Solid state Drives - SSD

[mmirot]

Anyone using a Solid state Drive?
 Are they worth the cost for PI?

How did you set it up.? 
OS on the SSD or data or both?

Thanks

Max

[Luigi]

I have an 80GB on my desktop (Windows 7 Ultimate, i7, 8GB).

OS and often-used programs (which includes PI) are on the SSD. User directories and everything else (including my image files) are on the spinner.

It's a fast machine, boots in seconds (not sure how many, don't reboot that much), resumes from sleep nearly instantly, but I don't think there's a direct benefit to PI unless you have the space on the SSD for the images that you're processing.

Have you looked at the hybrid SSDs?

[troypiggo]

I've been looking into them also. Bit torn. Seems their boot up and read/write time is very fast, which is good. But downside seems to be they have a limited life, ie the hardware can only do so many reads and writes. Not sure if the pros outweigh the cons.

[ruediger]

Anyone using a Solid state Drive?
 Are they worth the cost for PI?

I'm using a SSD (160 G) in my notebook for over a year now. OS (Win 7 64 bit), applications and most data is installed on the SSD.
One exception: All PI processing files and PI's temp directory are located on an external eSata drive, because of space requirements and the huge amount of data that is written to disk.
You will notice a performance gain if the temp dir is placed on SSD because walking back/forth in the history involves reading or writing to the temp dir. Loading and saving of projects is also considerably faster because this basically involves copying large amounts of data from the project dir to temp dir and vice versa. I can't say how this setup will have effect on the SSD's lifetime. So far I have written some TB to the SSD, but the wearout indicator is still at 98%.

Rüdiger

[mmirot]

Sounds good.

Thanks

[Nocturnal]

I've had an SSD in my desktop for over a year now. My work laptop has one but at first I was unaware. It's faster but it's not that dramatic compared to high end disks. If I was bored I could benchmark the saving of projects to SSD vs. hard drive.

[mmirot]

Sure,
How fast is grunt work like calibration, alignment and integration on both systems.
Also, what are the specs on the SSD SATA II, SATA III etc

Max