Alright I have a Dell M1530. Is this upgrade worth it? Id put the OS and necessary program installations on the new 64GB SSD and keep the sata drive as general file storage and game installation. Current Drive Specs: New Main Drive Specs: The upgrade would be $220US including shipping.
I'd go for it. The setup you described is exactly what I have, except my boot drive is still a lowly SATA Although BiT's review of that 1Tb monster gave some sporadic and confusing insights into how good SSD performance is. Good theoretical performance but weird fluxtuations in some scenarios. I don't fully understand it. If it's as fast as they're supposed to be however, it'll make bootups really fast. Just keep it nice and empty - although thinking about it, performance shouldn't drop off as an SSD drive gets full the way it does with mechanical drives, should it? And I'm guessing if you put all of the paging file on it, your computer will perform better at times when it's having to use that, meaning less severe crashes and slowdown (I think)
The performance irregularities of most MLC-based SSDs, including that one, are explained in the Anandtech review of the Intel X-25M, starting at this page and continuing through the next four. - Diosjenin -
The last place I would use a SSD would be as my boot drive for all the reasons Diosjenin has pointed out. Intel's SLC drives appear to be getting on top of the random write issue. You may find this interesting. However you will pay for one of these beasties. Good luck convincing the wife.
In all media commentaries on SSD drives, I've never heard the repeat writes before failure limit mentioned. I'd have expected that to be more of a point of concern.
This is the same as the setup I'm currently running. Whatever happens, you'll want to tweak the SSD. http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=1896294&postcount=4 TBH, I went this way to stop drive oscillation noise. I've been running the SSD as a primary drive since September 2008 with Vista x64. It's been fine, but don't expect a massive performance increase. My only question is that (iir) the Dell M1530 is a laptop. How do you intend to run two drives in it?
I saw a report out of CES that OCZ will be expanding its SSD lineup in 2009 with a focus on multi-level cell flash. and that these MLC-based drives are developed in-house using a new storage controller from Korean firm Indilinx. Orignal report here I might have been wrong about using SSDs as a boot drive given Silver51's experience. I don't believe it is a concern. The SSD controller is designed to minimise the number of writes and will detect when the failure limit is being approached. From memory the predicted lifetime of a SSD is in the order of 10 years depending on usage.
Mmm... if your budget is more in the $500 range, by all means you could try going for an Intel X-25M or another SSD based on SLC that doesn't have the random-write issues. If I were you, I would save the money and just get one Velociraptor while you wait for things with MLC to be sorted out (or take a look at this and maybe hold out a few months to see what the performance and pricing actually end up being there). A lot of the problems that Anandtech experienced can be avoided if you are very, very careful about how you set up the drive, where you store your programs, etc. It's probably better to install your browser and IM programs to a different drive (which may defeat the purpose for you), and the OS install issues can be avoided by installing the OS on a different formatted drive and then cloning the drive. And of course what it doesn't say is that even the lower-end MLC drives make excellent dedicated game install drives - it only 'writes' when you install or save a game, and it's just read the rest of the time. It just depends on what you're using it for and how much time and effort you want to put into tweaking it and making it work for you. - Diosjenin -
