boxst

I have to re-install Windows as all my dodgy installing / uninstalling of various programs has made it slow.

There are a few offers around for 64gb/SSD drives for £60-£70 and just wondered if it really did speed things up?

Any experiences or better prices?

Thanks.

Steve

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Yes, does speed things up but you (obviously) lose storage space. If you use as Primary Windows then put a 1Tb for muzak etc, then sorted

I have them in my Laptops & it makes a BIG difference, especially to things like booting up/shutting down. There's one in a PC elsewhere in the office I have my eyes on for my work desktop....

jowl

It's made a MASSIVE difference my PC. It's a decent spec PC, albiet older generation quad-core CPU. Putting a 60gb SSD in for the Windows (+apps) and keeping the other HDD's for storage has made everything so much quicker and the PC a pleasure to use.

would love to put one in my Macbook now but the 250gb+ ones are still a bit above the budget I can justify.

mike1210

Put a Crucial M225 in mine, awesome! One of the best things I've purchased for my computer

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Certainly for laptops it speed things up nicely as laptop drives are pretty slow and you are restricted at what will fit inside one.

For a desktop PC, there is the option of running a pair of fast HDs in a RAID 0 array for the operating system only (use a non-raid drive or redundant array for critical data), this will give speed AND space.

I currently do the latter, but have only done so because at the time SSDs were silly money. Now my PC is getting a bit old, I'm thinking of putting two SSds in a Raid 0 Put it this way; either method is MUCH better than a single hard drive...I will never go back to a single HD for a personal PC.

mike1210

I've posted this before but still worth a look

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PiMg...eature=related

john_s

iTrader: (1)

I used a 60GB SSD for my system disk when I rebuilt my PC late last year. It made a huge difference to boot times and application load times.... it makes my (single disk) work PC feel like a dog in comparison.

warrenm2

yep - big difference

Littleted

1 thing to note m8.

Ive had SSDs and it lasted 1 year just out of warrenty, the first issues you will see is Bluescreens, of which youll spend days trying to sort and then it will point to the drive.

Also be carefull at the 64gig ones, once Win 7 is installed and you updated youll be left with approx 2x gig, if you have lots of mem, then this will come down again.

I found over time it filled up even though i was installing on d and E, so i would save at least and get 128gig

The guys are right though since ive moved back to a 1TB spinner, its a lot slower at getting to usable state once into windows,

I dont think the Boot speed is all that better ive timed it with my sons who sits at the side of me and its not massive, the massive bit is once youve loged in its very quick.

BUT WHATEVER U DO GET A GOOD MAKE not rubbish, Crucial or Kingston are pretty cool

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

I agree. This is what does puts me off SSD, space, the reliability and also the degredation in performance after so many read/write operations (bit like fragmentation I suppose, but thats easier to fix).

If I were you ted, I'd get that 1TB drive into a RAID 0, 5 or 1+0 array. Then you'd get back the performance.

Littleted

yeah i did comtemplate that, i just popped 2 x 2tb in for the crap i dload. I did do raid 1 at first for resilliance but i kept getting messages that the drive was failing,

So i trashed it and kept them as singles and its fine, One thing sprang to mind is id moved swap file to 1 drive as above i was running outa space, this may have caused irregular writes thus the error appears.

I might buy another drive just need to check ive got space

mike1210

My Crucial M225 did die on me, however it was replaced next day as it has a 5 year warranty, not sure how many have a 5 year warranty

XRS

Crucial now have a limited 3 year warranty.

Do I take it that with their data transfer utility I can make a copy of my C drive and then use the SSD in its place? I have one hard drive at the moment and it has 5 partitions, so presumably after I boot it from the SSD I can just empty the old C drive and rename it?
How are these things mounted in a tower case? My PC is pretty old - I built it 5 years ago, so is it likely to have the right bits? It's an Asus A8N- SLi.

Cheers

acstua

iTrader: (1)

the new ocz vertex 3 look damn good
about 200quid for the 120gb tho

jowl

Windows 7 has much better support for SSD's and TRIM support to help protect against degredation.

I would defo recommend a clean install though.

john_s

iTrader: (1)

Personally, I'd do a clean install of Windows rather than copying across.

If you like, yep.

Most of the SSD drives are a 2.5" drive. You will probably need a 2.5" to 3.5" carrier to mount it in a 3.5" drive bay in the tower. They probably cost about a fiver.

A quick Google suggests that you should be ok; it looks like it should have SATA ports. You might need a molex --> SATA power adaptor if you've not got a spare SATA power cable coming from the PSU.

XRS

OK, thanks for that

Ray T

Has anyone tried these hydrid h/d's looks like you get a useful faster boot with the traditional higher storage for not much more than a std h/d.