Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

SSD's - How They Work Plus Tips

<< < (5/10) > >>

wraith808:
I swapped to an SSD for my system drive about a year ago, and couldn't go back to a hard disk. The increased speed is worth it, to me. Although I used many of eleman's tips when I first installed the SSD, I recently moved my browser cache to the SSD to speed up browsing. I'm willing to take the risk of shortening the SSD's life for the speed it brings. The SSD is imaged regularly and all important data lives on hard disks.
-johnk (May 28, 2013, 01:20 AM)
--- End quote ---

My main computer doesn't have an SSD, but my media computer does.  When my wife's computer died recently, she started using it full time until I replaced it.  I'm very surprised to see that with an SSD, it's only a little slower than a full sized computer.  And it's one of those book-sized computers.  It's a given that there's some things it can't do... but the SSD makes a huge difference.

pilgrim:
When it comes to cache and temp files if you have enough memory put them on a RAM Disk, no loss of speed and if you want to save it on shutdown you can.

I use Dataram RAMDisk on all my computers, on Windows 7 it's set to 4GB and holds all the cache and temp files for both 7 and XP Mode.
I also use it to temporarily install to if I just want to check out any software or get a product key.

I keep an image file with just the empty folders I use, save the image to a normal hard drive and it reloads at startup.

Mark0:
In my (admittely not very long) experience with SSDs, I actually never met one made inoperable due to flash wear, while I have seen various briked by faulty electronic / controller or simply bad firmware (or after an update of the latter).
So, I think the most important thing is to do the proper homeworks before buying, and getting a model with a good track record. I have good experiences with Samsung (I never heard of serious firmware problems with the 830 serie, for example). Probably the fact that they do the entire thing in house by themselves helps.

johnk:
When it comes to cache and temp files if you have enough memory put them on a RAM Disk, no loss of speed and if you want to save it on shutdown you can.
-pilgrim (May 28, 2013, 09:37 AM)
--- End quote ---

There have been one or two lengthy discussions here on the pros and cons of RAMdisks. Do you see significant benefits, pilgrim?

pilgrim:
When it comes to cache and temp files if you have enough memory put them on a RAM Disk, no loss of speed and if you want to save it on shutdown you can.
-pilgrim (May 28, 2013, 09:37 AM)
--- End quote ---

There have been one or two lengthy discussions here on the pros and cons of RAMdisks. Do you see significant benefits, pilgrim?-johnk (May 28, 2013, 11:24 PM)
--- End quote ---

As I commented elsewhere I never benchmark anything so my answer/opinion is entirely subjective.

Compared to my newest PC both my XP computers are slow, the Netbook has an N270 (OC'd to 1.74Ghz), the PC a 3.066Ghz P4, both are limited to 2GB of RAM which in turn limits the size of RAMDisk I can use.
One of the first things I moved was the Firefox cache and in my opinion that definitely improved things on both computers, for other things I would say that there was an improvement but by how much is debatable.

On my newest PC I have 16GB of RAM, most of the time my normal usage rarely exceeds half that so a 4GB RAMDrive is not a problem, I do not have a Page File.
Because of the overall specifications of the machine and the fact that the system drive is an SSD any advantages in terms of performance are probably minimal.
Having said that, it keeps the cache and temp files off of the SSD and it is faster than it would be if I had moved them to a hard drive.
Also, as I said in my previous post I use it for other things.

The bottom line: As long as I had the resources in terms of available RAM I would always use a RAMDisk.
Would I recommend them to others? Subject to the same criteria yes, there is something to gain and as far as I can see nothing to lose.
I am only aware of one thing that some might consider a negative and that is if you save a RAMDisk image that has a lot of files on it, it will increase your start-up times, by how much depends on the files involved and the system itself.
That's one of the reasons my image contains just a few empty folders, if I am about to shut down and want to save anything else I simply copy it to a hard drive.



Open at your own risk!I was surprised at the reservations expressed about SSD's in this thread.
I know that to start with there were problems with some of them.
But unless I am mistaken I'm sure I read something recently that said SSD's can be cured?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page