Minimum Live TV Drive?

[whurlston]

I just installed an SSD in my laptop to test but I still think they are far too expensive for pure HTPC usage.

[stustunz]

battery life any better ?
how hot do they run?

[86atc250r]

You'll probably see a small increase in battery life - don't expect miracles though, laptop drives are surprisingly efficient.

My daily use laptop is a Dell Latitude D620 - the HDD sits under your left palm. With a 5400 RPM mechanical drive the left palm rest would get uncomfortably warm after extended use. With the SSD, there is no detectable temperature difference between the left and right palm rests.

I noticed a small increase in my battery life - not enough to prompt me to try to measure the difference, although it was enough that I noticed.

SSDs are not optimal for HTPC usage - for a couple reasons

1.) we're not exceeding (or really, even approaching) the sustained read or write capabilities of a modern mechanical drive, especially the big ones. Mechanical drives keep up very well to even reading multiple video files at the same time.

2.) MLC SSD write cycles - for a HTPC we're constantly writing large amounts of data to the drive. Unlike mechanical drives that don't really wear appreciably with use, each writable block on an SSD has a limited number of times it can be written to --- in normal usage with it's wear leveling algorithm it's likely to last MUCH longer than a mechanical drive, but in a very high write application like an HTPC it may not last as long. In an application where you are going to be doing large numbers of writes and you need the pure speed of an SSD you need an SLC drive (as opposed to the consumer level MLC drives) - unfortunately, they are much more expensive & will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future.

[whurlston]

Pretty much "ditto" on what he said. The SSD is much cooler than the mechanical drive. I don't expect to see any battery life improvement though since I left the mechanical drive in the laptop as a secondary data drive.

[stustunz]

thanks will wait for price to come down
i wouldnt be putting one in htpc more thinking laptop
gets a bit warm and i hate fan noise