Im now thinking of trying out one of those cool sounding SSD drives... The latest customPC mag has the 128GB SSD by Patriot for @£300 and it appears to be very fast. Incidentally I already own the CPC recommended HDD SATA2 drive, the 1TB Samsung F1, but its currently not my main Local C: OS drive, just a 2nd drive for storage. My current OS runs on a 500GB Samsung F1 SATA2 drive.Im running Vista 32bit with 4GB RAM and I want to up it to a Win7 64bit OS and 8GB of RAM. I could wipe my drives and install win7 on the 1TB HDD but im thinking if i have to re-install OS's I might as well try to do it with improvements...and coincidently theres the SSD in customPC mag making me drool for some reason!! From what ive read the jump to the SSD drives for the OS would practically halve loading times for Windows or games like farcry2, fallout3, crysis and others and that sounds like its worth it! the thing is, is it worth it? Also would it be worth considering a smaller SSD drive?, say the 64GB SSD's, (if its cheaper? and you intend to couple it with the same 1TB HD drive ? I was thinking of putting just the win7 OS on the SSD and everything else I use like games or apps on the 1TB sata2 drive and trying to literally preserve the SSD in as close a state to the original OS install as i possibly could but I guess this would waste the "speedy" nature of the drive for anything but windows tasks and would mean its even less value for money. Is this idea of keeping the OS on a separate drive worth the effort? does it avoid the problem of a sluggish PC like mine presently seems to be because ive filled it up with programs and games? or will it be just the same only slightly easier to pick out what you can safely uninstall because its all on the "other" drive? Ive read also about the problem with SSD's burning out sectors because windows uses the same areas or sectors of the SSD drive as virtual memory(?) or swap files and the need to either change the areas used manually every now and then or alternatively use a normal HDD drive such as the 1TB samsung for this task instead. Thats about all i know on SSD's and running an OS from them. Is there anything else that is perhaps really important to know before deciding to buy one? Can you run into any SSD specific problems installing and running windows from them? especially win7 64bit? would, for instance, a 2x1TB samsung F1 RAID 0 array perform just as well. or close to as well? Anyone with experience of these drives? or 'in the know' about the real leap forward they seem to represent, (if indeed you think that!) I would greatly appreciate a quick answer to my questions or perhaps a brief run down on how you have found using an SSD as your main drive, why you are glad you got one perhaps? Im probably just daydreaming but I think I could end up with a rather cool HTPC if I do upgrade to SSD's etc, dont you think this still sounds ok even though it is a bit behind the times: Silverstone LC17 HTPC case (3xsharkoon80mm fans) BeQuiet 850W PSU Q6600 Quad core CPU @3200MHz Arctic Cooling Pro 4GB RAM 1066MHz @1166MHz Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L mobo with custom VRM cooling BFG 9800GTX 512MBDDR3 Graphics card (currently non-oc,standard layout) X-Fi ultimate PCI 7.1 soundcard Vista Home 32bit OS 1xSamsung Spinpoint F1 500GB SATA2 HDD 16MBcache 1xSamsung Spinpoint F1 1TB SATA2 HDD 32MBcache Samsung 22xDVDRW SATA drive especially if i can add : Windows7 64bit OS 8GB RAM 1xPatriot 128GB SSD I like the idea of it but I wonder, am I better spending the £300 on something else? a gigabyte Nvidia GV-N275UD-896H graphics card for £180 perhaps?? A cool blue-ray drive?? haha what to buy, what to buy.....
Unfortunately I dont own any SSD (yet ) however I would think that if your planning on using yours for games, then a larger than 64gb would prolly prove to be advantauages, as you wont experience much/if any performmance increase if the game was installed onto the slower 1tb drive. You might like to take a look into these SSD's also which are quite a bargin.
for OS, SSD is definitely more responsive and worth the money. 64GB is just about enough for all applications plus GTA4. anything else than that is going to need 128GB. GTA4 has got faster loading, a lot less noticeable texture loading when driving fast. so putting games that stream stuff as you play onto SSD definitely helps.
I'm running Win7 on SSD, and its the greatest thing ever. I'm not going back from here, and even though I'm on a 32GB drive, it still fits Windows and my benches.
Interesting thread with some interesting questions from the orginal poster. I dont have any thing to add other than interesting thread link here: Clicky Cliff notes: I have just enabled AHCI mode in the bios and changed the following registry setting so windows does not show the Blue screen of death. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976#appliesto follow the instruction and then change the bios setting and it all works now my performance has gone up in atto ATTO v2.34 Read Average speed is 260MB/s Max speed is 261.629MB/s Write Average speed is 195MB/s Max speed is 195.938MB/s So just change the bios setting from IDE mode to AHCI has given me a read increase of 10MB/s and write increase of 15MB/s. The drve is now running above crucial rating of 250MB/s read and 190MB/s write I have not looked over the information given, but firmware versions play a part of your drive, the above drive is the m225 ,as do other settings which may increase the performance of your drive by as much as 10mb for that guy. I think it is worth the time digging into your questions, I am interested in your burn out the drive as windows writes the same area issue, You should tidy up your orginal post and then we all can hit your bullet point questions and create a good thread here? I am due to install Windows 7 on a SSD drive m225 127Gb crucial some time in the following days, Ill try to post back. I dont know if windows xp smoker works under vista or windows 7 but for some reason on this machine I have here it boots into windows xp in under 15 seconds and this is a slow 2ghz box. There is always things you can do. I like the idea of being aware of all interesting points related to Windows 7 Being installed on a SSD drive. how best to midel windows 7, how best to place the page file, should it be configured in a diferent way, should the drive be formated with a different sector level... All vaild questions ???
Thnx for replies all, rainbowbridge feel free to repost this subject how you want it, i cant edit etc and keep up , I dont get in here often enough. since this post I was sorely tempted by these new SSD drives!! I went to various websites looking for SSD's I felt I could afford but failed to find a cost effective solution. I think because very large and extremely fast drives like the 1TB samsung F1's (and some newer western digital drives) are getting so cheap you'd have to be mad not to utilise them. 2x1TB F1's in RAID0 are supposed to beat the old raptor 10,000rpm drives for speed and they had just 74GB and cost hundreds!! I just bought another (brand new) 1TB samsung F1 32MB cache 7200rpm SATAII drive for a mere £65 delivered from Scan!, I can remember paying more than that for an old ATA66 fujitsu HD that was TINY!! I cant remember the size of it but we had barely heard of gigabytes let alone Terra bytes back then, IT WAS SMALL! Im going to install Win7 64bit on the new 1TB and just try out. Win7 on a clean instll and new drive. I know it wont be up to the speed of the SSD's but it will cost £235 less......Thats a new graphics card, new 5.1 speakers... thats 2 hours with a 6foot blonde East European Hooker for gods sake!, you just cant justify the extra spend. I wont do RAID yet either, I want to see how fast win7 is first, then a few weeks down the line see how it goes, I'll try and give a running commentary of how it performs at a later date. would have been nice to hear from someone whos recently switcched to these newer setups and has had more time.nevermind. thanks again all <S>
wuyanxu and i have this drive: Samsung 64GB And at £86 inc VAT it's almost £5 less than what i paid for it. It's certainly the way to go, and i would even consider a second and run it in Raid. Sam
Anyone play Crysis Wars? Ive noticed on big maps like Mesa that textures load slowly, so I'l often drive into an area and a few second later everything will texture-up. Wonder if an SSD will solve this?
We've just completed a HUGE SSD labs test for the next issue of CPC, in which we test pretty much every major SSD currently on sale. I don't think I'm allowed to say who the winner was, but it was certainly a surprise!
If you want the OS on its own Drive, find the best 32Gb SSD Available, and just keep your OS On it. Then for Programs etc you could get a bigger SSD. And finally for Files, keep the 1Tb's.
thanks again guys, Thank you for that recommendation samkiller, that is a great middle road price, perfect for a quick dabble into the tech without overspending and finding it unsuitable. I wonder how this setup would perform? it certainly sounds desirable to me 64GB samsung SSD (with Win7 Ultimate 64bit OS installed) 2x1TB Samsung F1 drives in RAID 0 array (with Win7 virtual memory addressed onto it) the RAID setup would be a tough call as i have 700GB of valued files and films/music currently stored on one of the 1TB drives and setting the raid would mean reformating both drives as one. where do you store that 700GB while you do that? (thats rhetorical ) still it does look twice as cool in a modders sig to have "RAID" in there somewhere right? thnx again for SSD link, if i get one ill get that or the CPC recommended one (thanks for headsup Baz)
