Intel 320 40gb

[kalston]

Hi,
anyone got one of these? I haven't been able to see an actual benchmark of it, only saw benchmarks of the twice as expensive 80gb or the 160gb and above (out of my budget).

Thing is, it's big enough for me since I'm only going to install 7 64 on it (without the hibernation feature and I'll tweak it a bit to reduce its size too) + a couple of frequently used programs such as Opera/Firefox etc. Not even going to install my games on it since SSDs don't help games much and I have really fast (and big) HDDs that will do the job just fine (short-stroked and all that).

But from what I read online, the bigger the SSD, the faster the write speed. (not worried about read speed and I know boot times will be amazing with the access times)

Apparently, even the 80gb should have twice the write speed of the 40gb, and the 80's speed is already not that much compared to my HDDs. Is this only the write speed for large files (ISOs and stuff) or will it also make the write speed for small files much slower?

As I said, this drive will only be for the OS and a couple of light apps, so performance with small files is what matters. i just don't want it to freeze or be slower than my current short-stroked system HDD under regular use.
(I know that the OS and the programs will start up much faster than on any HDD, but I'm not one to be impressed just by that)

Thanks.

Edit : an example of the sites I've been looking at : http://www.nordichardware.com/news/86-storage/42709-intel-320-gets-old-ssd-controller-and-varying-performance.html

 

[Brahmzy]

Keep in mind almost all SSDs can benefit from overprovisiong, or more accurately, underprovisioning. This means leaving a portion of the SSD unpartitioned. This allows the controller more NAND to play with during it's garbage collection and wear leveling operations. The 320 supposedly has pretty robust OP built-in, but I would personally never buy an SSD that small. 60GB is as small as I have gone.
Personal preference. Do it right and get the 80GB - the performance will be better as well as capacity concerns gone.

 

[Pocatello]

I have Intel SSDs in these amounts: 40GB, 80GB, and 160GB. I love the 40GB. I use it every day. The other SSDs are in my kid's machines.

If you can get a good price on the 40GB... buy it. I would not hesitate to use another 40GB.

 

[kalston]

Problem is that the 80gb is already twice as expensive, I'm not really willing to pay that much for a simple boot drive.
Leaving some unpartitionned space, even on a 40gb drive, shouldn't be that hard for me. (I've often used symbolic links to move documents and such to other drives than the system one)