solid state drives

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Goranothos
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solid state drives

Post by Goranothos »

Looking for opinions on solid state drives. Are these the way go to now, rather than the old spinning platter? I'm not interested in huge storage space. I'm currently using less than half of my 250GB drive. I'm interested in speed and reliability.
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Danille
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Re: solid state drives

Post by Danille »

Just purchased my first one yesterday at a total price of $176.00. ( the price went up a bit today) Ill let you know when it arrives.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0057QETGS
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Goranothos
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Re: solid state drives

Post by Goranothos »

Let me (us) know how it performs when you get it installed. It is going in a desktop or laptop? If a desktop, does it come with an adapter so it will fit in a standard hard drive bay? Is this going to be they only drive in the computer?

I could probably get by with 120GB......barely. Would probably be better for me to purchase at least a 200GB drive.
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Danille
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Re: solid state drives

Post by Danille »

It is going in a desktop. It will be installed with an adapter for the standard sized bay and will be the 3rd storage drive on the computer, The other two drives are 500GB SATA II 6.0 at 10,000 rpm speed.
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Belthil
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Re: solid state drives

Post by Belthil »

I've been using an OCZ Vertex II SSD for a little over a year now. It's only 30GB, but all I keep on it are my system and EQ files and the rest of my stuff is installed on a second spinning platter drive.

There's definitely a nice performance boost when booting up and I noticed a significant change in how fast I zone in EQ. The only thing I would caution is that if you are still using Windows XP, there are a number of contortions you have to go through to get the drive running at optimal performance. In fact, in many ways you are better off with a standard drive if you are using xp.
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Calebe
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Re: solid state drives

Post by Calebe »

I use a Corsair 120 gig SSD drive and it made a world of difference on boot times and load times of application. I also use 2 regular hard drives to store less used programs, music, pictures etc.. The only thing on the SSD drive currently is the operating system (Windows 7 64 bit), EQ and Starcraft2. Mine is a SATA2 drive, but they have SATAA3's out now. In fact got a flier from Newegg today for:

Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F120GBGT-BK 2.5
$PROD_MANUFACTURERNAME$
Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F120GBGT-BK 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
$154.99After $30 MIR

That sale is from 10am to 12:59 PST today only (Oct 20), which is a good price if you have SATA 3 available to you. Even at SATA2 speeds I would say if you want one, get one. They are fast, and you will see the improvement immediately. There are a few things you can do to be sure it is working properly. SSD drives work best in AHCI mode and with TRIM enabled:
The TRIM command allows an operating system to inform a solid-state drive (SSD) which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally.
How to check if TRIM is active

To check if the TRIM command is active on your PC, start a Command Prompt window (type “CMD” in the Search bar from the Windows Start Menu) and enter the following command:

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

If the result is “0” then the TRIM command is enabled, and if the result is “1” then the TRIM command is disabled.

Use the following command to enable TRIM:

fsutil behavior query|set DisableDeleteNotify = 0



How to enable AHCI in Windows 7 after Instalation:

There is one way to fix this, although you need to have knowledge of registry editing. The detailed steps from Microsoft are as follows:

1.Exit all Windows-based programs.
2.Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
3.If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
4.Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesMsahci
5.In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
6.In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
7.On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.

After this you’ll have to restart your computer, go to BIOS and enable AHCI. When you log in to Windows again, you’ll notice the installation of drivers for AHCI. Another restart will be required to finish the driver installation.

These steps are provided at your own risk and not suggested unless you know and understand the risks. You will want to make sure the controller driver and MB BIOS support this option before you enable it

Hope that helps. As for size I would say a 120 gig so you can store your most used programs on it to get the best possible load times on them.

Calebe
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Goranothos
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Re: solid state drives

Post by Goranothos »

Good info, Calebe. I don't want to go the dual drive route, so if I buy an SSD, I will get one large enough to be the only drive. I'm not much on storing multigigabytes of files and pictures anyway.
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Danille
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Re: solid state drives

Post by Danille »

Thanks for the information too. this will be most helpful during the install. Any advice for the best way to move my O/S and EQ to the SSD?
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Calebe
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Re: solid state drives

Post by Calebe »

Always the best way is to just reload the OS from scratch. Odds are good your current hard drive is a lot larger then the SSD drive so it may not all fit. As for EQ it is simple. EQ does not write to the registry at all, so just copy the whole folder over, create a new short cut with admin privileges and it will work.

If you still want to clone it, a good article to read is:

http://superuser.com/questions/99211/fr ... hdd-to-ssd


What I did, when I got my SSD drive, I did a fresh install on the SSD drive, and reinstalled the apps I use, not all that was on the old drive. I now have the option to boot from the SSD drive, but if I want, I can boot to Windows 7 from the older 750 gig drive, or if I want my 640 gig drive has Windows XP still on it and I can boot from that as well. When I install new programs using the SSD drive I just made a folder on the 750 gig drive called SSD Program Files, and I point to that to keep the usage on the SSD drive down.

A good article for more optimization is at:

http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/opti ... n-guide-2/

I didn't turn off system restore on my SSD drive yet, and the speed seems to be fine. I did change the config so any temp files were moved to the D: drive and not the C: drive to keep the read/write lower. Basically temporary internet files and windows files. Not sure if the info for that is in this article. Corsair has a whole forum dedicated to SSD drives with a lto fo good information.

Calebe

Also a good thing to do if you have enough ram (I have 12 gig), I turned off the swap file. That way no temporary files are written to the SSD drive extending it's life span. SSD drives have a finite number of read/write cycles one of the current draw backs to them.
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Goranothos
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Re: solid state drives

Post by Goranothos »

Calebe wrote: SSD drives have a finite number of read/write cycles one of the current draw backs to them.
Ugh, I did not know that. Of course, the same could be said of traditional spinning platter drives, due to their mechanical nature.
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