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About to buy

T

Trigun1127

Junior Member
Hey guys im about to buy laptop with the Intel 520 180 Gb. I just had a couple of questions. 1. Do you lose space like a HDD when initially getting one? Meaning, when buying a 320 gig hardrive you will receive it with 287 gigs due to formatting etc.. Does this apply with SSDs? 2. Ive heard multiple times that more you fill your SSD the slower it will get slower.With intel does the firmware and software provided keep it in good condition so that its not losing performance and remains stable? 3. Is a 180 gig ssd sufficient to keep games ... OS .. movies / tv shows etc.. on? I will be having a secondary 750 gig 7,200 hdd, so i will keep all excess on the HDD. I just want to make sure the 180 Gig will be good enough. I guess i could always go with the 256 crucial M4? 4. Do most "gaming laptops" use a 3gbps sata cable or 6gbps sata cable? Im wanting to get the most read/write i can.
 
1. Hard drive and SSD manufacturers report their products in Gigabytes (1,000,000,000 bytes) whereas in Windows the GB actually stands for Gibibyte (1,073,741,824 bytes). That is why a 128GB SSD actually shows up as a 119GB one.

2. The fuller the SSD is, the less space there is for the controller to perform garbage collection. It can have an impact on performance but it's not as big problem as it used to be. The bigger problem is Windows as it can go nuts if there isn't enough space left (there are caches etc.). I would try to have at least 5GB of free space.

3. Depends. OS, a couple of games and a few movies - sure - but dozens of games and another dozen TV shows is a no-go. Movies and TV shows won't really benefit from an SSD so you can keep them in the HD, though.

4. It doesn't matter what is the SATA spec of the cable, they are all essentially the same. A SATA 6Gb/s cable isn't any faster than a SATA 3Gb/s.
 
3. If you're planning on a gaming laptop which usually means it's the larger 17" lappys. Then they usually come with 2 SATA ports, meaning it has room for 2 drives. At least the 3 that I have encountered do. My current 2009 HP Core 2 18" and 2 2011 17" Sandy Bridge i3 and i5 from Dell and Gateway. You can use the SSD for your OS/current games and the HDD for media/p0rn.

4. Chances are very good that if you're buying a 2012 model laptop that it will be SATA 6gbps.
 
Arent read/write speeds on a ssd effected by the sata cable? 3vs6 gbps?


I see so there isnt any reason to keep any media on my primary drive.

Also i wanted to know a internal secondary HDD isnt anything like an external HDD right? I just wanted to know if i would be getting the same speeds I would be if it was my primary hard drive.
 
Internal 2nd-ary HDD will run at full speed. Don't bang your head about this too much. True gaming laptops tend to be cream of the crop, loaded, and overpriced. As long as you are spending good money on a 2012 gaming Ivy Bridge 17"+ laptop then you are nearly guaranteed 2 SATA 6 ports, eSATA, USB 3... the whole works.
 
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