oldson
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Post by oldson on Mar 19, 2017 17:17:55 GMT
i have had the nightmare of hard disk failure this weekend and have had to reformat and start again. as a result i have little faith that my system hard drive (intel 250gb SSD) is going to last. i am looking to get another system drive (i do also have a 1TB WD storage drive installed none SSD) and wonder whether SSD is of any benefit to me.
when i bought my pc i did play games but have gradually grown out of this. nowadays i only use my pc for surfing the net and playing my music.
am i correct in thinking that when playing tracks from foobar (or any player) they are loaded from the hard disk and actually played from system RAM (basically speaking)? if this is so, then what is the benefit of SSD , for my needs?
any advice would be appreciated
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Javier
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Post by Javier on Mar 19, 2017 18:31:24 GMT
Hi Simon,
The only reason for using SSD is speed, if you've read it improves SQ well... it doesn't. As you point out all media players buffer music files in RAM and that is where they play from. If you configure Foobar to do so it'll load the entire track thus reducing the number of disk accesses.
SSDs are great and I've extended the life of a few old laptops just by replacing the mechanical HDD with a new SSD. They went to being unusable to performing even better than a new low-mid range laptop however it is extremely important to optimize the whole system for them if one wants them to last and keep performing. As each cell can only be written a number of timmes minimzing disk writes is very important, for example using a minimum of 8GB of RAM and disabling the pagin file, hibernating, etc. There are many guides out there on how to it. They are suited for heavy writting scenarios unless you get one of the Enterprise "high endurance" types (quite expensive) which can stand up to 10 DWPD for 5 years.
At work I'm also replacing old HDDs with SSDs and all new PCs I buy I order them with SSD, including our servers. At home I would if I could afford it but I need lots of storage and going solid state is way out of my budget.
If eventually you consider getting a new one to replace your Intel drive I strongly recommend Samsung's EVO 850 line. They are very reliable and perform great.
If you need help with any of this send me a PM.
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oldson
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Post by oldson on Mar 20, 2017 19:27:08 GMT
thanks Javier, i may well be pm'ing you soon. still running the dodgy intel drive at the moment(still have issues as it asks me to enter bios,by pressing f1, on every cold boot to correct a setting!! gives no clue as to what setting though.) but i have just found a diagnostic tool on their website. will give that a try and see what it says. at the moment i am edging towards ditching ssd and buying a WD gold 1TB standard drive. this would be plenty big enough for me and reliability is said to be top.
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oldson
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Post by oldson on Mar 24, 2017 18:47:11 GMT
the dodgy drive is still working, so sticking with it for now. i do plan to get another to add in and stick operating system on that too, so researching what is best.
on a side note, i have noticed that any bios changes i make, initially save but are back at default the next day! i have noticed there is a battery on my motherboard, would changing this possibly cure this?
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Javier
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Post by Javier on Mar 24, 2017 22:45:23 GMT
I had MoBo batteries lasting for well over 7 years so unless you have a very, very old one it is not likely though at the cost not a big loss anyway.
As to the drive, if money is no prob go for the Samsung SM863a series or Intel's S3610, if on a tighter budget the best all around drive, without a shadow of a doubt, is Samsung's EVO 850 series. That is, if you plan on going SATA.. if your board has an M.2 socket that takes NVMe boards you may read some reviews about the EVO 960 which is insanely fast.
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oldson
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Post by oldson on Mar 25, 2017 19:25:57 GMT
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oldson
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Post by oldson on Mar 25, 2017 20:21:29 GMT
the wife had some batteries in a drawer, so i have just swapped it over.
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Javier
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Post by Javier on Mar 25, 2017 21:20:01 GMT
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oldson
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Post by oldson on Mar 26, 2017 15:15:31 GMT
the battery seems to have resolved the bios save issue. disk checks are showing no issues with the drive so will give it another chance.
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