2009: The Last "Year of the Grind"

[Jason Dunn]

<p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1238103306.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0; float: left;" /></p><p>I don't know about where your computer is positioned, but one of mine (my media editing workstation) is on a shelf slightly above and about 18 inches in front of my head. So when the hard drives start grinding away, they're easy to hear. Windows Vista's indexing is great from a user perspective, but it does have to scan content on a regular basis so grind, grind, grind is what I hear. Also, working with photos and videos creates quite a bit of heavy hard drive usage. I usually have music playing, but music is less satisfying when there's a constant grinding going on in the background. But there's hope...</p><p>I have yet to purchase a solid state drive (SSD) but watching prices fall, and capacity/performance increase, I can comfortably say that 2009 will be the last year I'll be using hard drives as the primary drive in my two main daily-use computers - and I'm eargerly looking forward to the sound of silence that change will entail. The primary hard drives in my two main computers are 150 GB 10,000 RPM Western Digital RaptorX drives, so that's the performance and size benchmark that SSD drives have to beat. I keep my music collection, videos, and other big files on my Windows Home Server, so the only thing I need on my primary drive are my documents, pictures, and applications.</p><p>Looking at the SSD drives out there today, some have hit that mark, and the rest are moving toward it quite rapidly. I'm hoping that by the end of this year, I'll see high-performance 256 GB SSD drives for around the $250 USD mark. 128 GB SSD drives would be a little too tight on space (I'm outgrowing my 150 GB drives) so 256 GB would give me room to grow, and as long as the performance was quick, I don't think I'd miss my Raptor drives. I long for the sweet sound of silence...</p>

[gdoerr56]

I actually have most of my user account folders mapped to my WHS so, other than applications, temporary files and the odd Quicken and Outlook file, my drive is empty.

I could easily get away with a 64GB SSD as long as it was fast enough. My concern, especially with video editing, would be wearing out large portions of the flash although I'm not sure that remains a legit concern these days.

The other benefit is that all of my computers in the house, under my account, have the same Documents, Favorites and other things I expect.

It's very easy to set up. Just right-click your current 'My Documents" folder, select 'Properties' and select the tab labeled 'Location'. You can put a UNC path here and Windows will even give you an option to move your current files to the new location. It works very well.

The secret sauce here, if you use a laptop, is then to use off-line files to make the server based content you available when you're not connected. Works like a champ (on Vista and Win7 anyway).

[Jason Dunn]

I actually have most of my user account folders mapped to my WHS so, other than applications, temporary files and the odd Quicken and Outlook file, my drive is empty.

I pondered going that route, and it's great that it works for you, but myself I'd be too nervous editing photos and/or video files and having a bit get lost here or there and losing my photo/video/etc. I trust local storage far more than network storage from a live-file-editing perspective. Maybe I'm just paranoid. :D

I use Windows Live Sync to keep my folders in sync across my PCs and it has the side benefit of giving me 4+ way data redundancy.