poor mans ssd?

My opinion is that it depends on what the drive is for. If it is for a boot/OS type drive, I would say it is a stupid idea. If it is for a data type drive, I can see it being somewhat valid if you have the money to "throw away" on the minor speed boost over a traditional 7200, don't have the money to spend on a larger ssd, and absolutely need the larger capacity, while at the same time not needing 1TB or larger and are too impatient to save up more money. That's quite the specialized niche.

So yeah, I'd say it's a stupid idea for most sane people that are operating under a budget. I don't think any stretch of the imagination could consider a 10k mechanical as a "poor man's SSD."
 
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A poor man's SSD would be a large capacity usb thumb drive,except without the speed.

what you are linking to is a very loud high rpm large capacity harddrive and its not even cheap,i could get a ssd drive for that price,lol
 
If your looking for speed, that ssd will blow the doors off that VelociRaptor.
I wouldn't frequently install and uninstall big programs from it.
 
Honestly I wouldn't get any of those two.They are both too expensive.
The first one is 480 GB and I found HDDs of 640 GB for lower price.Sure it has 10000 RPM,but the hell with that if it costs so much.Besides you do not need so much RPM unless if you do God knows what.

The second is only 240 GB and it's WAAAAAY too expensive.Plus recovering deleted data from SSD is a lot harder.Sure it is faster than HDD,but like I already said...you do not need so much speed unless if you do God knows what.

Every program,game and so on...is being read from HDD or SSD first and then automatically stored in RAM memory in order to work fast and normal.So if you get HDD instead of SSD (which I recommend),it will take JUST FEW SECONDS longer for a program or game to open,but once it's loaded in the RAM memory,it will work perfectly no matter if you have HDD or SSD.So you will NOT see any speed differences,unless if your PF usage is WAAAAY too high lol.

If for example a game works slow,it is not because of HDD.It is because of a weak graphic card and sometimes a processor too and NOT because of using HDD instead of SSD.So if your components are very weak,no SSD drives will help you there.


Take my advice.Buy a good quality HDD with 7200 RPM and save the rest of the money for something more important.
Here is what you could look into:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barra...R6/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&qid=1330391870&sr=8-28

That is a GREAT HDD and it costs only 85 dollars.



Cheers!
 
Yeah, for a data drive, 7200RPM is enough... You'll shave off a couple of seconds a day for loading times with an SSD or 10kRPM.
 
Just depends on how fast you want them to load. With my WD Black 64MB cache HDD, BF3 loaded in about 20 seconds. If that's not fast for you, then yeah, you'll want an SSD or 10K RPM drive.
 
If you people can't wait for just 15 - 20 seconds for a game to load and JUST BECAUSE OF THAT you are going to waste 300 - 400 dollars on SSD in order for a game to load A LITTLE BIT FASTER then you are nuts...
If you ask me that is wasting money on NOTHING...
 
S.T.A.R.S. said:
If you people can't wait for just 15 - 20 seconds for a game to load and JUST BECAUSE OF THAT you are going to waste 300 - 400 dollars on SSD in order for a game to load A LITTLE BIT FASTER then you are nuts...
If you ask me that is wasting money on NOTHING...
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You could apply this logic to anything. A Ferrari isn't worth it if you can get a Chevrolet for a fraction of the cost. (Come to think of it, my wife drives a Chevy.) Both do essentially the same thing. However, if you want a Ferrari, it is going to cost you some serious coin.

Likewise for an SSD, though that might be stretching the analogy. I won't argue the relative worth of buying one, but if you want the performance you are going to have to pay for it. Many here consider it a total waste of money. In my case I was sick and tired of a super slow computer (relatively speaking - I'm comparing it to the computer I built for my wife) and wanted an ultra-fast machine. I talked to a few people that had SSD's in their machines and read a little about them and decided I would pop for one. When I saw a Patriot 240GB SSD on sale, I picked it up. I still haven't put it in a machine yet, but when I do I can give a better idea of its worth to me.

That may be different from the value you assign - or that of anyone else on the forum - but if in the end it puts a smile on my face every time I boot up and I'm willing to part with the cash (which I already did) then it is worth it to me. If there isn't really any performance gain to speak of, then I probably will call it a waste of money. But I wouldn't have known until I tried. I needed a new computer anyways.

That probably doesn't answer your question, but you just have to decide what is important to you and how much you are willing to pay for it. Neither the Velociraptor or the SSD are about value, they are about the ultimate in performance for their respective technologies. Supposedly those Velociraptors in a SATA III striped array really scream - I read it on the internet so it has to be true! - but they are still not an SSD. And by the time you buy two of them, you might as well buy the SSD, save the fact that the HDD's will have more space.

David
 
eaglewolf said:
You could apply this logic to anything. A Ferrari isn't worth it if you can get a Chevrolet for a fraction of the cost. (Come to think of it, my wife drives a Chevy.) Both do essentially the same thing. However, if you want a Ferrari, it is going to cost you some serious coin.

Likewise for an SSD, though that might be stretching the analogy. I won't argue the relative worth of buying one, but if you want the performance you are going to have to pay for it. Many here consider it a total waste of money. In my case I was sick and tired of a super slow computer (relatively speaking - I'm comparing it to the computer I built for my wife) and wanted an ultra-fast machine. I talked to a few people that had SSD's in their machines and read a little about them and decided I would pop for one. When I saw a Patriot 240GB SSD on sale, I picked it up. I still haven't put it in a machine yet, but when I do I can give a better idea of its worth to me.

That may be different from the value you assign - or that of anyone else on the forum - but if in the end it puts a smile on my face every time I boot up and I'm willing to part with the cash (which I already did) then it is worth it to me. If there isn't really any performance gain to speak of, then I probably will call it a waste of money. But I wouldn't have known until I tried. I needed a new computer anyways.

That probably doesn't answer your question, but you just have to decide what is important to you and how much you are willing to pay for it. Neither the Velociraptor or the SSD are about value, they are about the ultimate in performance for their respective technologies. Supposedly those Velociraptors in a SATA III striped array really scream - I read it on the internet so it has to be true! - but they are still not an SSD. And by the time you buy two of them, you might as well buy the SSD, save the fact that the HDD's will have more space.

David
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thanks Dave. I also heard that those velociraptors are no joke. I might go with that since it has much higher storage space
 
Id get a SSD instead of a VelociRaptor,Yeah the rapsors are fast...but not in anyway comparable to a decent SSD....And that SSD you posted isnt exactly what i would class as a "Poor mans SSD" :D

The question is,Do you really need such a big SSD?

I have 2x vertex 2 60gbs,One dedicated for OS/Apps and the other for my main games (BF3 & GTA IV) which are not small games and i still have 25GB free on the game drive.
 
At any rate, Velociraptors DID scream, back before SSDs were prevalent. Back in the day, they were pretty much top of the line for mechanical drives, and the "screaming" was in comparison with other mechanicals.

Enter the prevalence of SSDs. I don't know offhand what their read/write speeds are, but it's pretty obvious they can't come close to an SSD. My mind goes to an article that had dot-graphs for SSDs and then mechanicals. On the graph with only SSDs, one of the slower Intel models was clearly trailing the pack, as the dot to the one extreme. However, a real sense of perspective was established when you laid eyes on the second graph, which showed both SSDs and mechanicals. All of the mechanicals were clumped in one of the far corners, and the SSDs were all clumped in the opposite corner. The Intel was one of the dots of course, and from this perspective it was simply one more dot in a tight clump of SSDs, far far away from the slow-ass mechanicals on the other side.

The slowest SSD you can buy absolutely DESTROYS any mechanical, velociraptor or otherwise. A velociraptor was a good option back in the day when you wanted to spend a little extra to get a speed boost out of your HDD, when either that was your only option or SSDs were too outrageous. When it comes to HDDs vs SSDs, SSDs are so far ahead that in comparison, velociraptors are in the exact same boat as a 7200.

Poor man's SSD? Not even close. The better descriptor might be "fast mechanical." A velociraptor drive is really only relevant when compared to other mechanical drives.

Would purchasing one be worth it? Only you can answer that.
 
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