SSDs vs WD Raptors

Hiya,

I am looking to build a stripe RAID for performance, massive storage is not important. I am struggling to find any recent comparisons of SSDs vs HDD (WD Raptors in particular) on the web.
Does anyone know of any reviews or have any thoughts?
Thanks,

Depends what is 'recent'. I am guessing you didn't search for velociraptor vs SSD? The older raptors cannot begin to compete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVI48_2XIG0 - Comparison of boot time and comment on running speeds (bear in mind that none of the cons of SSDs are considered).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-ssd-perf... - Here's an older review from THG. It highlights that some of the SSDs back then were not all the same, and in some areas, the Vraptor was comparable to the SSD drives (but not in other areas).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3636/western-digitals-... - A review from June 2010, showing how the Velociraptor is a better choice if cost and/or GIgabytes is the priority (this is becoming less of a concern, as the vid at the top shows two drives which are both affordable now).

Here's the wiki comparison:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Compa...


The Pros of SSDs:

Speed (more)
Temperature (less)
Noise (none)


The Cons of SSDs:

Cost (especially the decent models)
Life Cycle issues


Personally I'm sold on SSDs in theory. I built my current system in the spring of 2009 and chose not to include an SSD drive for the 'cons' above. Hopefully if and when I move to another system much of these issues will be far less. In fact, if I go with the theory that my system will be replaced sometime between 2012 and 2014, I might be inclined to get an SSD for the short time and 'test one out' for life cycle issues. Basically just give my existing PC a new lease of life.

My main concern with SSDs is partly due to the Windows bloat issues. Here's a rundown of my current boot drive:

Velociraptor 150 (139GB)
56.25GB used (40%)
83.48GB free (60%)

winsxs folder: 15.1GB (10.8% of HDD)

If I get a 60GB SSD who knows what bloatware might happen from MS, Adobe, and many other companies. With that in mind, one wants to get the largest drive available, so the life cycle / unwritten space issues take longer to surface, but then we're back to cost per GB if we go for a large SSD.

See here for tests on how long an SSD can last:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?2...

46 pages, so might want to read the first half dozen to get a taste of what's what, then skip to the last two or three for the lastest data.

Hope that helps (bet it doesn't).

1st sentence was correct....... doh!!!!

This system is to be used for 3D graphics design, so I think SSDs are the way forward, the life cylce writes are a slight concern but I think it should be OK.

thanks for the links, I will have a look through them

also google for more info on trim over an array - i was going to change my 320x2 drive array to 60x2 SSD bought the drives then found trim wont work over a software raid - this may have changed as not looked for ages so keep in mind ?