Shopping for a SSD. Knew that was coming huh?

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Shegokigo

Shegokigo

Problem is, I know NOTHING about them. How to set them up, how to get them started, how to set up my hard drives for maximum performance (The SSD I buy, the current Raptor Drive I have and my regular 7200rpm drive) or even what to look for in buying a SSD.

All I currently know is that I can spend between $70-$100 on a SSD on Newegg.

Advice my tech sages?
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

The SandForce debacle may be over, but I still wouldn't trust an OCZ drive. That's just me. I went with an Intel 510.

This guide will get your drive installed and your users directories moved off the C: drive onto a HDD.

This guide will get your SSD optimized for proper use. SSDs need different settings from Windows default.
 
Jay

Jay

Under $100 on an SSD? did the prices go down?

Just checked. Nope. I'd assume you're looking for a 40 Gig HD for your OS and perhaps only one game?
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

They had a firmware problem that sometimes caused the data to be unreadable on the drives. Actually, all the Sandforce 2xxx-series people had that problem. OCZ just got hit the most with it. Recent firmware may have fixed this. You should still back up your data anyway (regardless who makes your drive).

Best all-around SSD drives currently being produced (in my humble opinion) are from the Samsung 830 series. They have a long projected lifespan, plenty of throughput (in the 256GB and 512GB sizes) and significantly fewer reliability issues than current Sandforce drives.

If you want the specifics, I'll be happy to educate, but if you just want to know the whodunit at the end, go Samsung 830 and don't look back.

--Patrick
 
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PatrThom

PatrThom

Yeah, I know they're pricey compared to some of the other ones. In fact, the Sandforce drives consistently come out faster in most tests*. I wish I had a better solution, but I don't. SSDs are still too expensive/unreliable to use as a main drive and mechanical HDDs are artificially expensive right now due to flooding. There really doesn't seem to be anything out there that is both a) under $100 and b) bigger than 64GB. Your best bet would be to buy a pair of smaller, slower drives and RAID0 them together to increase the speed and size, but you probably wouldn't save that much money over just buying one the next size up.

--Patrick
*Sandforce gets its speed by compressing/decompressing data. This works great for everything except video/audio/textures and other pre-compressed files (which unfortunately comprise a large percentage of most game files).
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Games don't really get all that much of an advantage running off an SSD. WoW is more dependent on network latency than access speed off the local drive. I have Windows and non-game apps on the SSD. Games go on the HDD with the user folders.
 
Shegokigo

Shegokigo

"Not all that much of an advantage" is enough for me to buy PC parts DA, you should know that by now ;) Also there's a link up the thread a bit that actually DOES prove that it gives quite a boost to certain types of games.
 
Just Me

Just Me

Nice to learn something new every day as I'm not tech savvy at all and my first thought was SSD = Super Stardestroyer...
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Been doing some checking since last night. Looks like the current market prices (decent) for SSDs look like you can pretty much approximate the price of a drive by taking (drive capacity in GB)/64 * $100. I don't know if there will be enough pressure to reduce those prices until after prices of mechanical drives fall.

The SSD market is continuing to evolve*, prices will probably come down again when the industry moves to 3-bits-per-cell chips (thus increasing capacity per chip).

--Patrick
*LSI bought Sandforce, OCZ bought Indilinx, JMicron continues to seriously lag behind the other two, and Marvell stays right in the middle in just about every test. SSDs are such a moving target right now.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
I have an OCZ agility 3 (60gig) that I got for like 120$ and it has been treating me well, with one significant problem. If it has the OS installed on it it will need to have a firmware update otherwise the computer will not properly awake from sleep mode. And, funny enough, you can't update the firmware on the drive if it has the OS installed on it.

The wakeup problem isn't really that bad though. Basically it sticks when trying to wake up from hibernate. Then you power off the computer and power it back on. It POSTs then goes to a login screen which starts your computer from where it was when you put it to sleep. It's very strange.

Also, if you can afford it I would suggest using a 120 gig hard drive, not 60. The 60 gig hard drive barely fits the OS and one game. Leaves maybe 5-10 gigs. Putting more on there causes serious performance problems. With a 120 gig hard drive you have much more room for games.
 
gargoyle_eva

gargoyle_eva

So thats why it acts funky when I leave it on overnight? Meh, I'll just turn off hibernate. I'm running a 60gb agility too. I have win 7 , my music collection, and all the usual running junk (firefox, 7-zip, drivers for all my extra crap, pdf reader etc etc) and am sitting just under 28gb. If my music grows too much I will just slap it onto another drive. I dont really see why you would shove games on a boot drive, especially one this small.
Added at: 08:14
So thats why it acts funky when I leave it on overnight? Meh, I'll just turn off hibernate. I'm running a 60gb agility too. I have win 7 , my music collection, and all the usual running junk (firefox, 7-zip, drivers for all my extra crap, pdf reader etc etc) and am sitting just under 28gb. If my music grows too much I will just slap it onto another drive. I dont really see why you would shove games on a boot drive, especially one this small.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Read that link in my first post in this thread. Hibernate is one of the first things you should turn off when running an SSD. Indexing and virtual memory are right up there as well.
 
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