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New Drives Advice?

UncleMeat

UncleMeat

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 8, 2012
Messages
100
Hi, i'm looking to buy a 120Gb SSD (for os boot) and a 1Tb HDD (for storage).

My system includes:

Asus Maximus IV Gene
i7 3770k
16Gb Corsair Vengeance
_______________________


The SSD Affair

I was reading good things about the Crucial M500 / M550 SSD's, but when i rang the tech guys at scan uk, a chap there informed me that the Samsung 840 evo would be a better choice performance wise Something about turbo boost, doubling the speeds. Said he has one in his system at home :rolleyes: ...yeh i know. He also mentioned that as samsung have there own "in house" controller, that they manufacture, they are in some way better. is this true? So in the case of Mex v Marvel ..please rise ....and tell me your opinions?

The Storage Deal

I'm not really clear on which Storage HDD to go for, but i do know reliability / failure rate would be an important part of the decision. I'm not putting it in a server farm or anything drastic, but would very much appreciate any help / advice on making a good choice here.
 
Samsung 840 EVO is faster then either yes, though the 550 is no slouch it loses some and wins some compared to the 500. Samsung 840 ~ same average speed, 840 EVO faster, 840 Pro faster yet. None of these are by any means slow though. The 840 EVO and pro tend to keep their speed for longer apparently which is good.

Put it this way unless you get a bad drive, have it filled right up (leave ~18gb unused or more) benchmark the crap out of it, any SSD generally will last 5+ years no problems at all.
 
Is the "RAPID Mode" on the 840 EVO something that can be left on always? ...will it wear the drive out faster? or am i barking up the wrong tree?
 
http://techreport.com/review/25282/a-closer-look-at-rapid-dram-caching-on-the-samsung-840-evo-ssd

basically it uses system RAM as a cache for faster access for certain things, in many cases a magnitude faster, in other cases little to slightly slower due to needing to cache it to the system DRAM. I would read up on it, point is, the 840 EVO is already a very fast drive to begin with, if the way you intend to use it matters and can use the extra speed in certain cases the RAPID sounds like it can help, most cases, well not so much. DRAM by far is the fastest, PCI-E based SSD and the new M2 types are
slower (but still insane speed that most wont notice anyways)

Up to you, I would leave it as default not with RAPID enabled and write cache turned off, they can help performance for sure, but of course higher chance of data corruption which is bad (I have cache turned on and many loss of power no issues Sata or my SSD :p)
 
dragonstongue said:
Up to you, I would leave it as default not with RAPID enabled and write cache turned off, they can help performance for sure, but of course higher chance of data corruption which is bad (I have cache turned on and many loss of power no issues Sata or my SSD :p)
Click to expand...

Sounds like i should stick with the Crucial M500 / M550, as buying a drive for a feature that i can't use reliably seems a bit off. I guess i'm still going to be impressed, as it will be my first SSD :)

Could u perhaps recommend any reliable 1Tb storage drives?

Cheers D.T.
 
WD Blue 1tb I have an EALX that I use for back up works awesome, has within 1-5mb/s performance of my caviar black that are partitioned for speed, the EZEX model is even faster
 
its not that the feature can not be used reliably, it is based on the tech being used. DRAM does not store a charge, so unless the info is flushed to permanent storage, then it is more or less lost, and if it was "critical" information, then it can lead to corruption, same with write cache. It shouldn`t happen, but it can that's all. Either way, when they are a good 4x or better speed, I don't think that small bump is worth the chance of something bad happening at least in my books though they apparently do have a specific algorithm to prevent this, they are also not enterprise redundancy type either
 
Buying a 128GB SSD nowadays is a mistake, they cost more per GB than 256GB ones, are too small as soon as you start installing stuff like games (huge nowadays), and are slower.

Micron has flash factories (with Intel) so that argument isn't that great, but really both brands deliver great SSDs and have done so from their first respective model.

1TB hard drive is also very small and not cost effective.
 
Aesma said:
Buying a 128GB SSD nowadays is a mistake, they cost more per GB than 256GB ones, are too small as soon as you start installing stuff like games (huge nowadays), and are slower.

Micron has flash factories (with Intel) so that argument isn't that great, but really both brands deliver great SSDs and have done so from their first respective model.

1TB hard drive is also very small and not cost effective.
Click to expand...

How is a 1TB drive not cost effective?
 
A 2TB is 1,5 times the price or less. A 3TB drive is twice the price.
 
I agree that a 120GB SSD is a waste. Definitely go at least 240GB. WD Greens are never an option - they are junk. Go for the Crucial M550 SSD and a Hitachi HDD. If you do go WD, get a line better than the Green.
 
I have a 60gb drive and I have plenty of room on it with some arranging, a 128gb is minimum and most tend to have very close to the level of performance the 250s do. So I wouldn't say a "waste" I would say per gb the 240/250s are a better bet, but when coin is tight, 120/128 will do in a pinch AND leave enough room for a full OS install with room for 2-3 games on average while maintaining enough space for the SSD to take care of itself over time.
 
dragonstongue said:
I have a 60gb drive and I have plenty of room on it with some arranging, a 128gb is minimum and most tend to have very close to the level of performance the 250s do. So I wouldn't say a "waste" I would say per gb the 240/250s are a better bet, but when coin is tight, 120/128 will do in a pinch AND leave enough room for a full OS install with room for 2-3 games on average while maintaining enough space for the SSD to take care of itself over time.
Click to expand...

Maybe 120GB would be okay for non-gamers, but if he games, he's going to find it a pain and want to upgrade too soon to make it worth it.

Unless he's using this as a stepping stone to SATA Express / PCI-E SSDs. I still have my 120GB (and I dual-boot Win7 + Linux on the one SSD.. ugh!) because I'm not willing to buy another SATA SSD and would prefer not to have the relative power inefficiency of 4 SF2281 + a RAID controller for the Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe... Come on, SF3700...
 
I thought Western Digi's were still pretty good? Only drive iv'e had fail on me was a Seagate :(
Could look into a 240Gb M550 as far as the SSD goes
 
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Im in this same boat. I have a 240GB Corsair GT thats busting at the seams with games like BF4, Titanfall, Bioshock. I have a 1TB WD Black thats long in the tooth that was just RMA'd but it still feels painfully slow in my old Z77 rig. Im on a 87 so I may give it one more go but the overall system slowdown of having a spinning drive mounted sucked.

Thoughts? The 840 EVO seems like a good buy... but Im wondinering how long 500gb will even last with todays games...
 
if you install many games then by all means 500 or even 1tb will be used up, 250gb drive makes sense for the main OS drive, 1TB + for extra of course is good.

I use a 60gb SSD as main and it has 2 games on it, some stuff shifted to my 640GB and all stuff I rarely use and backups go to my 1tb Caviar blue. I only ever use WD for my drives, been many years and a good 20 drives at minimum hundreds counting friends build and I think all told only 3 of these drives died before 2 years time, many of them are 5+ years in use.

Really just depends on how you use it. I don't feel any real slowdowns even when I first installed on my 60gb ssd till now, still feels zippy, I did partition and shortstroke the mechanical so its as fast as I can make it and that helped quite a bit. To each their own, if you feel like shelling out the big $ for SSD they do have multi TB now :p

M500/550 Sammy 840/EVO/PRO no matters they are all very fast, I have heard though the Crucial drives tend to lose their speed faster over prolonged used then the Sammy 840 series, still many magnitudes faster then any mechanical out there though.

Single 120 good for OS and a couple games, 240/250 OS plus probably a good 10 games, so of course extra $ gains extra space and I fully here you, had I the $ when I got mine I would have went with a 120GB +, just saying, it still works, hell even the offload of OS to an SSD makes it worth it, even if there is no games on it, but for $/performance yes a 240/250 makes more direct sense, if you catch the sales I have seen a Sammy 840 PRO 500gb go for under $200 shipped :)
 
dragonstongue said:
I have seen a Sammy 840 PRO 500gb go for under $200 shipped :)
Click to expand...
Oops, i have again made the fatal mistake of not pointing out that i am actually in the UK, sorry for that. Still food for thought indeed, and many thanks for it too :)
 
I thought Western Digi's were still pretty good? Only drive iv'e had fail on me was a Seagate
Click to expand...

Statistically speaking your experience is meaningless. I mean unless you have thousands of drives you can't statistically say much about the reliability of millions of drives. Even the 200 drives that I have in which I send back 10 to 20 each year is pretty meaningless as far as saying that 1 manufacturer is better than a second.

Now this should be more meaningful:
http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/
 
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UncleMeat said:
:confused:

Also well im here, whats the difference (besides the size ofc) between 2.5" & 3.5" HDD's?
is there any benefits choosing one over the other in a desktop case?
Click to expand...

Usually lower power and noise from 2.5" drives, at the expense of smaller available capacities. Generally only the silentpc crowd goes for 2.5" drives in cases large enough to mount 3.5" drives, but there's good options for quiet 3.5" drives as well.
 
fantabulous said:
Usually lower power and noise from 2.5" drives, at the expense of smaller available capacities. Generally only the silentpc crowd goes for 2.5" drives in cases large enough to mount 3.5" drives, but there's good options for quiet 3.5" drives as well.
Click to expand...
Nicely explained, cheers ;)
 
You said you were UK was just pointing out that newegg is there now as well, so many of what we reference for product choices will be available there now as well :)

2.5 to 3.5, no not really, its the media/design inside that matters, I know they generally use 3.5 for regular HDD for capacity reasons and more then likely easier to design the run of the mill parts needed as it does give more room then a smaller case would, however, they are at that point now and I know Seagate and WD have started doing smaller size casing for HDD at much higher capacities. The drive affects power and noise, not the size of casing, a faster spinning drive will make more noise and use more power(and generally also produce that much more heat) just as an example WD Velociraptor is a 2.5 inch drive and I bet cookies that it will make more noise and use more power/produce more heat then most 3.5 HDD any day, though a smaller thinner casing should mean its "more sturdy" so I can see where you are coming from on this side. The physical media/design matters much more then the actual casing. Also throwing SSD into that equation, size does not always mean high capacity, as they have thumb drive size units offering TB of storage space and gb of speed, design dictates much more then physical size sometimes will.
 
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Nice to know that newegg is here in the UK. I've always used Scan as they have great customer support & are usually pretty reasonable.

Also see what your saying about size / design ;)
 
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