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Bill  All-Star Member  5334 Posts 6/00 |  Posted - Nov 26 2010 : 8:30PMI recently bought a relatively high end PC. Pretty much the only thing that I didn't get was an SSD. Now, I'm starting to question whether I should have or not. Does anyone here have experience with SSD's? Are they a worthwhile upgrade? I'm currently thinking about the 128GB Crucial RealSSD C300 because they are the only SSD that utilizes SATA III (and they seem to be well liked by the reviewers at Tom's Hardware). I'd really prefer to get the 256GB version. But they're just too expensive. I figure that, by the time that I actually need the 256, the prices will have come down enough that the upgrade will cost less than the current price difference between the 128 & 256 models. Also, for me, going with an SSD wouldn't be wasting a hard drive bay. The case that I got has 6 hard drive bays. So, the SSD would just be filling an empty bay. Edited by - Bill on Nov 26 2010 [Link] |
| Harri Patel Senior Member #SDNY he's all yours. -- Michael Steele 5110 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Nov 26 2010 : 9:22PM [Link] |
| Drew Black broken crankshaft 8031 Posts 9/99 | Posted - Nov 27 2010 : 10:32AM Manufacturers over provision NAND flash chips in these drives to help with wear leveling. In a consumer grade SSD there may be an extra 10% of Flash in the drive that's not available to the system. A 128GB drive may actually have 144GB worth of NAND flash chips in it. The nature of Flash chips require an erase cycle on a block/sector before writing to them. This erase takes time. There are a limited number of erase cycles before a sector starts dropping bits of data. In order to improve performance the processor in the SSD will keep a pool of blank blocks available and makes sure that it evenly distributes writes throughout all available sectors in the memory array. It does this in the background transparently to the system. This is why it's important to keep a good junk of the drive available or unused. I know far too much about SSDs. I was part of a team that was working on designing early ones back in the mid 90s. If you have specific questions feel free to shoot me an email. [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Nov 27 2010 : 5:00PM I think that I'll put one on my Christmas "wish list" and hope that a few people decide to chip in and get me one. If not, I'll probably get one after Christmas. [Link] |
| skronker Notable Legendary Icon Scopophiliac 9780 Posts 9/02 | Posted - Nov 27 2010 : 10:39PM [Link] |
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| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 3:10PM If you do get an SSD, I would recommend the latest Vertex 2 models. Their specs on reads and writes are considerably faster than the Crucial SSD and they're less expensive at Newegg right now. I just installed a 90GB model as my System Drive. After installing Windows 7 64-bit, Microsoft Office 2007, and some miscellaneous programs -- but virtually none of my data -- I still have 40GB left over. Before switching your operating system to the SSD, add it as an extra drive, format it temporarily, and download the latest firmware onto it. Then de-format it and install Windows. (Windows apparently likes to install on an unformatted SSD.) In order to cut down on SSD wear, I configured 512KB of my 8GB of RAM as a RAM-Disk and moved all my browser temp files to that. A company called DataRAM offers free software for configuing a RAM Disk of 4GB or less. To further cut down on wear, I moved my paging file from my System Drive to a regular 1TB HD, which has two partitions -- the first partition (12GB -- overkill) for the paging file and the second partition for my data. I also configured all my browsers to download into a folder on my regular HD rather than the Windows download folder on my SSD System Drive. For redundant backup, I have a second 1TB internal HD and a 1TB external HD. (I lost data once and I ain't losing data again, short of a fire or an earthquate that destroys all my stuff). [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 3:17PM My previous system drive was a 10,000-RPM Western Digital Velaciraptor -- which was pretty fast. On Windows Vista, it scored a 5.7. It also scored a 5.7 on Windows 7, whereas my Vertex 2 SSD scored a 7.7. [Link] |
| Harri Patel Senior Member #SDNY he's all yours. -- Michael Steele 5110 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 7:59PM [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 8:34PM [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 8:46PM [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 11:20PM [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 12:18AM Go with the Crucial and let us know how you like it. [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 12:25AM My primary point was to recommend that you update the firmware on the SSD before you install the OS onto it. Regarding my other observation, I tried to do a clean install on a formatted SSD (which I had just updated the firmware on) and it wouldn't take. Things went smoothly when I de-formatted it and then let the OS installation process re-format it. [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 12:28AM [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 12:38AM [Link] |
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| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 4:57PM For Internet Explorer: --In Internet Explorer, pull down the Tools menu and click "Internet Options". --In the subheading heading "Browsing history", click "Settings" --In the heading "Temporary Internet Files" click "Move Folder". --Set the file location on the new hard drive (or RAM-drive) to be used for the cache, and then click "OK". --Confirm the operation by clicking "Yes". Finally, click "OK" to close the window. For Opera: --Make sure that you are not running Opera. --Using Windows Explorer, find the "operaprefs" file located at C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera\operaprefs. --Double click the file "operaprefs" to open the Notepad. Copy and save the entire contents of the Notepad in case there's a screw up and you need to restore the original settings. --Under the heading in the Notebook entitled "[User Prefs]", add the following new line: Directory4= followed the path to the new hard drive (or RAM-drive) to be to be used for the cache. If you are using a "Z-Drive" for instance, the line becomes Directory4=Z:\. --From the File Menu, click "Save" to save the changes to the Notebook. You can now close it. For Firefox: --In Firefox, type the command about:config in the address box and press the "Enter" key. --Click the right mouse button in the list of options and choose the New, String. --In the "Name" option, enter browser.cache.disk.parent_directory. Click "OK". --Now enter the path to new location for the browser cache -- for example, Z:\. --Finally, click "OK". Restart Firefox to apply the change. ------------------------------ I hope this is helpful info. Use with appropriate caution. [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 7:38PM [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 7:44PM [Link] |
| JohnW Senior Member 1351 Posts 6/08 | Posted - Nov 30 2010 : 8:46PM Edited by - JohnW on 11/30/2010 8:47:51 PM [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Dec 1 2010 : 12:56PM [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Dec 1 2010 : 8:18PM [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Dec 29 2010 : 9:46PM [Link] |
| Harri Patel Senior Member #SDNY he's all yours. -- Michael Steele 5110 Posts 3/03 | Posted - Jan 4 2011 : 9:17PM [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - Jan 4 2011 : 11:31PM There is piece of SSD benchmark software called AS SSD. I little while ago, I was going to run it against my SSD and the old drive that it replaced for a comparison. I canceled the series of tests using my old hard drive when it said that one of the tests was going to take over 30 minutes to run. When the same test ran using the SSD, it took about 30 seconds to complete. I'll rerun the test using the old hard drive later and post the results of both runs. The overall score for my SSD was 593 (which only makes sense to someone else who has run AS SSD). Using the same comparison that Bob used earlier, using the Windows 7 scoring, the old hard drive scored a 5.1 and the SSD is scoring a 7.7, which brings the overall score of my machine up to a 7.7. Edited by - Bill on 1/4/2011 11:34:31 PM [Link] |
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