Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

SSD...WOW

Status
Not open for further replies.

spec

Well-Known Member
Most Helpful Member
Think about going for a Solid State Drive (SSD) for the new year.

The C:\ drive of my Lenovo T520 laptop is now a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD, which was an Xmas present from my son. Boy does it make computing a pleasure- you would not believe how much. This SSD is available in the UK for around £130 UK, and will probably be cheaper in the US.
 
Last edited:
I'm waiting for my Sandisk 480GB one to arrive :D
Only the best for you Nigel :cool:

PS: I know the owner of Sandisk- he visited us a few times when we were using a mammoth Sandisk SSD- he is a real laugh.
 
I ordered a Sandisk one because the laptop I've recently been given has one - and it seems pretty impressive.
Sandisk are the top flash manufacturers. They pioneered the technology if I remember correctly. When buying any flash products I always try Sandisk first. Often though they are twice the price so then I tend to go for Lexar.

In the case of SSDs, the Samsung model I have is pretty good I am advised. It certainly performs very well, from a user perspective that is. When I first tried it out I was waiting for an ap to execute and it seemed to be taking so long that I thought there was a problem. I hadn't realized that the application had run, opened the file I asked for and was sitting on the task bar waiting for me to do something. Every so often I do a restart, especially after some heavy internet stuff, just for the hell of it.
 
Last edited:
180px-JackEliSanjayStandingTall.jpg


The guy who used to visit us from Sandisk was Eli Harari in the centre of pic. He is one of the most personable chaps I have ever met. You would never guess that he was a genius and owner of a big company.

On the first visit he arrived late at night and stayed at a nearby country house. At about 9am the next morning I drove around to greet him and bring him to our company. We had a chat and a laugh and got on like a house on fire right from scratch. But when we got in my car he changed completely: he was stony silent, clung on to the door pull and slid back in his seat. I tried to continue our conversation but all I got was err yes, err no, maybe. I thought he was suffering from jet lag so left it there. But when we parked he was back to his normal jovial self. I was baffled.

I only learnt later that my driving had scared him to death. He could not understand how I could drive so fast down narrow country roads. In fact, I was not driving overly fast it's just that some Yanks are not used to narrow roads. I had a similar experience with a guy from Florida. From then on whenever I drove him anywhere I controlled my speed according to the amount of purple in his complexion.
 
Last edited:
Spec, I had similar experience with great tech chap from USA , we had a job at USAF in Scotland , he could not get used to driving on the left , and braked for every car on the other side of the road. In my car he hung on for dear life....
 
Spec, I had similar experience with great tech chap from USA , we had a job at USAF in Scotland , he could not get used to driving on the left , and braked for every car on the other side of the road. In my car he hung on for dear life....

Hola GD,

Little more than one year ago I've been again to Liverpool. I did not drive there but just seeing from the train all these highways with cars moving on the "wrong" lane was difficult to accept. The driver that took me to destination, besides his accent (I got almost nothing of what he said) made feel almost sick just by driving on the left...:( I felt better when it was me who told him where he should stop at destination. (Google Maps is great!).

SSD, have to buy, possibly with a new laptop.
 
Spec, I had similar experience with great tech chap from USA , we had a job at USAF in Scotland , he could not get used to driving on the left , and braked for every car on the other side of the road. In my car he hung on for dear life....
:)

When we were in Florida I scared some pedestrians to death just driving in a shopping mall car park- I wasn't driving that fast either. Americans seem to have a very laid back attitude to driving.

We heard on the radio that it would be raining the next morning so expect many accidents on the Freedom Highway. We could not understand this, but the next morning sure enough when it was raining there was accidents all over the place- nothing serious, just shunts.
 
I only learnt later that my driving had scared him to death. He could not understand how I could drive so fast down narrow country roads. In fact, I was not driving overly fast it's just that some Yanks are not used to narrow roads. I had a similar experience with a guy from Florida. From then on whenever I drove him anywhere I controlled my speed according to the amount of purple in his complexion.

actually Funny.

Try this one on for size: One workmate liked to drive fast. 100 mph wasn't a problem for him. I made him cringe by how fast I took corners at a slow speed like 30 mph.
 
Hola AT ,, what's new? :eek:
:nailbiting: Strange. Where did you get that? I composed my post to you in one session so I have no idea how that came to you. :eek: BTW, I cannot find it around...! :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
When I think about upgrading performance on a computer I think of more RAM, faster processor, better graphics card, etc. But installing a SSD sped up my laptop more than I ever anticipated. I didn't even upgrade for performance reasons. I upgraded because I bring my laptop in the field and I have tens of thousands of dollars worth of software on it. It made me cringe to think of someone pulling it off its precarious perch atop an oil drum or a rolling chair or an upside down bucket... The mental image of those HDD arms slapping and banging around between my precious disks of money, scared the crap out of me. But a SSD has no moving parts. Sure my laptop might get thrashed, but at least my HDD is safe, ready to be installed in a new one. Anyway, I was blown away. My aging battery wouldn't let the laptop run more than ~45min before; now with the SSD it's got better battery life than it did new. It runs WAY faster, and cooler, and quieter. The fan rarely even comes on. Best upgrade you can do for a laptop IMO.
 
To the OS it is like another USB peripheric as pendrive?
 
:)
We heard on the radio that it would be raining the next morning so expect many accidents on the Freedom Highway. We could not understand this, but the next morning sure enough when it was raining there was accidents all over the place- nothing serious, just shunts.

Last week at night, it rained after few months of winter. Next morning I fell down twice from motorbike. First time I almost got squeezed my balls from leg-guard and second time I got a hole in my pant near the knee. There was a truck sleeping upside down near the road too.
 
Comparison: HDD Vs SSD

I just knew that flash drives has limited re-write cycles like current Pendrives has around 100,000 cycles of re-write capability (approx). What about HDD? I have some prndrive currupted without any accident and I had some pendrive which became extremely slow after using few years. I think then the SSDs are not efficient till the day, are they?
 
To the OS it is like another USB peripheric as pendrive?
Not really. It's on your SATA bus, not your USB bus . So you don't get the option to "eject" or "unmount".

That, and SATA (III) max speed is 6Gb/s, and an SSD can actually hit that number. A HDD can't come close to that, even a 7200rpm HDD. Theoretical max speed for USB3.0 is 5Gb/s, but precious few (if any) USB3.0 devices or MOBO busses can support that. And when you're copying to a thumb drive from your HDD, your max speed is limited by the slow HDD.
 
When I think about upgrading performance on a computer I think of more RAM, faster processor, better graphics card, etc. But installing a SSD sped up my laptop more than I ever anticipated. I didn't even upgrade for performance reasons. I upgraded because I bring my laptop in the field and I have tens of thousands of dollars worth of software on it. It made me cringe to think of someone pulling it off its precarious perch atop an oil drum or a rolling chair or an upside down bucket... The mental image of those HDD arms slapping and banging around between my precious disks of money, scared the crap out of me. But a SSD has no moving parts. Sure my laptop might get thrashed, but at least my HDD is safe, ready to be installed in a new one. Anyway, I was blown away. My aging battery wouldn't let the laptop run more than ~45min before; now with the SSD it's got better battery life than it did new. It runs WAY faster, and cooler, and quieter. The fan rarely even comes on. Best upgrade you can do for a laptop IMO.

Hi strantor,

Yes, SSDs are amazing as I found too. Just one word of caution though: although SSDs have no moving parts and are reasonably immune to shock and vibration, they are inherently error prone things at the silicon level and should not be used as the only store for any valuable data. It is only by some very sophisticated error correcting algorithms that they are usable. The message is to regularly back them up (just like i haven't yet).

spec
 
Last edited:
Comparison: HDD Vs SSD

I just knew that flash drives has limited re-write cycles like current Pendrives has around 100,000 cycles of re-write capability (approx). What about HDD? I have some prndrive currupted without any accident and I had some pendrive which became extremely slow after using few years. I think then the SSDs are not efficient till the day, are they?

Those drives use flash technology which inherently has errors, just like any memory device, including RAM and HDDs. You have to be particularly careful when you buy flash products because of the Ebay effect. ie you can get sub-standard/production-line reject devices re badged and sold as good products. For this reason, it is best to stick with the main-line OEMs: Sandisk generally are the best. I have flash drives dating from when they first came out and they are all still fine. Some of the older ones are 100 MB- dont cha know!
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top