Hey computer geeks - or even, just anyone who uses a computer...

[Doomsday]

THIS is what to do when your hard drive crashes. True story.

My HD crashed, stopped rotating and became essentially a humming hot plate in there. Long story short, I took my PC tower to a computer repair shop owner friend of mine, and saw on his counter something I had been reading about but had forgotten - Solid State Hard Drives.

Sandisk 120GB SSHD - 60 bucks. I popped for it, had him install Windows XP Pro on it, and ain't looking back at all. (I will NEVER give up my XP Pro - they will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.)

Quick review of the SSHD - wonderful. I have never seen a computer boot up this fast. It boots up completely and is ready to work, faster than my monitors. But then after the bootup, it also operates greasy fast. Everything happens NOW with it... Everything runs blazingly fast, every program without exception. Even processor intensive ones like video editing and audio production, (Samplitude) run faster now.

Ya bring up Firefox? POP - it's there immediately with all tabs already loaded and ready to go in a eyeblink. How about Windows Media Player? BAM - there in less than a second with all your media already populated.

Because, the computer now doesn't have to "hunt" through the hard drive to find all the files it needs. I was able to back up my files and folders from the cloud server I save everything on, in just a little over two minutes and we're talking ALOT of data, well over 70 gigs worth.

There's no heat generated by this and it is immune to shock or vibration - so you don't even have to mount it, in your tower. (I did though, anyway) It's also of course, completely silent.

My only regret is I should have shopped online and got the bigger drive - they make these with capacity up to 2TB now - that's Terabytes.... I WILL do that, when my other HD takes a powder. It's a Western Digital 1TB drive that's only a couple of years old at this point. The one that locked up was about 8 years old.

So, take heart when your HD crashes - and yes eventually it will - and get yourself a SSHD to replace it. You'll be glad you did. Say goodbye to 7,200 RPM spinning platters - they're SO 20th Century...

You Pissants.

 

[VTA]

Solid State is awesome with normal tasks, starting up, finding files and such, but get 3D and video editing involved you're still looking at long render times and progress bars.

 

[Doomsday]

Solid State is awesome with normal tasks, starting up, finding files and such, but get 3D and video editing involved you're still looking at long render times and progress bars.

Yes processor limitations come into play for rendering.

I have Blender and it loads really fast now, but I seriously doubt the SSHD speeds up rendering significantly.

 

[VTA]

Yes processor limitations come into play for rendering.

I have Blender and it loads really fast now, but I seriously doubt the SSHD speeds up rendering significantly.

True and video card.
Blender is awesome, though despite being free, I've never gotten heavily involved in it.

 

[Doomsday]

Blender is awesome, though despite being free, I've never gotten heavily involved in it.

It is slow though.

 

[VTA]

It is slow though.

At what? The learning curve is huge, which is why I dropped it. Lightwave and Cinema are ridiculously expensive, but you can get to the point easy enough with them.

 

[Doomsday]

At what? The learning curve is huge, which is why I dropped it. Lightwave and Cinema are ridiculously expensive, but you can get to the point easy enough with them.

Just really really slow at rendering. Plus I'm certainly not even at novice level with it. Digital audio is what I do, not animation.