SSD vs HDD for databases I am trying to purchase a new Server to run MySQL Server on. This new server will be a slave of my main machine. However, this server will be dedicated for reporting only "Lots of reads and complex queries."

Now I am looking into investing into solid state hard drives but was wondering if it's really worth the price. The difference between an SSD and a SATA 7200 hard drive is about $1500 and the SSD has less disk space. If I do invest into SSD will the speed be noticeable?

I can purchase 4 (500GB SATA 7200) for $1500 less than purchasing 2 (500GB SSD)

Can you please help me making the decision to see if it is worth the upgrade or not?

Once more thing that I would like to mention is that I am not using query_cache so there will be lots of disk reads.

This server will have 32GB of RAM and will run Ubuntu 12.04
Yes with a lot of reads and reporting an SSD will make a huge difference. From 7200 RPM drive you could expect no more than ~100 IOPS while cheapest SSD can be as minimum 5x as fast as that. With good SSD you can get to 20000 IOPS or even more.

Also random writes in SSD are a lot faster as disk does not have to move every time.