Alright. I should point out. I'm not in the market. I've just been curious about these for a while.
SSD's are faster. Yes.
But how much does that matter? Does it even matter at all? Especially vs. space
I mean, I understand that it'll make programs open fast. But it's not like it's going to make recording faster.
It's not like people have been struggling to record before SSDs came along.
And besides plenty of people with HDDs even below 7200 rpm open programs fine.
Generally:
512 GB SSD= $1,000+/-
1TB HDD/ 7200rpm= $150+/-
...I could buy a new computer for the cost of a reasonably sized SSD
So how important are they?
I understand that theyre not noisy, but for much less than $1000 I can block out HDD sound.
Who here has experience with SSDs vs. HDDs and can tell me if they're "worth it"?
"let's say I get a desktop computer capable of multiple drives"
As opposed to the ones that aren't? =P Never seen one myself.
But yes, it should be as easy as making a full copy onto the new disk. If you have the original OS disk, it'd be a lot more healthy for the drive to start over fresh though. Hard drives end up getting full of junk.
There are numerous PCs from companies like Dell and HP that have room for only one internal hard drive, plus a power supply that can barely handle one drive. So its not that uncommon.
This is me. HP.
So in a perfect world I think I'd have like, 128 GB SSD for programs, 2TB HDD for libraries, and then another HDD for storage.
I'm curious. If I were to take the HDD out of my current HP desktop and plug it into something like a Mac Pro would it just be a matter of "plug and play"? All my current computer files as well as windows is setup to go? Or is it locked to the current motherboard somehow?
This is me. HP.
So in a perfect world I think I'd have like, 128 GB SSD for programs, 2TB HDD for libraries, and then another HDD for storage.
I'm curious. If I were to take the HDD out of my current HP desktop and plug it into something like a Mac Pro would it just be a matter of "plug and play"? All my current computer files as well as windows is setup to go? Or is it locked to the current motherboard somehow?
Macs could read the old PC FAT32 file system but not the newer NTFS file system unless a third-party product was used.
Well now you are talking about Apples & Oranges. When you say you have an HP I assume its a Windows machine, and pulling that drive and plugging it into a Macbook Pro is not going to sit well. On many levels.
First and most obvious, Windows is not simply going to boot up on a Mac without some serious tweaking. Enough so that you would want to start with a blank drive and work from there. Most Mac users I know who need to run Windows do it through an emulation product like Parallels.
Using the drive as a data drive may be easier. I'm a 100% Windows guy - I have an old Mac at home but never use it - and last I knew, Macs could read the old PC FAT32 file system but not the newer NTFS file system unless a third-party product was used. This may well have changed by now, I'm sure there are Mac users out there who would know. An OS has to be able to read a File System in order to read a hard drive formatted with that file system.
Even moving a bootable windows drive to another Windows PC usually requires some preparation. Windows pays close attention to what motherboard and what network card is in your system. If they change radically, the system will typically crash on boot up. Even if the system boots, Windows may decide it needs to be "re-activated" and you would need to go through that nonsense. What techs like myself do in these situations is prepare the copy of windows first by using a utility like Sysprep (which comes with windows). Sysyprep lets you "package" your copy of windows and programs and tells Windows to run through its initial setup on your next boot. So you would use Sysprep to prepare Windows, then move the drive (or simply make an image copy of it) to your new system and on first boot-up Windows goes through its setup and adjust to the new hardware.
Sorry if that is too much info, I just wanted to make the point that regardless of whether you are using Windows or Mac, you can't expect to just pull a bootable drive from one system pop it in another different system, and then expect it to work. Its more complicated than that.
Macs are becoming more and more beautiful every day.
Hmm, limited number of "writes"?
Well, I suspect I'm still at least 6-8 months away from SSD buying anyway. Hopefully they improve even more and come down in price too!
A few advices;
SSD don't fail they die. The SSD are practically an USB memory on steroids, in some computer forums they advise to change the SSD drive every 18 months.
Summarizing what has been said, I'll have a 100~200 GB SSD for OS and aplications, a couple of 500 GB 7,200~10,000 RPM SATA 2 or 3 for storage.
I'll do an image of the SSD every time I install something new so in case the SSD dies I wont lose a lot of time rebuilding my system.