hard drive
Cheap Solid State Drives Are, In Fact, Cheap
As of the last year or two, SSDs stopped being expensive, enthusiast-level components. The prices fell dramatically, and new players joined the game. Companies like ADATA, Patriot, and Sillicon Power undercut the prices of all major brands like Corsair, Samsung, and Intel.
How is it possible for those budget-friendly brands to sell a $70 drive that matches the speed, IOPS, and capacity of a $150 big-brand drive?
I’ve spent money on both kinds, and it seems the answer lies in changes under the hood that the average user won’t notice.
Let’s take a look at the ADATA SX900, compared with the Patriot Blast and a cameo by the ADATA SP550.
Photo Blog – Serious Server Setup
The next many pictures will go through transferring good old BIGBLUE to a new 4U Rosewill RSV-R4000 case, and the installation of two new Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB Drives!
From start to finish:
Upgrades to BIGBLUE (server)
Sorry to anyone who’s been trying to access the server the last 24 hours, I’ve had to take it down a couple times. I’ve just installed two new 1TB hard drives (RAID 1), and split the previous 750GB RAID 1 into two separate drives, giving me a total usable capacity of… 2.5TB! Seems like lots of storage now… but in a year I am quite certain it will be almost full, yet again.
I ordered the 750GB (x2) drives last November, and in a year I managed to almost fill them.
Of course, here is a lovely photo of the server, filled to the brim with hard drives! Beautiful, and awful at the same time.
6 drives, and not enough plastic rails to slide them securely in place (the bottom drive is just sitting there upside down). I’m out of SATA ports, but there’s still connections for IDE RAID!