Upgrade old SSD/hard drive?

[JDrew]

Hi everyone,

I currently have two drives in my system; a gen 1 OCZ Vertex 60gb SSD for Windows 7 X64 and main applications, and a 320gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 drive where I keep my games and other storage. I have had the SSD since Fall '09 and the Seagate since Fall '07.

I am curious as to whether or not upgrading my SSD to a 60gb Corsair Force drive and upgrading my hard drive to something like a Samsung Spinpoint F4/640 WD Raptor Black would have any noticeable effect on the responsiveness of my system in terms of boot time and level loading in games. This would be my sole reason for upgrading; I currently have no issue with running out of space on either drive.

Other relevant parts of my system:

Q9550 @ 3.4ghz
4GB DDR2 RAM
Gigabyte EP45-UD3R (only has SATA 2, so that's why I chose the Corsair SSD)
GTX 570

I would be buying the parts from either NCIX or Newegg (Canada), assuming there is value to the upgrade (ie, if I would notice a noticeable effect during everyday use an upgrade would be worth it, whereas if only benchmarks would be affected then I don't consider that to be worth the time/money).

Also - I am not committed to the Corsair drive I mentioned; anything equivalent would be fine. The drive has max 285/275 speeds, and my understanding is that on SATA2 the limits are speeds of 300 - please correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks - Drew

 

[Emulex]

sounds like a lateral move. spend money and move to 8gb of ram - its so cheap it would make more sense.

 

[amanoai]

I say no, you may notice an improvement but it won't be comparable to the money you spent on the upgrades.

 

[Drsignguy]

What Monitor do you have? The money that would be spent on the drives could be put towards a larger updated monitor? That's if you haven't got one already?

The above posts I have to agree with especially since you have the P45 chipset with sata 2, it would not be a very noticeable difference.

 

[JDrew]

Hmm...the Corsair XMS2 4gb kit (which is what I have now) is on sale, which after I use a gift card would be $55 incl. shipping and taxes. Given that I mainly game (FPS and RPG), surf the web, and email would I actually use the 8gb?

The monitor I use is a 24" 1920x1200 Westinghouse L2410NM that I have had for about 3 years. It has served me well, and I am not sure I can feel comfortable dropping the $ on one of the larger models.

 

[groberts101]

moving from a 60 gig Sandforce controlled drive to another 60 gig Sandforce controlled drive would yield essentially nothing. From all that I've seen the OCZ drive may be a tad faster due to slightly better firmware, especially considering you have the original 34nm nand drive. You could also upgrade the OCZ drives firmware to the newest 1.32 which can give a tiny boost as well. They say up to 5% gains but most only see 1-3% on 34nm drives with 25nm drives getting the largest bump.

Personally, I would add another storage drive or two and go raid as the most time spent these days is waiting for storage transfers. That depends on usage of course and ymmv.

from the standpoint of the original question though you would be hard pressed to tell the difference after the money spent on those upgrades.

 

[Zap]

Given that I mainly game (FPS and RPG), surf the web, and email would I actually use the 8gb?

No.

moving from a 60 gig Sandforce controlled drive to another 60 gig Sandforce controlled drive would yield essentially nothing.

Original gen 1 Vertex is Indilinx, not Sandforce.

 

[zagood]

Interested to hear some more detailed answers. My Vertex (1) 60gb apparently has 1% life left in it.

 

[JDrew]

Thanks for the replies.

One other option - would buying a second Seagate Barracuda

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=38...acture=Seagate

and setting up a RAID help me as far as load times go if I store my games there? I haven't set something like this up before, but I am sure I can learn.

Second question to that would be:

The drive on NCIX's website has a part# ST3320418AS whereas according to CrystalDiskInfo my current Seagate has a part #ST3320620AS. All other characteristics appear to be the same. Would this be a problem?

Thanks - Drew

 

[SickBeast]

You might save 3-5 seconds off your game load times with RAID. You would probably gain more from a larger and faster single drive, though.

 

[Tom]

Interested to hear some more detailed answers. My Vertex (1) 60gb apparently has 1% life left in it.

Is that normal ? Less than 3 years at 8 hours a day ?

 

[blckgrffn]

Is that normal ? Less than 3 years at 8 hours a day ?

Yeah, wow... I would be interested in hearing about other folks experience with this...

 

[groberts101]

first of all.. my bad on the above post and not catching the Indilinx gen 1 thing. I tend to do too much at once and **it happens.

second is the concern over these types of programs. I've seen all sorts of folks flipping out and thinking their drives are dying. Simple fact is that they work off of estimates based on current write levels and calculate off of those.

I've personally seen many hit 0% and start right back over at 100%. Then there's the fact that destructive flashes can wipe this data and firmware changes will impact readings as well. Also consider the fact that no one has posted of read only drives yet and the fact that these drives write into the Petabytes(dependant on the capacity of course and some of the early Indilinx drives even had 10,000PE/c nand)) before burnout is a concern.

Here's some light reading of this and similar. Some even have the designers themselves telling how the algorithms work.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...te-SSD-lifetime&highlight=indilinx+ssd+status

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?86600-60GB-Agility-at-end-of-life

http://www.overclock.net/ssd/664681-indilinx-ssd-status-thread.html


etc, etc