Sorry to thread jack but a couple questions come to mind and this seems the place to put 'em! What's the verdict on buying a used SSD? If it's say a synchronous one like the Intel 520/Crucial M4? Also realistically speaking, for the simple job of hosting my steam library for fast load times, will a Sata III SSD have a remarkable performance benefit over a Sata II one? Although 200MB/s vs 500MB/s seems pretty significant on paper, do you see such benefits in the real world of game loading?
The same as an HDD. It's up to you. For me, I don't trust any used products, unless it's from a friend which I know well. As I know what he does with the hardware. SSD in games performance increase in load time varies. It can load textures faster, as it can get it from the HDD, to your RAM, which the CPU send to your GPU memory, for it to do stuff. So if the game uses dynamic texture loading, this will boost a bit gaming performance, if it pre-loads everything, than load times will be a bit quicker, and game performance the same. But, if the textures are small, or compressed, then the difference won't be noticeable. What maters the most is max speed of small files. Sequential speeds are meaningless, unless you work with exceptional large files, like you are doing video editing. So SATA-3 wont' be beneficial. HOWEVER, many SATA-3 SSD are newer, so they use faster memory or better controllers or/and better algorithms, so small file speed are faster. You need to check reviews and compare yourself.
Nope afraid I didn't. I installed windows first. Got the mobo drivers all installed went back to the bios and told the sata controller to go to AHCI. Gets as far as the little lights on the loading windows animation and dies. It's a bit late at night now but I'll try that link tomorrow after work.
So you installed windows with the sata controller set to IDE, then went and changed it AHCI afterwards = same problem. You need to set it to AHCI in the bios before you install anything is what GoodBytes was trying to say- check out that link & it should fix it for you.
You did exactly what I was saying. You should not do that. Anyway, set it to IDE, apply the fix on the Microsoft support website that I linked to you, then go to your BIOS and set it to AHCI mode, and let Windows boot.
I did it. It worked. HOLYFRACKINGBALLS it took another two seconds off my boot time..... Rule 1: Never disagree with GoodBytes Rule 2: See rule one... haha Next nooby question, where do I look to disable defrag and hibernation? I can find windows defrag as in, the program but no button to say "never ever happen" although I did set its scheduled time to defrag to "never" I've been into my power settings and told the computer never to hibernate no matter how long i leave it but is there a proper way to shut if off?
Glad it could worked Its ok to disagree with me. [quote[Next nooby question, where do I look to disable defrag and hibernation?[/quote] Windows 7 will not defrag your SSD, unless you force it to do it (so leaving the scheduled is fine). In Windows 8, no mater what you do, on an SSD, it will execute TRIM. That is why in Windows 8, the disk degra tool has been renamed to "Optimize Drives" To disable hibernation: 1- Open the command prompt as true administrator 2- type: powercfg -h off, and hit Enter. 3- once it's done executing the command, restart your computer. To enable it back later on, simply repeat the process, and put "on", instead of "off".
Alright I did that, I didnt get any sort of confirmation of the command it just started a new line, a quick google shows that seems to be all it does? Thanks for all your help. Now I have a fast computer yay
I'm not sure if it's done automatically, but make sure to delete the hidden system file called hiberfil.sys in the root of C:. That will free up as much disk space as you have RAM, which is the whole point of disabling hibernate.
