I live in Thailand and the other day I wandered through the local tech mall and one of the larger DIY shops had some SSDs listed on their signboard:
And the bug bit.
Im aware of the
left-brain arguments to wait until the larger/cheaper Intel (G3?) drives are released this fall so an 80GB drive would sell for the current 40GB drive price, etc. This is my
right-brain were dealing with.
My mature Win7 C: partition (data is on another partition) is currently 37GB. If I delete old System Restore points, it drops to 29GB. Explorer shows a 4.5GB hibernation file and a 1GB page file. So, my partition size could drop to around 24GB. (My idea of a computer game is Solitaire. I use mainly word processing, e-mail and Photoshop.)
Questions:
(1) Is it current wisdom to turn off System Restore for SSDs?
(2)
Is the Intel drive actually a 48GB drive with 8GB set aside for maintenance or is the raw size actually 40GB from which un-formatted space must be subtracted to get usable size? If the latter, what is a practical amount of usable, formatted space to expect?
I found that answer here on anandtech.com:
[imglink]http://www.wpcoe.com/images/intel_x25v.gif[/imglink]
(2a) Would the Intel be big enough for my C: partition? I know Zap recommended a 50+GB drive in post #45 above, but if I turn off hibernation and System Restore and have a <30GB partition, would the Intel 40GB be enough?.
(3) I understand that the Kingston drives raw size is 64GB, meaning usable size would be smaller. Is the OCZ drive actually a 64GB drive with 4GB already partitioned off?
(4) Isnt the SNV125 a first generation Kingston drive, whereas the SNV425 is the newest generation, e.g. with Trim? Im puzzled why the 425 would be cheaper.
(5) For consumer (i.e. non-enterprise, non-power user) systems, many reviews say the Intel drives are the way to go. However, the Kingston drives seem to do fairly well, when not persistently pushed to their limits. Should I be swayed toward either the Kingston or Intel drives for any particular reason (other than size)?
If the Intel is not big enough, or is only borderline big enough, then the Kingston definitely gets my money.
However, if the Intel *is* big enough, then what I want to know is the Intel significantly better overall feature/performance-wise than the Kingston? If feature/performance-wise they were on a par, then the larger Kingston would be my choice, given the small difference in price.
(Cutting-edge technology takes a while to reach Thailand, and ordering from places like amazon.com, New Egg, frys, etc, while theoretically possible, isnt practical: e.g. if Thai Customs intercepts the shipment they can extort a handling fee in addition to duties. Thats if you can even get an overseas retailer to ship to Thailand. Warranties are problematic, as well.)