Solid State Drives

Discussion in 'Computer Building and Components' started by Dihm, Jun 4, 2012.

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  1. Dihm

    Dihm Speaker of the Word Staff Member Gothi SC Thane

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    So there's been a lot of talk about SSDs in the various threads, figured we'd collect thoughts and suggestions in to one.

    The consensus I've heard is that "omfg get one now".

    I've been thinking of picking one up for a while now, and I just saw this deal on Dealzon, from Newegg, for a Plextor M3 128 GB SSD, only $99 after mail in rebate. There's also a 256GB for $199. So that's $0.78/GB.

    There's also an OCZ Agility 3 120gb drive for $89.99 after rebate.

    Recommended by Trevnor: OCZ Vertex 3

    Info Sites:
    Tomshardware Best SSDs for the Money (May Update)
    Johnny Lucky Solid State Drive Database
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2012
    Dihm, Jun 4, 2012
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  2. Trevnor

    Trevnor Tokin' Canadian Staff Member Jarl SC Huscarl

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    Um, Dihm, I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be a 256 GB for 199 :D

    Also, the SSD that I ordered is supposedly one of the top line ones. It's called the Vertex 3 and it retails for 109.99 before rebate on a 120 GB one.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 4, 2012
    Trevnor, Jun 4, 2012
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  3. Dihm

    Dihm Speaker of the Word Staff Member Gothi SC Thane

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    Last edited: Jun 4, 2012
    Dihm, Jun 4, 2012
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  4. Tuonela

    Tuonela Well Liked Berserker

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    So just quick question on implementation. For better gaming performance, would it be better to use the SSD for the OS drive or the drive you install games on? Obviously on my set up I have them on separate partitions (but with a 120gig drive I can't fit both easily on one).
     
    Tuonela, Jun 4, 2012
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  5. Dihm

    Dihm Speaker of the Word Staff Member Gothi SC Thane

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    My understanding is that you want to put the OS, and any program you utilize frequently on it. So, both?
     
    Dihm, Jun 4, 2012
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  6. Taake

    Taake New Guy Thrall

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    Anything with a 5 year warranty is good as it will allow you to get free replacements or upgrades over the course of the warranty.

    For SSD, I'd recommend enough space on it to support the OS and future patches as well as enough room for any software you run frequently and would make use of fast read/write times. Remember that as SSD becomes more common prices go down as storage amounts go up so be mindful about how big a drive you're buying right now. Try to plan for not wanting to upgrade it for a minimum of 1-2 years.
     
    Taake, Jun 4, 2012
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  7. Trevnor

    Trevnor Tokin' Canadian Staff Member Jarl SC Huscarl

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    Yeah, I'm going to have the OS, MWO, and a few other games that I play a lot. Music and vids on the 1 TB normal drive.
     
    Trevnor, Jun 4, 2012
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  8. Tuonela

    Tuonela Well Liked Berserker

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    yea, just have to figure out how to easily replicate my C: partition to an SSD, haven't actually done that before to not sure what the pitfalls are. Currently have 2 partitions, C: and D: but they're actually the same HD.
     
    Tuonela, Jun 4, 2012
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  9. Taake

    Taake New Guy Thrall

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    Depends on how you plan to backup. If you try to make a system backup then you'll have issues as the system backup will have files that state the size of the hard drive when the image was made. Because of this, if your partition is larger than the size of the SSD you are trying to restore to it will fail. You can try to shrink the size of the partition so that it's smaller than the size of the SSD but I found that it's damn near impossible to shrink a partition/HDD beyond ~45% of the size.
     
    Taake, Jun 4, 2012
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  10. Trevnor

    Trevnor Tokin' Canadian Staff Member Jarl SC Huscarl

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    Yeah, I was wondering about the backup. I was going to just make a system image on a partition of the 1TB I'm going to have, and hope that would work, but from what you are writing, it might not.... :sad:
     
    Trevnor, Jun 4, 2012
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  11. Taake

    Taake New Guy Thrall

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    You can try and see what happens. I just know that when you create the backup it has settings that make note of how large the drive is when the backup occurs. You can restore to larger drives, not smaller. Not exactly sure how that will affect partition backups. Not sure if it takes into consideration the size of the drive or the partition.
     
    Taake, Jun 4, 2012
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  12. Trevnor

    Trevnor Tokin' Canadian Staff Member Jarl SC Huscarl

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    Hrm.... I'll give it a shot, but I might just end up setting a restore point for the time being, and then getting an external hard drive just for full system backups...
     
    Trevnor, Jun 4, 2012
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  13. Dihm

    Dihm Speaker of the Word Staff Member Gothi SC Thane

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    It seems like the Vertex 3 is better with compressible data, worse with incompressible. Better at low i/o counts ( or whatever that is). Much more power draw, much higher for random i/o writes, or something. Ugh.

    I'm not looking forward to reinstalling everything, again, either :sad:
     
    Dihm, Jun 5, 2012
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  14. MostlyHarmless

    MostlyHarmless Master of Recruits Staff Member Jarl SC Huscarl

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    All this talk of re installs has me a bit worried. I was set to buy one today but then the newegg ssd video recommended not ghosting the os from another hard drive on to it. What do you all recommend I've got 2 500gb wd caviar black's in raid 0 with a fresh windows 7 install (my friend installed it before I picked it up last week from him so I don't have an end user copy to re install on it) Should I spend $100 on the ssd and gamble on being able to ghost it over or save the $100 ssd + $140 or what ever windows is now?
     
    MostlyHarmless, Jun 5, 2012
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  15. Solis Obscuri

    Solis Obscuri Well Liked Hirdman

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    Wow, can't say no to that with a 5-year warantee and excellent reviews. Trigger... pulled.
     
    Solis Obscuri, Jun 5, 2012
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  16. Jotnara

    Jotnara New Guy Thrall

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    I would not recommend ghosting. I tried it with my Kingston SSD... failed spectacularly.
     
    Jotnara, Jun 5, 2012
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  17. Conlaoch

    Conlaoch New Guy Thrall

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    There are actually also a host of Win7 boot sector issues to take into account with the ghosting as well. so even if the image moves over properly, it might not boot without some diskpart work. (This came up at work when we had every image for a particular computer model mysteriously go bad. Once I figured it out, it would have been easy to fix, but the images were so out of date anyway that we just rebuilt them)
     
    Conlaoch, Jun 6, 2012
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  18. Dihm

    Dihm Speaker of the Word Staff Member Gothi SC Thane

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    Well I pulled the trigger, will be slapping that Plextor in this weekend.
     
    Dihm, Jun 6, 2012
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  19. Damien

    Damien New Guy Thrall

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    For everyone else that needs one: Kingston HyperX 3K. 240 GB for $199 after $30 rebate. Editor’s Choice Award – StorageReview.com

    My home page is Spoofee.
     
    Damien, Jun 6, 2012
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  20. Dihm

    Dihm Speaker of the Word Staff Member Gothi SC Thane

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    Just came in today, trying to decide if I want to put it in tomorrow and risk missing our Shadowrun game. :lol:
     
    Dihm, Jun 9, 2012
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