That's it. The SSD is OUT.
Reason: unpredictable performance on an NVida platform using Windows XP, especially hangups.
Here's the breakdown (a little Tom's Hardware in the bowels of the PureBasic forum
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Considering...
1. If you use an Intel chipset AND you run Windows 7: go for an SSD. They are very fast, and around $200 they're large enough now for a boot disk. Limit yourself a little when it comes to writing to them, but my oh my, it's outright incredible how fast Windows XP or Windows 7 starts.
2. If you can afford it and your temp files are small, OR very large, you may opt for a second WD Caviar Black. With its 64 MB cache it will handle all smaller writes in cache (those that Windows doesn't catch) and the caching algoritms must be quite smart. The combo SSD + Caviar Black was often faster than putting it all on the SSD. (In fact, if you don't mind the slightly slower boot-up and start program times, then the Caviar Black seems to be a winner cost / performance wise.)
3. If you run Windows XP you may be in for a gamble. Windows XP seems to run fine on Intel chipsets, though it may require installation of the Intel SSD 'toolbox' (or whatever the thing is called) which gives you 'TRIM' functionality.
4. People often state that you would not have a speed increase with XP, well, this is utterly wrong: the Intel X25M 'postville' SSD still allows writing speeds op 60..70 MB per sec. As I understood this strongly depends on the brand and model SSD but I had no issues. Vista should run a bit better with an SSD, but hey, Vista itself is sluggish so why would you move to Vista?
5. SSD's without 'TRIM' DO slow down over time, or at least the X25M does. However, I tried very hard to confuse the drive, and did not manage to. Even by fully loading it, and deliberately messing it up (using different bench marks) the maximal slow down I could bring the drive to was about 20%.
6. RAM beats SSD and HDD. If you don't have to swap, then there's no disc activity. So if you're using memory hungry apps (video, graphics) go for RAM. It's cheaper and (except for starting programs that are not yet in the cache) is the better solution to speed up your overal machine.
7. If you have a NON-INTEL chipset AND do run XP or Vista then DO NOT use an (Intel) SSD. You may be treated to irregular hickups, or even end up in total freezes. These only occured for me when doing massive amounts of disk IO and CPU IO simultanously. (Running two Vista 64's inside VirtualBox was a sure way to make me reboot inside an hour or two when I was running XP from the SSD.) Perhaps there will be a firmware upgrade some day, but you cannot install it as the toolbox wouldn't work on a non-Intel platform.
8. An SSD is faster than a Raid 0 Raptor or VelociRaptor setup, unless you write a lot. As most caching by windows and HDD memory is taking care of your smaller writes, the slower write speed of the SSD doesn't matter much.
9. Games do load faster from a Raid 0 VelociRaptor setup than they do from the single SSD. (Nothing's going to stop you going Raid 0 on SSD's though, although 'Trim' may not work on Raid 0's.)
In a little table, here's how all setups that I tested compared, boot wise. I gave the SSD ten points, and it's highly subjective based upon my usage patterns
Windows boot
Yes, I seriously tested all the combos below in two gruelsome evenings! (Except for the Raptor Raid 0, as one of the old drives had gone the way of the dodo, so that's just a guess.)
1x SSD Intel X25M 80GB - 10.0
2x VelociRaptor 150 GB Raid 0 - 8.5
1x VelociRaptor 150 GB - 8
1x WD Caviar Black 1TB - 7.5
2x Raptor WD740 Raid 0 - 6.5
2x Samsung Spinpoint 500 GB Raid 0 - 6
2x Seagate 350 GB Raid 0 - 5.5
Programming
Mostly PureBasic, and as everything fitted inside the cache, it just didn't matter much. It was the browsing around for documents etc. that mattered here. (I did not test all combos.)
1x SSD Intel X25M 80GB - 10.0
1x WD Caviar Black 1TB - 9.0
2x VelociRaptor 150 GB Raid 0 -9.0
1x VelociRaptor 150 GB - 8 - 9.0
1x Raptor WD740 - 8.0
1x Samsung Spinpoint 500 GB - 7.0
1x Seagate 350 GB - 6.0
Gaming
2x VelociRaptor 150 GB Raid 0 - 10.0
1x SSD Intel X25M 80GB - 9.0
1x WD Caviar Black 1TB - 8.5
The Caviar Black launched my games about just as fast as the Intel SSD. I'm not going to discuss the rest of the field
Would I?
1. Would I buy an SSD for PureBasic alone? Nope.
2. Would I buy an SSD for Windows XP? Only on an Intel mainboard, and somewhat reluctantly.
3. Would I buy it for faster booting? Yes. (Oh yes!)
4. Will it increase your (purebasic) development speed? Only if you crash your machine a lot and have to reboot
5. Would I buy an SSD for gaming? Nope.
6. Is it time to dump your two years old harddrive? Yes. (The newer drives have become so much faster that even buying something just below the ultra fast level is a huge improvement over what is probably now in your rig.)
Conclusion
Unless you need to squeeze the last bit out of your machine, your best buy is probably going to be two Caviar Blacks, with some smart partitioning, and putting the temp and swap file on the first partition of the second drive, you'll end up with 2 TB of data for less than 200 bucks, even cheaper than a single SSD and almost as fast in reading and writing as the VelciRaptor Raid 0 or that same SSD.
If you need to donate me some money as I've saved you so much time investigating yourself I can pass you my bank account
