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An interesting alternative has recently appeared. Intel X25-V 40GB, roughly half of a X25-M 80GB G2 for about half the price. The interesting part is on average two of those in raid 0 is faster than the single 80GB. ref. Lost of TRIM in raid, but they suggest workaround of under-partitioning a bit to give more working space. Wonder if TRIM works in Windows software raid 0 as opposed to the chipset or hardware versions.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

I'm sure I read somewere that Intel has just released a new driver that enables TRIM in RAID modes other than RAID 5.

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Canon EOS 50D/EF-S 18-55mm IS/EF-S 55250mm IS/EF 50mm F1.8 II /Lowepro AW Slingshot 200/ Digital Ixus 860 IS

PC>Q6700/MSI P45 Zilent/6GB 800mhz DDR2/2x 4870 1GB/Samsung Spinpoint F1 500GB/Maxtor 200GB+80GB


My Flickr

Having just upgraded my netbook from HD to SSD, the difference isn't as much as I hoped.

Noise: the silence is a little disconcerting. The click and hum of a hard disk is almost reassuring that a computer is on, leaving the job to the cooling fan. I'm sure I'll welcome this in the long term but for now I'm still in the getting used to it stage.

Power consumption: Might actually be slightly higher than the disk I took out. In a desktop scenario, it could show more improvement over 3.5 inch drives, but doesn't seem that different compared to 2.5 inch drives.

Capacity value: of course this is the biggest weakness for now. For HALF the cost of the 40 GB SSD, I could have got a 500GB model in the 2.5 inch form factor. Going up in physical size, 2TB in 3.5 inch format could be got for the same price as the SSD. You will not be picking a SSD for capacity!

Performance: While the benchmarks confirm it is performing as expected, in practical use I haven't felt it. Maybe the applications I'm using are light enough the disk was never a significant bottleneck after all.

Full details in this thread.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Consider me an SSD adopter 2. I got the 80 GB Intel XM25-M Postville, and...it's amazing. I mainly bought it because virtualizing 5 servers on a 5400 RPM disk was sort of a mission impossible.

The performance is quite amazing. Applications launch almost instantly, nothing bottlenecks the HDD. Trying to open up firefox whilst doing a disk transfer? Nearly no slowdown for both. Want to open an app? It's pretty much instantaneous.

Oh, and battery life wen from reported 8 hours to 9 and a half.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

Like Citruspers above, I also went for the Intel X-25M G2 80 GB. I've had it for 3 days now, and I really like it. Lightroom got a lot faster when it comes to importing and rendering images. I haven't tried CS4 so much, but loading levels in my favorite games also got a lot faster. The computer as a whole feels more responsive, and programs never crash. I can only second the opinion of the sticker I received along with my new SSD: "My SSD rocks" .

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Nikon D90 (Primary), Nikon D40 (Backup)
AF-S DX 35mm f/1,8
AF-S 60mm f/2,8 micro
AF-S DX 55-200mm f/4-5.6 VR
2 x Speedlight SB-600

I got a first generation Kingston V-Series 64GB SSD in August 2009 and it's been quite nice most of the time. Perhaps it's not quite as fast as the Intel 80GB SSD, but for ordinary daily stuff, it's fast enough and Windows 7 Pro x64 starts within 30 seconds from it. It's not very fast for too many random operations - the 640GB WD Caviar Blue is a little better there, but for sequential stuff and the odd random operation (like starting some app from time to time) is quite quick.
I have two partitions on it, the first one is just for the OS and the other one is for apps that don't have to be installed (Apache, database servers - data are on the WD HDD, some portable apps). Games and documents are on the WD HDD. Games are too big for the SSD but it doesn't really matter - they loaded only a bit faster from the Kingston drive.

Hi everyone, I've just published an article discussing what's the smallest SSD you can get away with as a boot / application drive. I compared the OCZ Agility 2 60GB against the OC Vertex 2 120GB.

What's the smallest SSD you can get away with?

I'm loving the fact that SSDs are getting cheaper. Compact & much more reliable than Hard Drives,they will be the best option for my future computer. (a tech expert told me that 2 SSDs in RAID,coupled with a fast processor & enough DDRAM will be amazing for photo/video editing)

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Gear: Nikon D80, 18-105mm, 35mm F/1.8, 85mm F/1.8, SB-600
Visit my work here

Interesting thoughts on what is "big enough". I've been running a 40GB in a netbook for a while, but of course that doesn't have high software demands. Unfortunately I also found that the major bottleneck on that was the CPU not HD, so the performance difference from SSD was minimal compared to HD.

I debated getting one into the new laptop I have, where a 2nd hard disk is not usually an option. The price/capacity of SSD isn't quite there for me yet.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

I have an 80 Gb Intel SSD with 2 x 2Tb normal data drives. I have around 35Gb free on the SSD for the past year having installed numerous applications. Not felt restricted in any way. Posted previously about the benefits for me - couldnt go back now.

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Nikon D90
Nikkor AF-S DX 18-105 f/3.5-5.6G VR, Nikkor AF-S DX 70-300 f/4.5-5.6G VR, Nikor AF-S DX 35 f/1.8 G

I am currently looking to buy a new laptop. Having used SSD drives for some time, I consider having an SSD drive mandatory. The real-world performance increase to me is considerable. Not sure how reliable they are, having one die on me just a few weeks ago (I assume the controller is dead), as opposed to never having a primary old school HDD failure in the couple of decades I have been using them (lucky I know). So far I have owned 3 SSD drives, 1 failing. The worry I have now is that I bought 2 identical drives.......

I consider 256GB the minimum size, as I already have that in my current laptop. Pricey yes, but worth every penny? In my opinion and for my usage yes.

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http://www.parismetrotrash.com

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From this bit-tech article:

Corsair announces Force 3 SSD recall

Corsair only released the Force 3 range last month, so not too many users will have an affected SSD. Corsair has announced that it's recalling one model of its new Force 3 SSDs, due to stability issues.

According to Corsair, only 120GB SSDs with the part number CSSD-F120GB3-BK are affected by the problems, which don't affect all Force 3 SSDs. However, if you own an SSD with the offending model number, Corsair recommends that you stop using it immediately, even if you haven't experienced any problems with it.

Thankfully, Corsair has stopped shipping the drives and has a fix for the problem, but you'll need to physically return the SSD, as the fix requires changes to the SSD's hardware components, as well as a firmware update.

There's more info available at bit-tech.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

When I built my current computer a bit over a year ago, I found SSD drives were too expensive. A 150gb model ran for around 750$, while 60gb ran for about 300-400$.

What I opted for instead was the hybrid Seagate 95005620AS to supplement my 2TB internal and 2TB external HDDs.

There isn't a lot of details about the internal specifications of it, but it combines both an SSD and an HDD for a total of 500GB. It moves around the data to the SSD portion based on what you use more often, and keeps the less-used files on the HDD portion of the drive.

I've had great results with the drive so far. The boot times and application load times are very good (not as good as a pure SSD, but much better than a pure HDD), yet I have enough storage space so I'm not worried about installing more applications, windows updates, etc. It's definitely an alternative worth looking into.

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Cameras: Canon EOS Rebel T2i, Canon S90
Lenses: Tamron: SP70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di VC USD, Canon: EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens, 75-300mm f/4.0-5.6 III, and EF 50mm f/1.8 II
Retired camera: Fujifilm Finepix s700

Im running a 128GB SSD OCZ Vertex 2E as my system drive ^^
The boot up is just lovely!


well Im planning on getting 1 more SSD but this time a Vertex 3E or Agility 3 SATAIII but still 128GB, the larger ones are too expensive!

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http://www.AnderssonPhoto.com
Cameras: Leica M8, Nikon FE-2, Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, 5D Mark II, 40D
Lenses: Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm 1.4, Ultra Wide Heliar 12mm 5.6 ASPH II, Nikkor AI-S 28mm 2.8, Canon 24-70 2.8L, 85mm 1.2L II, 300mm 2.8L IS, TS-E 45mm 2.8, Sigma 105mm 2.8 Macro
Canon 1.4x/2X TC II, Canon 580EX II X2, Gitzo + Manfrotto.
Wishlist: Leica Monochrom, Summilux 50 ASPH, Voigtlander 35mm 1.2 ASPH II

I know I am not one of the regular posters here, and I am late to this thread.

There's one huge disadvantage seems no one seems to have mentioned (apart from the cost of SSD):
Data recovery on SSD is quite difficult, much more difficult than regular HDD. (This is from a technician of a data recovery company in Sydney. I unfortunately had to use the data recovery service once.)

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AntBlog701 | SillyDog701
Apple: MacBook Air (11-in, 1.8GHz i7), Mac Pro (12-core 2.66GHz), MacBook Pro (15-in), iMac (21.5-in, Core i5), Mac mini Server (2.66GHz), iMac (24-in, C2D), PowerBook G4 (12-in, 1.33GHz), iMac G4 (1.25GHz)x2, PowerMac G4 (dual 1.44GHz), iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, 4, 3G, iPad 4, iPad 3, iPad 2, iPad, iPad mini (all 64GB, LTE/3G), iPod touch (4th gen & 1st gen), 3 x AirPort Extreme, Time Capsule...