New to SSD

Y

YamahaAlex37

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 23, 2005
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YamahaAlex37 said:
Can I just plug it into SATA and do a fresh install of Windows 7 64bit, or are there special BIOS settings, or other things that need to be done?
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Reviews indicate that setting your SATA controller to AHCI mode offers a slight performance improvement. Other than that you shouldn't have to do anything in the BIOS. There are a number of tweaks you can do within Windows, but I don't think any of them are really necessary.

Personally, I don't run Windows off my SSDs. All it really does is decrease boot times and add a ton of unnecessary writes to the drive. Seems like a waste of expensive SSD space to me, my desktop is on all day and the important parts of the OS sit in RAM once it boots. I just use SSD's for applications.
 
So basically I can just treat it like my regular sata hdd?

Interesting about not putting the os on there, that would certaintly leave alot more room for aps.

i read something about garbage dumping.. and how fast to sdd degrade?
 
Most modern drives support TRIM, which helps to limit the degradation. As far as not putting the OS on the SSD, that's a novel approach I haven't seen before. I don't know whether the OS really loads all the stuff it needs into memory on boot or not, but since the OS is the lynchpin to the whole deal, I'd personally want it to be on the fastest possible drive and the concern with write-based lifetime has pretty much been shown to have been overblown.

Win 7 is SSD aware, and will automatically set itself up for use on the SSD, so you don't really need to do anything special. Look into symbolic links, though, as they can be used to move unneeded programs off the SSD to a storage drive while still leaving them accessible. Search for Link Shell Extension here and you'll find some informative threads.

All that being said, I'm not sure a 64GB drive is really big enough to be effective - once you put Win 7 on there really isn't a whole lot of space for apps or games (depending on your usage, of course).
 
Forceman said:
As far as not putting the OS on the SSD, that's a novel approach I haven't seen before. I don't know whether the OS really loads all the stuff it needs into memory on boot or not, but since the OS is the lynchpin to the whole deal, I'd personally want it to be on the fastest possible drive and the concern with write-based lifetime has pretty much been shown to have been overblown.
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I've tried both configurations, the only improvements you get by putting the OS on the SSD are faster boot/shutdown times and (in theory) faster launch times for applications bundled with Windows. We're talking about things like calculator here, you aren't going to see a difference. Superfetch on Vista/7 preloads frequently used applications into RAM anyway. Navigating through explorer windows is just as snappy on either type of drive.

My concern with the OS writes isn't so much about drive longevity (supposedly you could write 10's of GB per day and still go for 15+ years with a 64GB drive), that's why I said most of the tweaks I've heard about are unnecessary. I'm more concerned about performance. Windows is always doing little reads and writes to the system drive, and even the newer non-Intel SSD's with decent controllers seem to struggle a bit with lots of random IO.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Windows is always doing little reads and writes to the system drive, and even the newer non-Intel SSD's with decent controllers seem to struggle a bit with lots of random IO.
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If by newer non-Intel SSDs you mean Sandforce or Marvell/Crucial, then that is incorrect. Even the somewhat older Indilinx SSDs are excellent at small file random I/O.

I think Forceman is right that putting the OS on the SSD is the mainstream approach, and it is probably a good idea for most users.
 
john4200 said:
If by newer non-Intel SSDs you mean Sandforce or Marvell/Crucial, then that is incorrect. Even the somewhat older Indilinx SSDs are excellent at small file random I/O.
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All I know is that we tested a few configurations at work and we found that putting the OS on a separate drive and using SSD's solely for the applications and associated data we were working with gave us the best performance. Putting everything on the SSDs (RAID 0 of 4 128GB drives) was slightly slower. They were 128 GB OCZ Vertex's, I believe those have the Indilinx controllers.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
All I know is that we tested a few configurations at work and we found that putting the OS on a separate drive and using SSD's solely for the applications and associated data we were working with gave us the best performance. Putting everything on the SSDs (RAID 0 of 4 128GB drives) was slightly slower. They were 128 GB OCZ Vertex's, I believe those have the Indilinx controllers.
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Now you are introducing new variables -- RAID. Without knowing the details, I cannot tell why you had worse performance. You did not even specify what you put the OS onto, if not an SSD.

But I guarantee you that the performance of modern SSDs for small file random I/O will CRUSH that of HDDs. It can be on the order of 100 times faster for certain benchmarks. Installing the OS on a modern SSD will not give worse performance than on an HDD, and for most usage patterns the SSD will be significantly faster.

I should add one caveat. Some of the smallest SSDs, like the 40 GB Intel, have lower sequential write speeds than HDDs. If you are doing a lot of sequential writes, than an HDD would be faster than the smallest SSDs. But for 120GB and higher SSDs, this is not an issue, since the sequential writes will be 100 MB/s or greater.
 
So would you recommend the 64gb onyx OCZ if $100 is my budget? And basically I just need to switch to ACHI mode and treat it just like a regular HDD? Anything special I need to do if I'm going to have a hdd for all my files?
 
Personally, I avoid OCZ products, due to their poor customer support for RMAs. Is $100 really your limit? My first choice for an SSD is an 80GB Intel X25-M, but that is $199. My second choice would be a G.Skill Phoenix Pro (Sandforce based) which are $155 for 60 GB, or $130 for 40 GB. My third choice would be an Intel X25-V 40GB, which is about $100.
 
No! you don't treat it like a regular HDD.

- disable defrag on the ssd drive
- use AHCI mode in the bios
- disable super fetch in windows
- try not to use the drive outside of the OS requirements (don't download movies to the ssd)

OCZ tech support and RMA is great. They have tons of people on the ocz support forums, and it's way better then putting in a help ticket.

I would not buy a intel x25 as it is pretty much 1.5 generations old now. Any sandforce drive would be a solid choice, and the c300 is another decent choice if you plan on only using 1 drive in windows 7.
 
Personally, I don't think I would go for a $100 SSD at this time. The trade-off between the performance and the limited space just doesn't seem to break the right way a that price point. You can get a blazingly fast (for mechanical drives) 7200 RPM drive with 10 times the storage for that same $100 and still have "acceptable" performance (depending on your definition of acceptable). Bear in mind that the smaller SSDs are sometimes quite a bit slower than the higher capacity ones because of the increased parallelism of the high capacity drives.

That being said, depending on your use you might be a special case - I can see going to an SSD like that if you are a heavy Photoshop user or something, where the increased speed makes a big difference, but for general purpose users I don't see it being worthwhile right now.
 
af22 said:
No! you don't treat it like a regular HDD.

- disable defrag on the ssd drive
- use AHCI mode in the bios
- disable super fetch in windows
- try not to use the drive outside of the OS requirements (don't download movies to the ssd)

OCZ tech support and RMA is great. They have tons of people on the ocz support forums, and it's way better then putting in a help ticket.

I would not buy a intel x25 as it is pretty much 1.5 generations old now. Any sandforce drive would be a solid choice, and the c300 is another decent choice if you plan on only using 1 drive in windows 7.
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Win 7 automatically disables defrag and superfetch on SSDs. Just install it and use it like normal. Although AHCI is always a good idea.
 
Which of these would be the best?

(i have a $20 TG gift card)
Corsair CSSD-R60GB2-BRKT R60 Reactor Solid State Drive - 60GB:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5214113&CatId=5300
Kingston SSDNow SNV425-S2/64GB V Series Drive - 64GB
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5746844&CatId=5300
Corsair CSSD-F40GB2 F40 Force Series Solid State Drive - 40GB
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6574974&CatId=5300
OCZ OCZSSD2-2VTX40G Vertex 2 Solid State Drive - 40GB
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6574776&CatId=5300

I'm leaning toward the vertex 2 because I read this: "As far as I know, the Vertex uses the Indilinx controller. That controller is the only one (Other than Intel
) that can maintain its performance as you use it over time. It supports the Trim command within Windows 7."
 
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The Vertex 2 is Sandforce, not Indilinx. No comment on the others, you need to list the make/model, not just provide a link.
 
john4200 said:
The Vertex 2 is Sandforce, not Indilinx. No comment on the others, you need to list the make/model, not just provide a link.
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Maybe he meant Vertex I?

So there are certain drives that don't degrade compared to others?
 
The SSDs that support TRIM will maintain their speed better than ones that do not, if you use them with Windows 7 or some other OS or tool that supports TRIM.

In the price range you are looking at, I'd go with a G.Skil Phoenix Pro 40GB or the Intel X25-V 40GB. The Corsair F40 Force 40GB is also a decent choice.
 
john4200 said:
In the price range you are looking at, I'd go with a G.Skil Phoenix Pro 40GB or the Intel X25-V 40GB. The Corsair F40 Force 40GB is also a decent choice.
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According to these benchmarks the Vertex II kills the intel?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/152?vs=148

I also read on a newegg review of the vertex II from someone who had both it was faster than his intel.

Tigerdirect doesn't have the G.Skill but if its similar to the Falcon II the Vertex II beats it according to that anandtech bench.
 
I put a 60GB OCZ Agility 2 on my wifes computer. Windows 7 64bit Ultimate + World of Warcraft (16GB) + Windows Virtual XP Mode (which is a complete installation of Windows XP Professional, with all Windows updates) + Office 2007 + all the /Program Files/ and I think there is still 12GB of free space on the drive.

60GB is fine. Payed $140 at Microcenter (in store).

I think, and I may be wrong, but the BIOS must be set to AHCI in order for TRIM to work. Either way you should set any modern drive to AHCI as it offers some new abilities over standard IDE mode. **EDIT, I think IDE may work actually ** But thats it really, you dont have to do anything else when using a TRIM supported drive with Windows 7/Vista.
 
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No, the G.Skill Phoenix Pro is not similar to the Falcon. With SSDs, you need to pay very close attention to complete model names, since the manufacturers change controllers but sometimes only make slight changes in model names. And the controller type is what matters. The G.Skill Phoenix Pro uses the Sandforce controller. So does the Corsair Force, and the OCZ Vertex 2.

The benchmark you cited is somewhat misleading. In real life usage, the Intel and the Sandforce drives are much closer in performance than the benchmark suggests. Many of the benchmarks just write and read zeros, and the Sandforce drives excel at doing zeros, since they use compression. If your data is compressible, then the Sandforce will outperform the Intel. But if your data is hard to compress, I think you will be unable to tell the difference between the Intel and the Sandforce in regular usage.
 
Thanks westrock and john.

I think I am sold on the OCZ 60gb, since I have the $20 gift card to tigerdirect. Good to know you put so much on your agility John, and the vertex II should be the same or faster i believe, so I think I will be happy.
 
YamahaAlex37 said:
So would you recommend the 64gb onyx OCZ if $100 is my budget? And basically I just need to switch to ACHI mode and treat it just like a regular HDD? Anything special I need to do if I'm going to have a hdd for all my files?
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Avoid OCZ or Corsair like plague, only go w/ intel

do a search in this forum under Corsair and OCZ. Corsair drive disappear at BIOS level, they have a massive recall on it. OCZ well, if you don't have any heart issue, do a search on "OCZ problem"
 
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Happy Hopping said:
Avoid OCZ or Corsair like plague, only go w/ intel

do a search in this forum under Corsair and OCZ. Corsair drive disappear at BIOS level, they have a massive recall on it. OCZ well, if you don't have any heart issue, do a search on "OCZ problem"
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Only corsair had serious firmware issues.

I have 2 OCZ drives which suffered the FW 1.5 data bomb problem. It only is a problem if did not update to the 1.6 firmware, and if you "overly benchmark" your drives. If you had wrote down your drive's identity number, you can reflash the firmware and fix it without problems. this problem does not effect any of the new sandforce drives.

intel drive are hard to recommend today since they are very close to the end of the current cycle. all intel ssd products on the market are 1 generation behind the current competition, but yet still selling at the same prices.

sand force is the best choice at the moment.
 
af22 said:
intel drive are hard to recommend today since they are very close to the end of the current cycle. all intel ssd products on the market are 1 generation behind the current competition, but yet still selling at the same prices.

sand force is the best choice at the moment.
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The Intel SSDs are as fast or faster than the Sandforce for random and sequential reads, which are the most common I/Os for most everyday usage.

Also, the Intel SSDs are much more likely to be trouble-free than OCZ Sandforce SSDs. I just checked the 1- or 2-egg reviews on newegg.com, and they are only about 3% of all reviews for Intel. For OCZ Vertex 2 and Agility 2, more than 15% of all newegg reviews are 1- or 2-egg.

The Intel SSDs are still the best choice if you value reliability and a hassle-free experience. If you are willing to sacrifice reliability and possibly have a lot of trouble, in order to get a little better write performance, then Sandforce drives might be the way to go.
 
Happy Hopping said:
Avoid OCZ or Corsair like plague, only go w/ intel

do a search in this forum under Corsair and OCZ. Corsair drive disappear at BIOS level, they have a massive recall on it. OCZ well, if you don't have any heart issue, do a search on "OCZ problem"
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I found nothing searching this...

So the issues are resolved with new sandforce?

Also, tigerdirect now does have the Intel X25-V 40GB for the same price as the Vertex II, but it says right in the specs: Write Speed: up to 35 MB/sec / Read Speed: up to 170 MB/sec compared to the Vertex 2: Write Speed: up to 270 MB/sec / Read Speed: up to 280 MB/sec. That seems huge! All the forums I'm reading are also indicating the Vertex II is much faster

So long as the issues have been resolved with sandforce I will get that.
 
sandforce has never had any problems.

it's the safest buy at the moment.
 
Sandforce SSDs have more problems than Intel SSDs. Just look through the newegg reviews. The percentage of below-average reviews for Sandforce SSDs is significantly higher than for Intel SSDs.
 
Thanks af22,

just want to throw this out there before I buy the sandforce, I found this at another site for $15 less and it has 20 more gb, and all the reviews seem great on newegg:

Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB

is it going to be about the same or slower than the Vertex II?

*edit - i am interested in these benchmarks: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-7-ssd-trim,2705-18.html, where the gaming throughput of the C300 seems to be much higher than the Vertex 2. The only disadvantage the Corsair C300 seems to have is much slower write speeds, correct? How big of a difference in real world performance does that make?
 
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The key spec you're looking for in a SSD is a random read/write speeds. Write speeds really doesn't matter that much during day to day usage unless you do a ton of multi-TB transfers everyday.
 
So for less money and 20 more GB the crucial 64 should be the winner over vertex 2 and corsair f40?
 
Sorry to pipe in here, but I'm also in the market for an SSD. I was wondering what is the most capable SSD I can handle with my mobo (Asus P5K-E)? I'm not too sure, I've heard that newer SSD's are coming out from Intel later this year but I highly doubt I'd be able to handle that.
 
WOW, I was planning to game with this, but then I read that I can't choose which specific games from steam to put on it, its either install all of steam or not, and i just checked my steam folder, 71gb... this may throw off my entire reason to get a ssd :(

would i have any performance increase with the os on the ssd and steam on a 7200rpm? i don't really care if my computer turns on in a few less seconds, its on most the time anyways.
 
YamahaAlex37 said:
would i have any performance increase with the os on the ssd and steam on a 7200rpm?s.
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Yes. That's been the stock recommendation for SSDs for the past year or two: SSD for the OS and a fast hard drive for the actual data/games.
 
but all the user reviews i;ve been reading say to get more than 30gb, and i've read stuff like put the OS, adobe suite, and most played games on the SSD. are you sure if I my game is on a seperate drive it will still load faster etc? if this is the case then i am just giong to look at 30gb ssd
 
YamahaAlex37 said:
but all the user reviews i;ve been reading say to get more than 30gb, and i've read stuff like put the OS, adobe suite, and most played games on the SSD. are you sure if I my game is on a seperate drive it will still load faster etc? if this is the case then i am just giong to look at 30gb ssd
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I do recommend getting a SSD larger than 30GB. 40GB minimum. Yes it will still load faster.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Personally, I don't run Windows off my SSDs. All it really does is decrease boot times and add a ton of unnecessary writes to the drive. Seems like a waste of expensive SSD space to me, my desktop is on all day and the important parts of the OS sit in RAM once it boots. I just use SSD's for applications.
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where on earth did you get that?

my whole big push is for users to buy 32GB drives and then change default directories in registry to D: (a 1TB drive or whatever). The performance boost is excellent: an OS is very very rarely going to give the drive a big sequential read, so that's exactly where you'd want an SSD to be!
 
MrWizard6600 said:
where on earth did you get that?

my whole big push is for users to buy 32GB drives and then change default directories in registry to D: (a 1TB drive or whatever). The performance boost is excellent: an OS is very very rarely going to give the drive a big sequential read, so that's exactly where you'd want an SSD to be!
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Nice, I think I'm in for one. Is there a tutorial for this?
 
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