[aklug] Re: SSD

Yeah, go ahead and do it.

I tend to be pretty conservative regarding new tech. The SSDs seem to
have finally settled down to incremental changes.

I'm also a cheap kinda guy, so I waited a long time for prices to
stabilize at a point that seemed worthwhile. (thai flooding
notwithstanding).

I bought one last year for a non-profit that I take care of (a winxp
machine modded for multiple rdp sessions). It was funny; I asked
after a couple of weeks whether they noticed any responsiveness
changes. They said 'not really'. So I took the SSD out and replaced
it with a 7200rpm HD. Within three days they called me saying 'what
happened? What did you do? it's sooooo slow now' Heh. Anyway, i
put the SSD back in and they're happier now.

I finally bought another one for myself and put debian mint on it for
my home playaround box. The responsiveness increase is life-changing
(as someone else said). Probably judicious structuring of your
filesystems could probably speed it up even more, but I'm not that
extreme anymore.

Other thoughts:

Long term reliability is still a concern to my mind, so I'm even more
paranoid about keeping current backups.

Used to be there were advantages to the SLC vs MLC technologies; my
impression is that those have narrowed.

Be sure that wear levelling methods are implemented. I think it's
automatic in most current major distros.

Do your homework. I'm currently using the Crucial M4's; those seem to
be the current sweet spot. That could change next month.

Short version: as someone else said, just do it. With judicious
precautions it'll change your tech life.
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Received on Sat Oct 20 11:47:30 2012