: "Florida Flicker and Flash")... so I have a large UPS (1500VA) on my HTPC. It could easily sleep for more than a day... and I have a natural-gas-fired emergency generator. Power outages are a normal event here in Florida... so I may not be the best resource for those of you who live in areas where electric power is more reliable.

itznfb

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#42

Post by itznfb » Thu May 24, 2012 2:21 pm

I figure I'd add my thoughts in here. I use only SSD drives for OS and APPS. I no longer have any spindle drives in my house for that function. I have 1 Corsair Force GT drive but the rest are Samsung 830 series. The performance is great and they have proven to be some of the... if not the best in terms of lifespan. Samsung also has software called SSD Magician which can disable all the Windows features that are unnecessary and harmful to the SSD.
Using the SSD for recording TV is a horrific idea and a complete waste of the SSD. You're going to degrade the SSD at an exponentially higher rate and it's completely unnecessary. I use Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB and 2TB drives for my TV recording and they have absolutely no issues keeping with 4 HD recordings going and recorded playback all at the same time. Think about the crappy drives in the Cable company's DVR and they keep up with 2+ HD recordings and playback at the same time.

My current setup:
NMedia 500s
Antec Earthwatts 430
Asus F1A75-M
AMD A6-3500 Llano 2.1GHz
G.Skill Ripjawsx 2x4gb 1866mhz
Ceton InfiniTV 4
Samsung 830 64gb
WD Caviar Green 1tb x2
WD Caviar Green 2tb x2

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blammo

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#43

Post by blammo » Mon May 28, 2012 9:35 am

I'm planning on getting an SSD at some point in the future for our dedicated HTPC and main desktop PC. The HTPC would just have the one drive, probably 128GBish, and the desktop probably 64GB - 128GB for OS and apps. If I was trying to work out how much space I'd need for the desktop would it be just a case of looking at the size of the 'Windows' and 'Program Files' directories?

barnabas1969

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#44

Post by barnabas1969 » Mon May 28, 2012 2:09 pm

That depends on whether or not you're planning to re-install Windows or just backup/restore your system drive.

Do you currently have Windows installed on one drive, and all your data/video/music/etc on other drives? If not, it would be difficult to tell how much space you'll need using backup/restore.

If you do a fresh install of Windows to a new SSD, you could go as small as 30GB... as long as you're careful where you put programs that you install in the future.

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#45

Post by stairmand » Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:32 am

The only problem i've had with a 64GB is TV recording and buffering. I record to the SSD and then on completion it uploads it to home server so you need enough space for the whole program + whatever TV buffering is going on. This is fine 95% of the time but programs like the Formula 1 which is 3 hours or so I cant record as the drive is just a tad too small. 80GB or larger would be fine.

richard1980

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#46

Post by richard1980 » Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:09 pm

It depends on how many tuners you have. WMC requires enough free space on the recording drive so that you could fully buffer all tuners simultaneously. But instead of looking at the registry to see how big your buffer actually is, WMC is hard coded to require 6 GB free space per tuner. That space is reserved by WMC and can't be used for recordings. Any remaining free space on the drive can be used for recordings. So basically, if you want 20 GB available for recording, you need 26 GB free with one tuner, 32 GB free with 2 tuners, 38 GB free with 3 tuners, 44 GB free with 4 tuners, etc. And that free space should be measured after a reboot but before WMC is started.

CapriRS302

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#47

Post by CapriRS302 » Tue Jul 17, 2012 10:58 pm

Easy, you go to microcenter or their website and buy the microcenter branded 60 or 120 gig sdd. They are cheap but work extremely well.

I hope you are not planning on having your htpc record tv to an ssd drive. I am not really sure you will see any improvement there. Use the ssd for your OS and programs, then get a 2 (or 3. :) ) gig Sata hdd for your recording.

lurch66

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#48

Post by lurch66 » Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:20 am

CapriRS302 wrote:Easy, you go to microcenter or their website and buy the microcenter branded 60 or 120 gig sdd. They are cheap but work extremely well.

I hope you are not planning on having your htpc record tv to an ssd drive. I am not really sure you will see any improvement there. Use the ssd for your OS and programs, then get a 2 (or 3. :) ) gig Sata hdd for your recording.
you do mean 2 or 3 TB not gig I hope :D

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#49

Post by kc10boom » Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:44 am

Not all firmware upgrades will wipe the drive. I've upgraded my Intel SSDs using their upgrade boot discs without issue. I'll toss in my. 02 and say get SATA III drives even if your system is SATA II, allows you to get the full speed out of them with future upgrades. Intel may not be the most smoking fast but are rock solid and have great SSD utilities. Intel was one of the first, if not the first, company to release a SSD. As stated, Kingston HyperX is very nice, I use that in my gaming rig. NewEgg has a sale on Intel 330 series for $105 for 120GB, which uses the latest SandForce controller.

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#50

Post by bobbob » Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:13 am

my ocz has been super reliable, i just replaced it with with a SATA III version and moved the existing SSD to my laptop. both are significantly improved and i can confirm i did not need to wipe the drive to upgrade the firmware, unless i wanted to do a "turbo" upgrade which moved from the version i am on to the latest in one step. instead i upgraded one version at a time

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T Rush

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#51

Post by T Rush » Wed Jun 05, 2013 3:08 am

I'm rebuilding my main THPC

so far the plan is to use six 1TB WD 5000rpm 'green' HDD's in RAID-5 for ~5TB of media storage
I still need to see if I can buy another WD10EARS drive(which I think are off the market now), otherwise I just have five of them for ~4TB RAID-5
...I tried a USB 3TB drive on my WD 'MyNet' N900 router and it was horrible to read the Movie Library from, but fine to write to?, dont have a spare LAN port to do a NAS, so I think its fine/best to just have the shared storage in the main THPC..anyway:

tho the motherboard/cpu and hard drive from my Wife's old computer already has Win7 x64 Ult. OEM installed/activated, and these are the parts I'll reuse to build the the new THPC out of in my Silverstone case, I'm thinking of using one of my SSD drives in it...I have two 50GB(from an attempt at RAID-0, that didnt last a year before it got too corrupted to boot) or a 100GB SSD, both were/are used in my personal massive desktop PC...but I could switch some stuff around(and always buy more goodies)

I read most of this thread, so here are my questions:

1) gosh, I think 50GB SSD is just gonna be too small...yeah, my last THPC only had a very minimal Win7 install, just really OS + anti-virus/defrag/CCleaner and the least amount of driver clutter, the only other software on it was just DVD/BluRay 'backup to disc' stuff, and thats it!...and it still seemed huge...so add a Live TV buffer from my HDHomerun Prime...but then remember that backing up a BluRay can also use maybe 12GB of temporary C drive space(I didnt see that brought up in this thread yet) even if the destination for the completed file is on another drive ...so can anyone convince me that 50GB SSD is really more than I'll need for just running WMC ? as I would prefer to use the 50GB drives(one in the main HTPC, and the other in a secondary Media Center PC connected to a TV in the bedroom)...if not I'll have to use the 100GB SSD i'm on now(and try the RAID-0 again here, ugh)

2) bottom line, will a LiveTV buffer tare-up a SSD? ...ok, even if it just last 2.5years, by then it will be so cheap to replace anyway, and its not gonna have any data on it, just OS/driver/apps...the worst part will be re-installing and setting-up/customizing WMC...computer hardware in my house becomes 'out-dated' in about 18 months, after that if it makes it to 'hand-me-down' use I feel that I'm getting more than my moneys worth...so I'm OK either way right?

3) should I even mess with trying to 'clone' the old OS install over to the SSD from the HDD? ...I've messed with doing that before(even had to change drive size).... I dont know which is more involved or I'm more likely to screw up; fresh install and reactivating OEM Win7, or the 'clone' of a properly running updated OS

4) can I increase LiveTV buffer length?

5) will a SSD improve LiveTV buffer performance(skipping forward and back, pause/still frame-by-frame) and playback ?

6) will WMC navigate any noticeably better? ...I dont reboot or sleep my main THPC
...so actually what benefits will I see with a SSD and WMC ?
(thats the big question, as I do know what a SSD does for a desktop PC and IMHO its a great improvement one of the best to come in 15 years, but WMC seems to run fine on a HDD?)
Last edited by T Rush on Wed Jun 05, 2013 7:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

richard1980

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#52

Post by richard1980 » Wed Jun 05, 2013 10:26 am

The live TV buffer is (by default) located on the same drive that you configure as the recorder storage drive. So if you configure WMC to store recordings on a spinning drive, the live TV buffer will be stored on that same drive unless you intentionally move it to an SSD.

There is no real observable benefit to storing the live TV buffer on an SSD. I've compared live TV buffer performance on two WD Green drives, my Intel SSD, and RAM. The performance differences between the tested storage locations were negligible, even though RAM is far faster than any SSD or spinning drive in existence. However, if you store the live TV buffer on an SSD, watching live TV will significantly decrease the lifespan of the SSD. The actual realized lifespan of the drive will depend on several factors, but ultimately any writes to the SSD decrease its lifespan...and the live TV buffer requires much data to be written (in the US, up to 9 GB per hour per buffer).

IMO, building an HTPC with components that have short life expectancy is very foolish. That approach works well in an environment where things are constantly changing and hardware demands increase rapidly over time, such as a gaming environment. It doesn't work well in an environment where the technology is mostly stagnant. Dedicated HTPCs have had the same basic hardware demands for the past 10+ years, and there have only been a few technology improvements over that same time that actually benefit a dedicated HTPC.

The benefit of using an SSD is the significantly decreased seek and read/write time compared to a spinning drive. This translates to increased performance both in and out of WMC. WMC stores quite a bit of data on the OS partition, such as the software itself, the EPG database, DRM keys, and artwork/thumbnails.

As for the size, I'm currently running a 40 GB Intel X25-V. I have a fairly clean system, with only a handful of additional programs installed. With my page file disabled, I have about 20 GB free space on the SSD.

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T Rush

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#53

Post by T Rush » Wed Jun 05, 2013 6:16 pm

richard1980 wrote:The live TV buffer is (by default) located on the same drive that you configure as the recorder storage drive. So if you configure WMC to store recordings on a spinning drive, the live TV buffer will be stored on that same drive unless you intentionally move it to an SSD.
oh, thanks for that info, as yes, I am intending to move the "Recorded TV" storage to the RAID-5 array to decrease the likelihood of old recordings getting purged and to have ample space for any new recordings(which was a slight issue with the old setup and using just a 350GB HDD for "C:")....so then if I do that, I'll have to consider separating the LiveTV buffer, and locating it back to "C:" on the new SSD config
...but you say:
richard1980 wrote:There is no real observable benefit to storing the live TV buffer on an SSD. I've compared live TV buffer performance on two WD Green drives, my Intel SSD, and RAM. The performance differences between the tested storage locations were negligible, even though RAM is far faster than any SSD or spinning drive in existence.
true, I guess I kinda already tested this, but didnt even realize it, as I've been watching LiveTV on my personal desktop PC which is running off of my 100GB SSD...if there would have been a huge performance difference in pause and skipping forward/back with LiveTV I would have noticed
..consider this tho: because I'll have all my media(Photos, Music, Movies) on a separate "D:" drive, and that will be accessed over the network by as many as six other computers; besides any benefit or not of SSD, could there still be some to having a different drive for LiveTV buffer to prevent heavy 'thrashing' with network reads accessing all the media at the same time?(hopefully i worded that question sufficiently)
richard1980 wrote: However, if you store the live TV buffer on an SSD, watching live TV will significantly decrease the lifespan of the SSD. The actual realized lifespan of the drive will depend on several factors, but ultimately any writes to the SSD decrease its lifespan...and the live TV buffer requires much data to be written (in the US, up to 9 GB per hour per buffer).

IMO, building an HTPC with components that have short life expectancy is very foolish....
yes I agree...'kinda'...as long life on my main THPC is factored alittle differently than the rest of the computers I build....my THPC build concept is focused more on two things: low noise and as little air flow required as possible...and this is because the THPC needs to stay in an "always on" state(at least in my case), so not only could noise be an issue during use(watching TV/movies or playing music/photo slideshow), but also when not in use(TV screen and surround system off, but: "whats that sound I hear in the room, is that still supposed to still be on?") ...and with as little air flow thru the THPC case as possible, it also means as little dust & pet hair enters as well, thus keeping the parts cleaner and cooler...with much lower power draw, and no moving parts; a SSD requires less from the rest of the system(less heat and air flow can be decreased lessening noise and dust) less power use also means less heat/noise from the PSU as well as how that might transfer to every other part of the system...it could be said that a SSD might extend the life span of other components and extend service intervals of the system on those grounds
but with the always on 24/7 the hours of the lifespan add up much faster than a desktop/laptop that would be shut-down or Sleep at times, one year of use with the THPC might equal three years 'hour time' of a computer that is turned off when you are away from it, so having a "long life" of a THPC might only mean "2 years" while a long life for a desktop could be 4....18months is still all I demand before I can replace it with something half as expensive and/or twice as good

richard1980 wrote:IMO, building an HTPC with components that have short life expectancy is very foolish. That approach works well in an environment where things are constantly changing and hardware demands increase rapidly over time, such as a gaming environment. It doesn't work well in an environment where the technology is mostly stagnant. Dedicated HTPCs have had the same basic hardware demands for the past 10+ years, and there have only been a few technology improvements over that same time that actually benefit a dedicated HTPC.
although dont forget its not only what the system 'demands' are, as yes in a THPC we are still running basically the same Media Center software and doing the same things with it(where in 'gaming' the requirements can increase at the frequency of how often that next new game is released or updated, several times a year even!) ..but the rate that new technology develops after it first hits the market is astounding ...its not too painful to replace an original $240 36GB SSD with a new one that has more refined features and three times the space for half the price today, and this could be done long before any failure date ...the "market" is still a factor of "valued time frame" that a part has worth, even for the same performance levels

btw: didnt the Digital Cable Advisor just jump up to a "4GB RAM" requirement recently?...dont remember that being an issue with my old THPC(think it only had 1GB or maybe 2GB) when I first got my Prime turner and CableCARD
richard1980 wrote:The benefit of using an SSD is the significantly decreased seek and read/write time compared to a spinning drive. This translates to increased performance both in and out of WMC. WMC stores quite a bit of data on the OS partition, such as the software itself, the EPG database, DRM keys, and artwork/thumbnails.

As for the size, I'm currently running a 40 GB Intel X25-V. I have a fairly clean system, with only a handful of additional programs installed. With my page file disabled, I have about 20 GB free space on the SSD.
ok, you have talked me into it, I'll try one of the little 50GB SSD in the rebuilt THPC
...thanks for your great post, and letting me question it alittle, it helped me a lot :thumbup:

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#54

Post by ewitte » Fri Feb 07, 2014 7:45 pm

Its possible to get ~120GB for less than $80 if your doing windows it would be a plus. If your doing something like openelec you can just run off a small thumb drive.

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#55

Post by ewitte » Fri Feb 07, 2014 7:48 pm

T Rush wrote: btw: didnt the Digital Cable Advisor just jump up to a "4GB RAM" requirement recently?...dont remember that being an issue with my old THPC(think it only had 1GB or maybe 2GB) when I first got my Prime turner and CableCARD
There is a script that disables DCA check I used it to run win 7 inside a VM.

barnabas1969

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#56

Post by barnabas1969 » Fri Feb 07, 2014 9:16 pm

@ewitte: You do realize that this thread started almost 2 years ago, and hasn't had any activity for 8 months, no?

stefoid

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#57

Post by stefoid » Fri Aug 01, 2014 3:56 am

I recently replaced the system partition on my failing HDD with a 32GB SSD. It has made my sluggish atom-based htpc a little more spritely, so was a good move, even without the fact that the HDD was on the way out.

I got the absolutely cheapest I could get off ebay which turned out to be a Chinese 'Kingfast' for A$30. I thought I was taking a risk with an unknown (in the west) brand, but it turned out to be absolutely fine.

One thing I will say if you dont want to spend all day trying to migrate your HDD system partition to an SSD is : use the free DriveClone utility. DO NOT do what I did and try to do it using Windows 7 System Image and restore. What a HUGE WASTE OF TIME that was. disabling stuff so I could move 'imovable files' so I could defragment, so I could shrink the partition so I could...... blah blah blah. the pain, the pain. thanks for nothing Windows 7.

just use driveclone

gary94080

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#58

Post by gary94080 » Fri Aug 01, 2014 4:33 am

that's something I want to try next. I have a pc that has a hard drive that may be going out.

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#59

Post by jec6613 » Sun Feb 01, 2015 9:16 pm

stefoid wrote:One thing I will say if you dont want to spend all day trying to migrate your HDD system partition to an SSD is : use the free DriveClone utility. DO NOT do what I did and try to do it using Windows 7 System Image and restore. What a HUGE WASTE OF TIME that was. disabling stuff so I could move 'imovable files' so I could defragment, so I could shrink the partition so I could...... blah blah blah. the pain, the pain. thanks for nothing Windows 7.

just use driveclone
I used my onboard Intel RAID ... make a RAID 1 volume with the existing drive as the primary, it imaged to the second drive, then delete the array and remove the older HDD, then voila! It only works when using larger drives (I was moving from 74 GB 10k SATA to 120 GB SSD), but aside from the drive add and later drive remove, there's no downtime, either, mine was only offline for 10-ish minutes, total.

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DavidinCT

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#60

Post by DavidinCT » Tue Feb 24, 2015 8:15 pm

My MC used to have a 60gb partition of another drive. I picked up a 60gb OCZ installed it, it made a huge difference, the only thing is that the OS is on it, nothing else (no media or recorded shows), I got a newer OCZ 90gb one and swapped it out (got it for $35). I really don't think you need much more than a 90gb OS drive, in fact I was doing it fine for over 5 years on a 60gb partition (still always had about 25-30gb free)

For a OS drive only, Win 7 boots in under 6 seconds and in MC in less than 10. 10X the speed it was on the old drive. It even helped with the Movie Library, it loads so much quicker (Meta data and pictures) than it did before. The movies are all on 2 other drives.

I also backup the OS drive with Acronis every Sunday morning to a network drive, so if the SSD fails, I wont lose any sleep (besides trying to get one quick to replace it but, could always use a HD sitting around)

Normally I pick a drive based on Price and reviews....got a good review, it's worthy for my MC machine, it got a perfect review, then it goes in my gaming machine.
-Dave
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Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

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