SanDisk unveils the worlds first 4TB SSD

I never mounted an SSD internally. But I did try one in a USB 3 Docking station. The sequential read/write benchmarks were only 10 or 15% faster than WD Black Sata III 640 GB. But the random benchmarks were nearly as fast as the sequential. This made it killer for video muxing right in the dock. I had an MP4 converter that only processed the audio and remuxed to output .mp4 files.

The program was portable. I had the program folder, temp, source, and destination folders all on the SSD. Also the MP4 program was multi-threaded. If I loaded it up with a few files I could just watch the progressbar slide across. It was fun to do those jobs. :)

LittleJay, post: 28357, member: 114 said:

I have been running SSD's in both my desktop and laptop for the past 3 years and use spinners only for data storage. To run the OS on a spinner now would drive me crazy for all the reasons mentioned above.

Yeah, the spinner that's in my desktop PC now will end up being the Data drive. Windows will be installed to the SSD.

My laptop has dual drive bays so I put a 128 GB SSD in it for the OS and a 256 GB SSD in for Data. At the time a 500 GB SSD wasn't in the budget and the two I did buy were on sale. I've been tempted a few times to take the 256 GB SSD out of my laptop and put it in my desktop. So far I've resisted the temptation. The 750 GB spinner that was in my laptop went into an external USB 3 enclosure for backup.

If the prices of SSD's per gigabyte of storage ever come down to the same level as that of spinners, I would use SSD's exclusively. But I'm not holding my breath waiting!

LittleJay, post: 28389, member: 114 said:

If the prices of SSD's per gigabyte of storage ever come down to the same level as that of spinners, I would use SSD's exclusively. But I'm not holding my breath waiting!

You have to figure before too long the spinners will drop down to a subordinate tier like cassette tapes and LPs. Also the SSDs themselves may find production numbers maxing out as PCs just make slots for the memory. Why have all that metal casing?

LittleJay, post: 28389, member: 114 said:

If the prices of SSD's per gigabyte of storage ever come down to the same level as that of spinners, I would use SSD's exclusively. But I'm not holding my breath waiting!

They are a lot more affordable than they used to be.

MilesAhead, post: 28397, member: 195 said:

You have to figure before too long the spinners will drop down to a subordinate tier like cassette tapes and LPs. Also the SSDs themselves may find production numbers maxing out as PCs just make slots for the memory. Why have all that metal casing?

There are PCIe versions, very pricey though.

Metal cases have advantages. They can be used as heat sinks and provide shielding against electronic interference. I'm not sure its needed for an SSD though. I think some of them have a metal mounting bracket and a plastic case. If it wasn't such a pain to remove the cover on my laptop I'd have a look at mine.

alphanumeric, post: 28399, member: 152 said:

There are PCIe versions, very pricey though.

Metal cases have advantages. They can be used as heat sinks and provide shielding against electronic interference. I'm not sure its needed for an SSD though. I think some of them have a metal mounting bracket and a plastic case. If it wasn't such a pain to remove the cover on my laptop I'd have a look at mine.

Of course right now compatibility says they have HD form factor. I guess "slot" was not the word to use. I mean in the future they will likely snap in like other memory. They just won't be as expensive as fast RAM. You might have 128 GB of RAM on an HP desktop PC and room for 16 TB of these things.

Edit: with connector in the back for super fast access to HD compatible devices or whatnot.

Edit2: Like the PC maker will be saying "Yeah you can still use that old slow HW if you insist. But don't put it inside our machines!"

Who knows what the future holds?

alphanumeric, post: 28410, member: 152 said:

Who knows what the future holds?

Not me. If I did I'd be buying on margin down on Wall St. :)

alphanumeric, post: 28398, member: 152 said:

They are a lot more affordable than they used to be.

Very true. You can buy 240 GB models now for less than what I paid for my first 128 GB model. I guess what I was saying, and this is my point of view, is that for data storage a spinner works just fine and I'm in no rush to spend the extra money on a 1 TB or more SSD for that purpose.