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Looking to upgrade the HD in my Acer Revo to a SSD.
Should I be expecting a noticeable performance increase in windows and xbmc?
What drives would people recommend?
At some point in the future I will probably upgrade my Revo so to the extend it could be future proof would be great.
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What about displaying of thumbnails, loading library etc?
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Yes, there will be a noticeable difference in Windows performance. Most things will just happen with minimal delay. In XBMC the performance won't be as noticeable. In my case, my libraries load faster on an initial startup. After images are cached and put into RAM, it's no different than an HDD, really. The lack of HDD access noise is nice too.
I'm using a Samsung 830 128gb SSD and have zero complaints. It also comes with decent pack-in software utilities.
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+1. Anyone who still just spouts "it only makes booting faster" is regurgitating something they read years ago and has never used a SSD.
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@bluray: I'd sign that. My OpenElec Box as well as my PCs and laptops run on SSDs. But not because of the "huge" performance gain of any OS (using Windows 7 as well as (X)Ubuntu and OE), but more because of the smaller energy footprint, the quick bootup and the silence when running. Another point (for laptops only, of course) is the "no-moving-parts" thing. You can throw them around without having to worry about the insides. But hands down, if your HTPC is running and the libraries are loaded and cached - no big thing at all.
@thomasjay: if you don't have that much local files on the HTPC I would go with a size around 30-64GB and buy a solid one. Crucial M4s run very nice, Samsung 830 64GB is a beast, too. OCZ I'd only go for a Vertex3, Vertex2 had too much failures in my history and OCZ still has some issues with the brand new Vertex4. Or think about an Intel 330 Series. That ones are pretty solid.
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Intel, Crucial or Samsung seem to be all well recommended.
I hear differing views with respect to reliability on most of the other brands - usually quite a bit cheaper too.
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Using a Mushkin Chronos myself, 60GB for the XBMC box. Fast read/write speeds and picked it up for €40.
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Installing an SSD drive in my HTPC (Mac Mini) was the best choice ever. I am using Transparency! skin and it is now very zappy and fanart and posters pull up without any noticeable delay. No comparison to before. I forgot the brand of the SSD, but it wasn't anything particularly expensive / fancy.
I also just went ahead and installed a PCI-E SSD in my storage server. Also very fast, just much slower boot time than before as the PCI-E needs to initialize upon boot-up, which takes a bit.
Server: Asus Sabertooth Z77 | Intel Core i5 3.4 GHz | 16 GB DDR3 | 128 GB SSD, 82 TB (9 x 6 TB, 7 x 4 TB)
HTPC 1: Raspberry Pi 2 | HTPC 2: Raspberry Pi 2 | HTPC 3: Raspberry Pi