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Comment by dexen | Hacker News Reader

For a desktop, a 147GB, 15k RPM harddrive, bought second-hand, is the price-performance-reliability sweet spot. For example, a Seagate Cheetah one generation older than the current.

Also, because I've been using XFS on it. With journal on another drive, performance is blazing fast -- and yes, including mass deletes of small files.

XFS used on the only SSD (cheapest one, admitably) I have was performing terribly -- because it has to do lots of random writes

And no, a 15k RPM is not noisy -- both thanks to good bearings and human ear not being very sensitive at that frequency.

For a laptop, sure, the available harddrives (7.2k at best, often even 5.4k) have terrible random access times; an SSD may be way better. But not on my desktop, not yet anyway.

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Some of the first-gen SATA SSDs (based on the JMicron 601 and 602 chipsets) had nasty stuttering problems with lots of concurrent writes, but pretty much every SSD made in the past 12 months is going to blow away any spinning-platter disk when it comes to random writes. SSDs based on Sandforce's 1200-series controller can do 30,000 IOPS, sustaining more than 150MB/s with 4kB random writes.

You should probably investigate the current hardware (OCZ's Vertex 3, Crucial's m4, Intel's 510 series); it might surprise you just how much better it's gotten in such a short time.

Look, as an average individual, I'm not limited by drive interface (PATA, SATA and SCSI u320 are all OK for me), nor disk size (be it 2.5'' or 3.5'' or any other, really), nor capacity (I have a 1.5T drive for bulk storage, and only need about 20G for home & system & some breathing space), nor power usage. The only two real constraints for me are: 1) budget and 2) information on actual (``real-world'') performance of drives. As opposed to cute benchmarks.

> You should probably investigate the current hardware (...) -- that has never been an option to me, and probably won't be for some next 25 years. Budget, ya know.

TBH., I'm irritated by folks comparing top-of-the-line SSDs with slowest harddrives on the market (5.4k and 7.2k RPM, especially in 2.5'' form factor) and making a big woo about SSDs being faster. Get yourself a decent 15k harddrive, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Perhaps even short-stroke it if you are a racer.

> Get yourself a decent 15k harddrive, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Perhaps even short-stroke it if you are a racer.

15k HDDs are nowhere near modern SSDs in access time, IOPS or random access bandwidth (let alone factoring in noise and consumption). Nowhere.

And they're in similar prices ballparks.

15k drives in desktops are the most worthless technology available these days.

A quick search on popular polish auction site (allegro) gives:

OCZ Vertex 3: 120GB: 1100PLN, 240GB: 2100PLN

Cheetah 15k 147GB: 400PLN (second hand).

Newegg prices, both new:

Vertex 3 120gb: $299.99

Cheetah 15k 147gb: $219.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227...

His prices are probably correct for an auction site though: since 15ks are pointless, I'd expect their resell price to be much lower than on SSDs.

I've failed to make myself clear:

at the pricepoint of 1100PLN, the Vertex 3 offers only 0 IOPS, transfers measly 0MB/s and stores appaling 0B for me. Because it's way over my budget.

Your arguments were that a modern SSD is faster. That's pretty clear. But will such an SSD (of 64GB+) be available at the pricepoint of my budget? If not, your argument is moot.

A fast harddrvive can be had for reasonable price, as I'm willing to buy a second-hand ones. No such option exists for the Vertex 3 yet.

reitzensteinm found a more expensive offer for the harddrive -- that hardly invalidates my original point. Btw., newegg doesn't ship to europe, Amazon adds some heft fee ($77 S&H last time I considered ordering headphones, itself $134) and I don't feel like using no-brand, mail-order hardware from Hong-Kong for my home folder.

If I had spare $300, I'd first buy a pair of noise-cancelling (or at least well sound-proofed) headhones -- would be a better boost of productivity than faster storage.

I hope that's enough of excuse-making for not buying an SSD yet.

If you're willing to go up to 469PLN you could get a previous-generation (still basically pushing the limits of SATA2) Sandforce-powered 60GB SSD.

http://allegro.pl/ocz-vertex-2-e-ssd-2-5-60gb-285-mb-s-275-m...

While SSDs aren't that much faster at sequential access than top of the line hard drives, they asbolutely blow 15k drives out of the water when it comes to random reads and writes. And random reads and writes are basically the most common access pattern on most PCs - load a program, and tons of DLLs and config files are loaded as well. Compare the just released Vertex 3 with a Seagate Cheetah - at the same $/gb. The SSD has 5% the latency of the 15k rpm drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148...

This isn't just spec sheet or benchmarking bullshit, either - real world performance for random reads and writes really is that much better.

Of course, SSDs are only worth the price if you're limited by drive IO - and as stated elsewhere in this thread, that's not necessarily a given. But if you are limited by IO, and you're looking for a performance drive in todays market, unlike just two years ago, 15k rpm drives are dead in the water unless you need 600+ gb.

Thanks to the second-hand market, I can get an (older) Cheetah at an affordable price (as per my other reply below). If I had about 2000PLN to spend on storage, I'd probably toy with DIY SRAM based SSD, rather than ready-made Flash-based one.

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