SSD VS heavy Usenet activity ( downloading, writing, unpacking to)

[Hypatia]

I was wondering if anyone knew how SSD disks deal with heavy data writing when you get something from usenet.(multiple threads, multiple files written at the same time, scanning ,repairing if needed etc)

I just wanted to get myself something small(~100Gb) and use it as a temp storage just for downloading data to it . And then unpack to a slow WD green drive.
But the question is how long ssd drive will "live" under that kind of heavy usage..
does anyone have any experience with all this?

[tesco]

Why do you want to do that?
An SSD is good for installing your operating system and most used programs too, since their loading time is bottlenecked by the speed of the hard drive.
For downloading from usenet, isn't the bottleneck your internet connection? Your hard drive should have no problem keeping up. Unless you've got some super fast connection.

[Hypatia]

well,ive got only several 1.5TB WD green truecrypted + some really old drive. They cant sustain 15-16MB download speed while unpacking something, for instance.I have my all drives truecrypted.
So i wanted small ssd ,not pricy, with great writing speeds and access times< and 1.5 years "life" cycle
Dont like thrashing my HDD =)

[tesco]

What about having the files extract to a different drive than the one you download to?
Then it will read from one and write to the other.
Just throwing ideas out there, I imagine an SSD will last 1.5 years+ for what you want but couldn't say for sure.

edit: Also, I know that with my SSD I can use a smart reader and it will tell me teh estimated remaining life of the SSD, in percentage. Not sure how reliable this is, but you could always check out this number after a couple of months and use it to guage whether or not you're killing the drive, in which case you can use it for something else (such as operating system). Again, just throwing out ideas.

[Hypatia]

What about having the files extract to a different drive than the one you download to?
yeah i did that. Changed settings in a newsreader. Didnt help much, though.
Dunno why.


ou could always check out this number after a couple of months
yeha, probably. One never knows until one tries it.=)


PS Actually ive got an idea.. i guess ill just get myself 24Gb RAM and assign 20Gb to a RAM disk, thats it. =)

[jefffisher]

i wouldn't even consider a solidstate disk for usenet downloading extracting at 40MB/s is fine for me it's not like anyone can download that fast the only reason you'd need a faster disk is if you could download faster than that and the drive couldn't keep up.
do you really need a file that takes two hours to download to extract ten times faster? sure it's going to save a few what like three minutes? that's a decent amount of time if the overall operation took six minutes but if the file is going to take two hours to download anyways than a solidstate disk or even 24GB ram drive is only going to make the total operation go about 2% faster which is nothing.

[zot]

A few years ago Binsearch had installed SSD drives in their servers, and then realized they made a big mistake after suffering SSD drive failures. Then they reversed course and went back to the slow-but-dependable spinning disks once again. Maybe SSD drives have improved since then, but I seem to remember reports from other early adopters of this (then) new technology complaining of SSD failures also. I've had USB flash drives used for ed2k/torrents/usenet fail. (used for the purpose to extend life of HDD, so they did their job, i guess)

The ideal plug-in solution for a usenet download cache drive for users on a hyper-speed connection (where the defining bottleneck in downloading is the disk-write time) would no doubt be a RAM drive. (the hardware kind, not those buggy software apps)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hyperdrive-redefines-solid-state-storage,1719.html

But be prepared to pay through the nose -- a 'proper' 64GB RAM drive can top $1000.

[tesco]

A few years ago Binsearch had installed SSD drives in their servers, and then realized they made a big mistake after suffering SSD drive failures. Then they reversed course and went back to the slow-but-dependable spinning disks once again. Maybe SSD drives have improved since then, but I seem to remember reports from other early adopters of this (then) new technology complaining of SSD failures also. I've had USB flash drives used for ed2k/torrents/usenet fail. (used for the purpose to extend life of HDD, so they did their job, i guess)

The ideal plug-in solution for a usenet download cache drive for users on a hyper-speed connection (where the defining bottleneck in downloading is the disk-write time) would no doubt be a RAM drive. (the hardware kind, not those buggy software apps)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hyperdrive-redefines-solid-state-storage,1719.html

But be prepared to pay through the nose -- a 'proper' 64GB RAM drive can top $1000.
USB flash drives don't have wear levelling. An SSD would last much longer.