Ok guys, the other day I said I wouldn’t buy an SSD until 1Gb = £1, but these new Sandforce controllers are getting closer to that ideal. However there are several questions I’d like to know the answers to before I jump in. I’ve know a bit about SSDs but I still can’t get my head around these. 1. I know I can clone my Windows 7 installation – but what happen’s about the rest of the data on that disk – am I going to be left with two copies of Windows? One on the old HDD and one on the SSD? 2. Also, how does the cloning software know where all my windows install files are, and separate them from all the other stuff? (I’d only be buying a smaller sized SSD) 3. Is there any way I can have a few of my Steam games on the SSD (the ones I play the most) and the rest on the normal HD? 4. Essentially, is it going to be less fiddling about to reinstall Windows? – that would be a bit of a mission, since I have so many steam games downloaded, and I’d have to back up all my stuff etc, but might be easier. 5. Finally, the age old classic….. If you had around £100 to spend…. What would you buy? I’d rather get more capacity than a faster speed, since even the slower SSDs seem to be massively faster than a normal HDD.
Hi Parge, I will hit at a couple of these. 1 &2. When you clone your HDD, you will clone everything - windows install, programs, data. You can't really just grab the Windows installation unless you had put that in it's own partition to start with. I think that a new SSD is the perfect time for a fresh OS install. The other option is to pull all of your music, steam, etc off the drive and into a backup before cloning. You should be able to get things to a size that is ok. Clone the drive over to the SSD, clear the old HDD then bring the data files back. 3. yes. Search for 'mklink' and steam. There is also a one pager on this in PC Format this month. 4. As mentioned, it is a great time to clean house. A fresh windows install on an SSD is awesome. 5. There was a very recent thread here on 64GB SSDs that should help.
On OS X you have a Data Migration tool that transfers the user data specifically to a clean OS install. If you can do similar on Windows, I would totally do that. Would be the best time ever to do a clean install. Then make a clone of it onto an HDD
Hi mate! Thanks for all that! Despite all this talk of cloning etc etc, I'm going to have to go for a fresh install. To save me having to d.l millions of GB of Steam data, I'll move it over to a spare HD, and then copy it back into the folder, I have plenty of space on other HDs so hopefully this won't be too much of an issue. Music, etc is already stored on another HD, so its just the steam files I'll have to copy over. That thread on SSDs was very useful indeed, so thanks for that. I think I'm going to go for a either a 64GB C300 or a 60Gb Corsair Sandforce drive - they seem to be the most popular choices atm.
Oooh... this is tempting me now..... TRIM support... 200Mb Read/160Mb write. For the money.... (I know its not as fast as the sandforce drivers) What do we think?
I'm not touching Kingston drives even with a 10-feet pole. They seem to have a habit of switching the insides of the drives even within same series and not bothering to change the name, making it next to impossible to know what controller/nand your ssd will have. And all this under the guise of making consumer's life easier. Also, their support on certain drives have been less than stellar.
Whilst the theoretical specs are good, as far as i'm aware then, irl, the performance is very hit & miss... Well, it's kind of a Gen1 SSD with updated firmware so, whilst it apparently doesn't stutter, the specs have had to be lowered & still has significant transfer peaks & troughs. Having said that, it is, i suppose, ish value the money if you're prepared to live with the limitations, but if you're prepared to up your total spend by another ~£50 then 2x 60GB SF drives in R0 will give vastly better performance. As to the brand for a SF based SSD, i've obviously mentioned in the past that OCZ had an exclusivity agreement with SF for the final version of the better performing f/w - at least originally meaning that Corsair, etc are using a beta version... (there's been no info released as to how/if this has been resolved between OCZ & SF which then impacts on the other manufacturers) Otherwise, a check yesterday for another thread suggested that the OCZ version was slightly cheaper - the prices seeming to change almost every day though...
£109.97 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductId=37163 Planning on going raid when they hit maybe £100 but the one I have already is awesome and it hits the advertised speed, but I don't think you should go for the 64GB C300 as you will need Sata III and the Kingston may look good but its better to go one 64GB now and then later on another 64GB SSD and get double the speeds by doing that.
or 96GB for £140 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/96GB...ead-235MB-s-Write-170MB-s-64MB-Cache-17K-IOPS If I had the money (will do next month) then I'd get a couple of these - one for Steam and one for music.
If you've got around 100 quid to spend, and judging by your specs you have a ton of storage capacity regardless, why would you go for anything but the fastest? What do you need more than 60GB for? Will it not just purely be for the OS and Apps? Except Steam I guess... I'd install that to one of those HDDs. After the insane amount of glowing reviews and such I think you'd be mad not to just go for a 60GB OCZ or Corsair SSD based on the SF1200 controller. Ordered mine yesterday, can't wait to see how it goes down!
Yeah, you nailed it, its because of Steam! The Corsair one at £110 is looking like the one to get atm. I don’t have that many apps. How big is a typical Windows 7 installation?
He he ... just to be argumentative, I actually think the SSDNow's are quite good (I use two in RAID, bought a few months back). They have been changing the controllers around, but the SNVP325-S2 (with the Toshiba controller) stock onwards are not bad. There's such a shift from mechanical HDD's to any decent SSD. Much of that has to do with simple access times and responsiveness, so using a slightly slower drive (relative to other SSDs) isn't such a big deal. This is particularly true if it is sitting behind a SATA 3G pipe. I think that the major downside of SSDs is that they are too small - sure you can just put your OS on there, but even better is your top few games and apps as well. Pros and cons either way really, but the SSDNow V+'s are not a bad choice if you're on a budget and still want a good SSD kick. Just need to find a much better price/GB than the SF and Marvell drives to make it a decent purchase.
Either i was being blind or that must have changed since yesterday... So it's now about £5 cheaper than the V2 rather than the other way around. That's obviously the original Vertex not the Vertex 2... ...not the same spec/controller/etc... Well, ~50GB if you're sensible & under-partition any of the ~60GB SSDs to help maintain speeds, etc...
Hi guys, found the OCZ Vertex 2E Sandforce drive for £125 -f you use the code SSDTEN at checkout - you get £10 off. Good deal!
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/60GB...orce-SSD-MLC-Flash-Read-285MB-s-Write-275MB-s Is cheaper and you don't need to use a silly voucher.
Can I have opinions on this? Sounds like a bargain, but the seller has 0 feedback (I'd be covered by buyer protection on paypal anyway) 160GB Intel SSD (Gen2) Its either that or a 60GB Corsair Force drive.
You pay your money and take you chance I guess. Last week I bought the 128GB Crucial SSD, and it's awesome.
Zero seller feedback = nononononononono Get a 60GB SandForce (Vertex 2 would be my preference) and be done with it. If you have more to spend get the C300 128GB - it's very good too, and unlike the SandForce drives, won't vary its speed depending on the compression of the data it's writing/reading. Almost all SSDs on the market now ship with TRIM support. Some perform it better than others. The C300's latest firmware is excellent. And don't RAID SSDs! All you get is big boosts to sequential speeds with almost zero appreciable difference to real world performance, and you lose TRIM!
