Ssd?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!

[Scarlett]

Someone just mentioned SSD would be better for rendering video files, and I had never heard of it. I looked up one on Amazon and it was £300 for a 1 TB machine. Why are they expensive, and why are they better than standard external hard drives?!

[bhg481]

SSD has a much faster access rate than conventional drives. Conventional drives are a spinning disc with a read/write head floating above it. In order to access a particular data file the computer has to wait for the disc to spin to the right position and the arm carrying the head to move out to the correct position. This may seem fast to you but it's very slow to the computer. With a SSD the computer can access the file directly.

[Scarlett]

Interesting! Do you think they are more reliable than normal hard drives? I have had several die on me, and I spend so much backing up back ups, that I am thinking I would be better off buying an SSD one?

[bhg481]

Incidentally, if you have the SSD as an external drive, rather than one inside the computer, you will lose a lot of the speed. If you connect via USB2.0 instead of USB3.0 you will be wasting your money.

[bhg481]

I'm not sure they're more reliable, infact they used to have a shorter life than HDDs but reliability has been improved enormously - I have an SSD as the main disc on both my desktop and my laptop. They are certainly more robust than HDDs since there are no moving parts on them so will not be damaged if the computer is banged or dropped.

[Togo]

Not expensive. I replaced my old hard drive with a Seagate 1tb ssd drive and it is brilliant. Quiet and quick, and you do not even have to format it like the old disc systems. Cost me about £100 from Maplins.

[SlackAlice]

http://uk.pcmag.com/storage-devices-reviews/8061/feature/ssd-vs-hdd-whats-the-difference

The main plus with an SSD is speed, because of no moving parts.

[fender62]

you can replace a laptop with an ssd drive 2.5, are they fast of course, as they have no metal platter like hard drives, think of it like an usb memory stick, do they fail..yes they do, always good to backup you important data to an external usb device mem card, hardrive, question is..do i have a fast system already, defragmented extra memory etc, i would not buy one unless i had for example a system that had at least an i5 cpu, not for an old pentium cpu, upgrade and see the difference, i like i7 cpu's myself.

[bhg481]

Can I also ask what you mean by "rendering" video. I take video and use a program called "Studio" to convert the files to BluRay discs. This involves editing to shorten/remove, re-order the files etc and then rendering to produce a file suitable for putting on a BluRay disc. Editing speed is improved using SSD but rendering speed is more dependent on the processor speed and is no better.

[bhg481]

Togo - are you sure it's not a hybrid drive you've got. 1TB SSD is much more than £100.

[Togo]

It is the hybrid bh. It has been in since early August and was on offer at the time I admit. I would have no compunction fitting the ssd and am indeed thinking of putting one in my laptop. Santa is coming and it will be on the wish list.

[bhg481]

My laptop has a 2TB hybrid and a 1TB SSD, the hybrid being the system disc. I must say that I was disappointed with the speed improvement on the hybrid but the SSD is something else.

[fender62]

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2025402/ssds-vs-hard-drives-vs-hybrids-which-storage-tech-is-right-for-you-.html