Intel X25-V 40GB SSD

[Tomson]

I've got this drive coming in the post and it's my first ssd, so after seeing lots of post about installing toolboxes, checking trim, firmware i'm not sure exactly what to do being used to the old (just plug in) platter drives.

Everyone seems to talk about updating firmware for new drives but given this drive is like 2 weeks out and the latest (1.5) firmware on the site is dated 12/8/2009 so I guess this drive comes with the latest.

I know about turning off hibernation to save space, are there any other tips and anyone tried this drive out yet? I've not seen any reviews but would imagine it on par with the kingston 40gb ssd?

 

[ilkhan]

Install 7.
Enjoy.
You can turn off hibernation and/or page file if you want to save space (with 40GB, not a bad idea) but 7 aligns and turns off defrag automagically. The rest is just extra.

 

[Tomson]

ah thanks. I've actually read a few mixed reports about turning the page file off, a lot of people recommend just reducing it's size.

The drive is going to be just for win7 and apps, i'm not sure what apps people are installing but some people are saying there isn't enough space for apps, but surely after windows theres 20gb free. I was going to put cs4 master, office and visual studio on there, plus other little apps.

 

[Impulse]

Install 7.
Enjoy.
You can turn off hibernation and/or page file if you want to save space (with 40GB, not a bad idea) but 7 aligns and turns off defrag automagically. The rest is just extra.

Yeah, if you're doing a clean Win7 install you don't really have to tweak much unless you wanna save some space (like disabling Hibernation on a desktop, or System Restore on a laptop where you'd wanna use Hibernation, I wouldn't even bother w/the page file). Pretty sure the X25-V comes w/the latest firmware out of the box. You should have plenty of space for the apps you've mentioned, if you mess around w/your Win7 install you can get it down to about 10GB so you actually end up w/25GB+ for other stuff.

 

[Tomson]

Received.

Couldn't see any online reviews yet so just a quick overview.

The box comes with a cd, sticker and a 3.5" to converter which is handy.

It feels like a new machine after my old drive, office stuff opens instantly and i love the way once i login i can open firefox straight away, before i would log in and have to wait about 1 minute (sometimes more) for things to settle down:

old drive (200gb IDE, 7200rpm western digital, probably 5 years old):

new drive:

Happy with that. Windows 7 didn't automatically disable defrag so i did that manually.

After installing win7 there was 25gb left and after updates, office 2007, live mail, msn and few little apps.

 

[Impulse]

The defrag service remains enabled but only runs on mechanical HDD, 'course if you're using the X25-V on a laptop you might as well disable it since it's likely your only drive in the system. Newegg just lowered the price on these today by $15 (down to $115), shame that my order from ProVantage just shipped, could've saved myself another $5.

 

[Tomson]

£93 here in the uk, thats probably around 150 mickey dollars

The 43MB/s writes look so even that i'm sure it must be crippled in the firmware to keep it at that speed.

 

[Aumakua]

just keep in mind that with SSD its recommended to keep 30% of the hard drive free even with TRIM support, I am not an expert and can't tell you all the exact technical reasons, something about space to write and delete, if you fill it up too much it will really slow the drive down (plenty of posts on various sites about this).

anyway with the general rule that only 93% of the drive can be used in the first place (so a 40GB drive is really like 37GB) and then taking the 70% thing into account, you only have 26GB of usable space on a 40GB SSD. If windows 7 takes 20GB, you can install a few apps and thats it, no games, no media (which isn't a problem unless on a laptop).

 

[Impulse]

That's a bit of an exaggeration. You don't need to keep as much as 30% empty...

20% would do, some people do 15%. Intel's drives in particular already reserve 7% (not visible to the user) for cache. Windows 7 doesn't take up 20GB of space either unless you're installing every possible add-on in Ultimate or something, you can trim a Windows 7 install down to less than 10GB. He should easily have 20GB of space for apps, games, or whatever after formatting, installing Win7, and taking into account the fact that you shouldn't fill it up.

That being said, 40GB overall is still a lil' cramped (or very cramped for a desktop)... I'm gonna be using two 16GB SDHC cards on my netbook along w/the 40GB SSD. My netbook actually has two SD card slots so one is always inside and active, I've always that one for backups and whatnot (so I don't need to run out and grab an external drive to back something up on the go) and I use the other for movies, etc.

My current OS install on my netbook, w/Office 2003 installed, along w/a few other apps (iTunes, TiVo desktop, SUPER, PowerISO, Wolfram Mathematica, Visual Studio, cell phone software, etc.) is only about 18GB, and I think there's even one or two ISO files thrown in there that I neglected to delete after I installed some of that.

 

[Tomson]

Is the SSD toolbox only needed if trim isn't used so you can set scheduled cleanup times or if you want to get some drive info?

 

[C-rizzle]

£93 here in the uk, thats probably around 150 mickey dollars

The 43MB/s writes look so even that i'm sure it must be crippled in the firmware to keep it at that speed.

Its more of a hardware limitation / cripple, that firmware cripple. Though I believe Intel may have crippled the 80Gb drives some too, so they don't cannibalize the 64Gb X25-E.

The 40Gb is only operating on 5 channels. (5 channels x 8gb per chip = 40Gb) The 80Gb Intel drives have 10 channels (10 channels x 8Gb= 80Gb). So you'll notice the 80Gb drive has pretty much exactly double the write performance on the first 2 tests (on Crystal Mark).