Intel SSD 660p: 512GB Of NVMe Storage For $99 USD

[Weasel]

The difference between a HDD and *any* SSD is massive

That doesn't matter. What matters is that for many cases, HDDs are "enough". If you have the simplest RAID 1 mirror, you get about ~200MB/s sequential reads, which is really enough for a lot of cases. Not everyone handles large files or bloated garbage. Nor do they work with a massive amount of files, either (which needs a lot of seeking and stuff). And, well, you get reliability with the mirror for probably the same price if not even cheaper. ;-)

SSDs definitely have their uses, but people who just go by "dude the differences are massive" are missing the point. They are indeed massive, but for many cases, it simply doesn't matter.

[sykobee]

The difference between a HDD and *any* SSD is massive, I'd certainly recommend getting an SSD for your commonly accessed files and project files. HDDs are still great for media.

If you are a heavy writer of data (the equivalent of a drive write per week say), then get a more expensive SSD which allows for more drive writes - although a TLC 3D-NAND should suffice even then.

Most home users don't do such heavy writing. This is where these cheap "100 drive write" SSDs are viable. An earlier poster wrote they had written 10TB in a year, so their drive should last 10 years at minimum. In reality, it will last a lot longer still - the drive controllers are very good at wear levelling, and the drive write numbers are pessimistic for obvious reasons.

Also note that enterprise user systems have a load of bloat enterprise computer management software installed, that crater performance. An SSD can reduce boot time to 30s from 5 minutes! And the company will have a mandatory power-down/hibernate policy, etc, etc.

[Vistaus]

How often do you boot your laptop? I have an HTPC that I reboot maybe a few times per year. I leave all the applications open that I need to use, so I'm never opening things from the disk, except media which opens fast enough from a spindle drive. In many cases, I can see that an SSD isn't worth the investment.

I reboot my laptop every week, usually b/w 2-6 times (depending on the case - i.e. compiling latest git of my current DE needs a reboot afterwards to fully kick in, and so does a new kernel (rolling release here)).

[Melcar]

In this day and age we need things 5 seconds ago.

[aht0]

So precompiled textures are for nothing:-)

I fail to see how this question would relate to the discussion. It's like asking if pre-compiled programs themselves are for nothing.

Loading times for a single player do not matter simply because you are not competing with other players. It does not really matter if your game's data gets loaded in 5 seconds or 10. You do not lose advantages - like not getting into game first and getting to choose ingame assets first before other players.

[Weasel]

"Business database" is not exactly average home usage.

Not to mention it'll probably be stupid to use QLC or even TLC on such a thing.

[untore]

If people claim that hdds have a usecase nowadays they must basically just copy mediafiles and archives back and forth all day. Get a raid of SSHD at least if you live and day by your magnetic storage disks with crazy spinning little heads, that should be quite competitive to cheap ssds. If only manufacturers wouldnt cheap out too much on the quality of the cache cells.
I would like to see a double cache layer plus storage with Intel optane. Something like zfs arc+l2arc+storage at a hardware level.

[aht0]

Business database applications benefits from a fast drive like do games in customer computers. Have you ever played a PC game and waiting it to start;-)

"Business database" is not exactly average home usage. And OEM branded "office PCs" still come with mechanical drives often enough.

Games - Precisely WHICH online games on Linux platform need to sit on SSD for better loading times? Is there even any? For single player, loading times do not matter. Emulated games run on reduced performance regardless and there loading times tend to be last of your worries. Be happy when you are not losing too much fps and game does not have too many stability issues and extra gameplay-related bugs.

On windows, there is some truth but it's game engine specific. Most load all needed data during the beginning of the round and during the round difference between having a ssd or not, is exactly zero. Because all the needed data is already in system RAM. ARMA3 is the only unoptimized exception I play that benefits from having a ssd (because it would load textures etc when it needs'em from drive) but its graphics engine is clunky anyways in more ways than this and going to be replaced in Arma4. It actually worked well enough with 2 Cheetah's in Raid0 (15krpm SAS HDDs over LSI MegaRaid controller card - but thats not "average home user" solution. Reading performance approaching that of older SSDs).

[molecule-eye]

My laptop boots in 7 seconds with an SSD, so 7 seconds vs 16 seconds is a major difference. Maybe not major enough for you, but definitely more than the 4 second difference you mentioned.

How often do you boot your laptop? I have an HTPC that I reboot maybe a few times per year. I leave all the applications open that I need to use, so I'm never opening things from the disk, except media which opens fast enough from a spindle drive. In many cases, I can see that an SSD isn't worth the investment.

[M@GOid]

But https://www.computerworld.com/articl...iscovered.html

Hard Drives usually don't die completely and suddenly like that, while it's totally the norm with SSDs, some even have self-destruct mechanisms on them. It's also more viable to have mirrors with HDDs because they're cheaper for large amounts of storage, so... you know, that counts for practical reliability.

Well, I had seeing both HDD and SSD dying without warning. Also, on the article I linked before, some of the SSDs indeed showed signs of failure before stop working. One of them ever allowed copy operations.

But indeed nothing is forever. SSD or HDD, I say we backup the entire filesystem from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

My setup is a small 240GB SSD for the OS and my /home, but all voluminous stuff like video files and games are in a 2TB HDD. A external 3TB USB HDD handles my backups. Since all those drives are approaching or surpassing 5 years of use, I thinking on a new external backup drive, you know, to not cry tomorrow.

Still, for all people out there still with cold feet about buying a SSD: just do it. Once you are used to a system with a SSD, there is no turning back.