This is an old link but here are some updated ideas:
If you are considering an SSD, a recent improvement in SSDs is in the Intel 520 series.
The problem with SSDs is that writing to the NAND memory in SSDs wears them out
over time. Another company invented a hard drive controller called SandForce.
It spreads the writes all over the hard drive like holographic memory in the
human brain. That evens the memory wear over time.
Intel gave in and licensed that technology. Intel also created additional
memory that can only be accessed by the SSD. When a memory
location wears out, it assigns that memory location to a new location in
that fresh unused memory.
Intel is confident enough to offer a 5 year warranty on this hard drive.
A 120 gigabyte drive is $200. (I don't work for Intel nor am I associated
in any to that company except a customer.)
Other companies' SSDs have the Sandforce controller, but not the warranty
that I am aware of.
I use my SSD by loading only my applications to it, not my Operating System.
I really don't care how fast my computer boots up. I want my trading
platforms to run fast. That would be Interactive Brokers TWS for 1 application.
I can tell that TWS runs faster, although the real bottleneck is my Interent
access speed.
Also, a securtiy consideration:
Password crackers run at 300 billion password crack attempts a second
on an SSD drive. But if your OS is on slow spinning hard drive, that's like
an eternity to a password cracker and it makes it hard to get that much
time to crack a password. Slow is more secure in this case.
Any other SSD insights specifically for running trading applications on an SSD
are appreciated.
coldrunner