New Computer Specs

Billy Welsh · March 19, 2013, 02:35:43 PM

Quote from: Mark on March 19, 2013, 12:39:37 PM
interesting. I see two hard drives... for a CSR? And, why 500GB for a workstation? smallest he could get? The 120Gb by itself should have been good enough.

Must be missing something.

Could be one "hybrid" drive - they are combining SSD with regular drives, putting the OS and other "critical, often accessed" data on the SSD for better boot/response time.

Jeff Zylstra · March 19, 2013, 03:13:51 PM

Quote from: Billy Welsh on March 19, 2013, 02:35:43 PM
Quote from: Mark on March 19, 2013, 12:39:37 PM
interesting. I see two hard drives... for a CSR? And, why 500GB for a workstation? smallest he could get? The 120Gb by itself should have been good enough.

Must be missing something.

Could be one "hybrid" drive - they are combining SSD with regular drives, putting the OS and other "critical, often accessed" data on the SSD for better boot/response time.

Billy, how'd you know what my next question was going to be? I'm going to guess that the "Dell Recommended" drive below is exactly that? And if that is the case, would you recommend that drive?

3.5 Hard Drives

250GB 3.5" SATA 6Gb/s with 8MB DataBurst Cache™ [subtract $204.10]

500GB 3.5 6.0Gb/s SATA with 16MB DataBurst Cache™ [subtract $191.10]

1TB 3.5" SATA 6Gb/s with 32MB DataBurst Cache™ [subtract $181.35]

   2.5 Hard Drives

320GB 2.5 SATA 3.0Gb/s with 16MB DataBurst Cache™ [subtract $180.05]

500GB 2.5 3Gb/s SATA with 16MB DataBurst Cache™ [subtract $150.80]

500GB Hybrid 2.5" 3.0Gb/s SATA2 with 4GB SLC NAND Flash [subtract $119.60]
   Dell Recommended

320GB 2.5" SATA 3Gb/s Opal SED w/FIPS, 512e Hard Drive [subtract $167.05]

128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Dell Solid State Drive [Included in Price]

By the way, the Dell rep. said that the on board video on the Optiplex 7010 supported dual video cards, and that ALL of their video cards now supported dual videos. Is that true of all video cards now? I'm feeling like I'm falling behind again. Just wait until I post asking about which smart phone to buy!

Billy Welsh · March 19, 2013, 03:37:24 PM

That has to be what Dell is recommending.

Personally, given the lower risk of failure + the performance gains, the next time we are buying I will opt for a smaller SSD at the same price as a 500GB standard or hybrid drive. We are NEVER going to use 500GB on a workstation, so I will ignore $ per GB and focus on $ per likely used GB. And its getting harder to find standard drives that are not too big.

Jeff Zylstra · March 19, 2013, 04:19:17 PM

Quote from: Billy Welsh on March 19, 2013, 03:37:24 PM
That has to be what Dell is recommending.

Personally, given the lower risk of failure + the performance gains, the next time we are buying I will opt for a smaller SSD at the same price as a 500GB standard or hybrid drive. We are NEVER going to use 500GB on a workstation, so I will ignore $ per GB and focus on $ per likely used GB. And its getting harder to find standard drives that are not too big.

All this talk makes me wonder if it is still possible or advisable to install large programs on a secondary hard drive. My wife have numerous card programs, I-Tunes, and other space hogs on our computer at home. I'm wondering the feasibility of changing the drive letter during the install procedure so that these programs install on a large, secondary drive so I can keep a smaller SSD drive for reasonable performance. Is that possible or advisable?

Mark · March 19, 2013, 04:20:25 PM

Quote from: Jeff Zylstra on March 19, 2013, 04:19:17 PM
Is that possible or advisable?

Possible? Yes.

Jeff Zylstra · March 19, 2013, 04:26:46 PM

Quote from: Mark on March 19, 2013, 04:20:25 PM
Quote from: Jeff Zylstra on March 19, 2013, 04:19:17 PM
Is that possible or advisable?

Possible? Yes.

Now aren't you the wiseguy today! So you're saying this is not advisable because of performance issues, or data and/or installation corruption issues? Just what ARE you saying!

Conan_Ward · March 19, 2013, 04:40:26 PM

I don't see why it'd be an issue, if you don't need the performance boost of a SSD, a large storage disk would be the way to go. I'm running a terrible contraption with 3 internals of various sizes/ages and an external at home and it's ok, the standard disk utilities in windows seem to keep things in line.

on hybrids real quick: got one for free recently (seagate 500gb) i'm not noticing anything huge running programs off of it, but i'm too lazy to move the OS onto it. The charts I've seen do indicate it does pick up a slight benefit to boot times and what not, but nothing near a pure SSD. The recommended use of keeping them to laptops sounds about right...in a desktop machine, I wouldn't go with the half measure. A ssd for programs/os and traditional for storage (if needed) is the way to go. If it wasn't free, i'd feel ripped off

Mark · March 19, 2013, 04:42:04 PM

Quote from: Jeff Zylstra on March 19, 2013, 04:26:46 PM
Now aren't you the wiseguy today! So you're saying this is not advisable because of performance issues, or data and/or installation corruption issues? Just what ARE you saying!

LOL, I just don't have enough experience with these drives to expand on it. What I CAN say is that I have been installing things to drives other than C for decades, for one reason or another.

For example, I would install Exchange onto a partition other than the OS for performance reasons. I suspect that woudl be the same thing with an SSD and a non-SSD setup. Files and what not could be stored on the non-SSD and anything that you want fast access to on the SSD. just can't speak from experience yet. Make sense?

Gene Foraker · March 20, 2013, 11:02:17 AM

The accepted practice for power users is now to have an SSD boot drive along with a large "data" drive. Install important programs to the SSD to gain its speed, but not the media data such as music, photos or video since they don't need the speed.

Jeff Zylstra · March 20, 2013, 11:13:27 AM

Makes perfect sense. Thanks, Gentlemen!

Jim Jensen · March 20, 2013, 11:19:36 AM

Very interesting to learn - thanks for starting this discussion. Helps us non-dedicated techs keep up.

Jeff Zylstra · March 20, 2013, 11:44:35 AM

Quote from: Jim Jensen on March 20, 2013, 11:19:36 AM
Very interesting to learn - thanks for starting this discussion. Helps us non-dedicated techs keep up.

That's what this forum is all about! I can't possibly keep up anymore, so I rely on those of you who can or do keep up. Sharing the information is the only way that us non-dedicated IT people have of keeping up.

I am interested in these "hybrid" drives, as to how they work and how fast and reliable they are, etc...

Conan_Ward · March 20, 2013, 01:18:48 PM

I've got the 500gb version of this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt-review-finally-a-good-hybrid-hdd

Short answer on the chart, it puts the performance almost directly between a ssd and traditional drive and a price point to match. Since the ssd portion in this case is really a cache, it's probably more reliable than a traditional ssd for long term worries about the ssd read/write limits over the lifetime.

Bob · March 20, 2013, 01:48:13 PM

Not followed thread but thought I would read through it. To answer Jeff, absolutely nothing wrong with custom installing apps vs. default install to C:, changing the installation path to another drive. I've done this as long as I can remember. I've always installed large apps on spare drive and I keep the C: drive for common things OS, Office, things essential to operating use. Games, iTunes, photo library, anything non-essential on spare drive.

Most all apps have option to install defaults or custom. I always choose custom and change the install path.

Regarding using solid state drive vs. typical drive. Average person is not going to care really. SSD would be quicker but with speed on PC's only as fast as the slowest part/bottleneck gets moved to another point. I've not used SSD based system so who am I to talk.