SSD choice

[andrewboon]

I need a SSD that is fast and reliable. I have no idea what SSD to get because I know nothing about them, only that they're a lot faster than HDD and have no mOving parts. I just need a 60-80 GB SSD to install my OS onto and some games for faster load times. I have had my eye on this one because it seems to be very popular and has great reviews but let me know what your thoughts are and if you have any suggestions for me. Thanks for reading.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148441

 

[Kantastic]

The Intel 320 series, Crucial M4 series, and Samsung 830 series drives are among the most reliable solid state drives in the market. Granted, the Intel 320 series and the Samsung 830 series drives are both relatively new, but both Intel and Samsung have wonderful track records. I own an 80GB Intel 320 drive and a 64GB Samsung 830 drive. I haven't experienced any issues with them whatsoever. I would have preferred the Crucial M4 over my current Samsung 830, but the price was right on the Samsung when I purchased it.

 

[Coup27]

I agree with Kantastic. The drives to consider, especially if you are new to SSDs are the Intel 320, Crucial M4 or Samsung 830.

Q1) Does your motherboard have SATA 6Gbps or only 3Gbps?

Q2) What prices can you get them for in the capacity you're looking at?

 

[andrewboon]

I agree with Kantastic. The drives to consider, especially if you are new to SSDs are the Intel 320, Crucial M4 or Samsung 830.

Q1) Does your motherboard have SATA 6Gbps or only 3Gbps?

Q2) What prices can you get them for in the capacity you're looking at?

1. It has both. Two 6GBPS ports and 4 3GBPS

2. My limit is 120$ and the most I could find was 64GB

 

[Coup27]

You can get either an M4 64GB or an 830 64GB for your budget.

You can't go wrong with either to be honest. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two either. Even in benchmarks it's tight.

 

[andrewboon]

You can get either an M4 64GB or an 830 64GB for your budget.

You can't go wrong with either to be honest. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two either. Even in benchmarks it's tight.

Okay. I will only be installing my Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and SWTOR onto the SSD. Do I need to leave some space available so it doesn't slow down? Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit is 20GB and the game I will be downloading (Star Wars : The Old Republic) is about 30-40 GB. Will I be fine with the 10 GB I'll have left? I won't need to install anything else but those two items. The rest of my programs and files will be installed to my hard drive.

 

[Coup27]

All SSDs come with whats called 'spare area' which is amount of NAND which the user doesn't see. This post is good at explaining it:

The flash chips are 16 GiB chips, not 16GB chips. SSD are sold at standard HDD Gigabyte rating, that is, 1 GB = 1 000 000 000 bytes. Flash chips are manufactured in Gibibytes, ie 2^30 -> 1 GiB = 1 073 741 824 bytes.

You'll notice that in Windows, the total amount of free space reported on an Intel 80 GB SSD is ~74.4 GiB. However, the 80GB drive actually contains 80 GiB of flash; Intel (and everyone else actually) just conveniently uses this ~7% discrepancy as spare area.

So the drive already has an amount of space for maintenance needs.

It does get a little more merky though. I've just bought a Samsung 830 and it says in the user guide that to achieve best performance and over time, the user should overprovision an additional 7-10% of capacity. It doesn't actually say it word for word but thats what it means. To do this though, you have to leave a portion of your SSD as unallocated space. So if I open my disk management I have ~107GB C partition and 12GB unallocated space.

This space is however optional as the drive already has an amount, but Samsung obviously feel it's necessary for them to advise users on overprovisioning themselves to aid long term performance.

 

[andrewboon]

Okay, and one more question. I am about to buy the 64 GB Crucial M4, but if I decide that I need more space in a few years, can I buy another 64 GB M4 and hook both up to my computer? I don't want to buy the 128 GB right now cause I'm not sure if I'll need all the space.

 

[Coup27]

Yes you can. Connect the first M4 to SATA 6Gbps port 1 and leave port 2 blank. Plug your HDD's into the SATA 3Gbps ports. Then if you decide to add another M4 later on, plug that into the space 6Gbps port and it'll appear as another drive. You may want to re-order the drive letters then as it'll appear as something like F or G or whatever but thats a minor job.

By then Intel will have TRIM working in RAID so you could always RAID0 them together for a combined 128GB drive with TRIM support. Depends if you could be bothered. I wouldn't lol.

 

[andrewboon]

Yes you can. Connect the first M4 to SATA 6Gbps port 1 and leave port 2 blank. Plug your HDD's into the SATA 3Gbps ports. Then if you decide to add another M4 later on, plug that into the space 6Gbps port and it'll appear as another drive. You may want to re-order the drive letters then as it'll appear as something like F or G or whatever but thats a minor job.

By then Intel will have TRIM working in RAID so you could always RAID0 them together for a combined 128GB drive with TRIM support. Depends if you could be bothered. I wouldn't lol.

What is trim?

 

[Coup27]

In simplist terms TRIM is a command used to assist in maintaining the speed of an SSD over time. Windows 7's default storage driver supports it, and so does Intels RST, but if you RAID drives together you lose it. Intel have announced that TRIM will work through RAID soon. If you buy an M4, install Windows, install the latest Intel RST driver then TRIM and your SSD will look after themselves.