Buying my first SSD

killianzz

killianzz

killianzz

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16 Feb 2011
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I've never bought one before. Got a 2500k on a Asus P8P67 Pro board, is there anything compatibility wise that I should be wary of? Looking to get one around the 60gb mark, looking at the crucial m4 or the ocz agility 3 at the moment. Which one would y'all recommend?

Im going to use the SSD as my boot drive. Had my windows7 ultimate 64 bit pc for about 4/5 months, would I be better off doing a fresh install onto the SSD, or use the software to copy over my windows install? I want my pc to run fast, but if I'd see little benefit from a fresh install then I probably wouldn't bother

Also, a little bit random but most of the time when I turn my pc on it goes back to the bios screen twice before it goes to start loading windows. This means it takes a little longer than normal to boot up. This wouldn't remove the point of an SSD would it? Really don't have the time at the moment to go troubleshooting the issue.

Thanks.
Richard.
 
Crucial and Intel are the way to go, far less reported problems.

Personally I'd do a clean install but I can't think of any problems in making the SSD a clone of your current boot drive (provided it's big enough, of course.)
 
Crucial M4. Far less issues.

You need to switch to AHCI in the BIOS for the SATA controller, if not done already.

A fresh install is always recommended when migrating the OS to another drive.

Your motherboard rebooting sounds symptomatic of the problems that motherboard has in general. To be fair, a SSD does nothing during the boot self test, but decreases the operating system loading times. Depends how long it takes to get to the Windows splash screen, and then how long after that.

It's not just the OS loading, but response time and programs loading and response times that will benefit from a SSD.

There's no rush I suppose. You can read up on the pros and cons, and how painful a OS re-install would be for you. I would probably stretch to a 128GB M4 though. I think it's better value at £140.

If you run high memory (8GB or over), it's worth moving the swap file to a mechanical drive, or run without virtual memory entirely. That's what I do, but I will never max the 8GB any time soon. Also disabling the hibernation feature will save more space on the SSD. Swap file and hibernation file usually both around 6 GB, so that's 12GB of space that could be used for something else. When you run 60GB (in a matter of fact, 56GB available), then that's quite a big chunk.

ON a second note, I move my Guild Wars folder from the SSD to a mechanical drive, and there is a noticeable difference, small hiccups when caching hard drive data, slightly slower loading times (although GW has fast loading times anyway)... I guess the game is not optimised at caching to the RAM, but that's the sort of performance differnce I would see between a game / application on a SSD, and the same on a mechanical drive. SSDs makes things run smoother.
 
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You've pretty much answered all my questions between both of you, sweet. Some good advice there olivier, think I will definitely disable hibernation - the extra few gb will be a bonus. Going to go with the crucial, I bought OCZ ram which has been a little problematic. I know its a little petty but with the reported problems with their SSD's as well I don't see any point in taking the risk (also get an extra 4gb lol). To be honest 64 gb will be plenty; I was going to get a budget 32gb one, so 64 feels perfect at the moment, should be enough for everything I want to put on it and more.

One more thing, i've got a normal SATA cable spare, will that do SATA 6gb/s or will I need to buy one? And should I plug it into the normal SATA3 ports or the marvell ones?
 
Tbh i have and still own a 120Gb Vertex 2E and a 240Gb Vertex 3 and have had no isseues what so ever, also what has been mentioned before about setup and stuff is pretty much faultless.
 
got the ocz agility 3 60gb version on firmware 2.11 not had any issues running nice and fast was a bit sceptical at first as i had a ssd that bricked due to firmware issues but that was when they first brought them out teething problems so fingers crossed :)
 
Your current SATA cable will be fine. They're all the same regardless of being branded differently. Marketinh bull once again.

If you get a Sata3 drive. The obvious thing to do is plug it into a Sata3 port on the mobo.
 
Buchanan0204 said:
Your current SATA cable will be fine. They're all the same regardless of being branded differently. Marketinh bull once again.

If you get a Sata3 drive. The obvious thing to do is plug it into a Sata3 port on the mobo.
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Just like the £40 hdmi cables, or my personal favorite: the gold plated optical cable. I know it needs to go into a sata3 port, but there are 2 different types of port on my motherboard. Not sure what the difference is or whether or not it matters, I'll have to dig up the manual. Im sure the OCZ drives are just as good, the speeds look crazy, however I think Im going to go with the crucial because of the proven reliability and the extra 4gb. Im pretty sure that I'd be happy with both though. Thanks everyone for your help!
 
Krony said:
Tbh i have and still own a 120Gb Vertex 2E and a 240Gb Vertex 3 and have had no isseues what so ever, also what has been mentioned before about setup and stuff is pretty much faultless.
Click to expand...

I have a Vertex 2E and no complains. They seem to have dropped a clanger on the OCZ Agility 3. The Vertex is better quality (memory anyway). Hopefully it will be fixed with firmwares, if not already, but it's hard to recommend without letting you know of the potential issues.
 
A fresh install is essential because Win7 changes its behaviour when installed on SSD.

The hibernation file stored on the drive is the same size as the memory in the PC. Well worth disabling on anything other than laptops.

Swap file is required for some annoying programs. The biggest single requirement I've seen is for a 1GB page file, so you could set it to that or move it off the SSD. With 4GB tho, you'll probably need more than 1GB if you load lots of stuff :)
The recommended (by microsoft) size is 1.5x memory size, which is utterly ridiculous, I simply don't need a 24GB swap file :D
 
Go for an Intel 320. Quality SSD got an 80gig version myself. Never going back to platter.

Such a low return rate on intel ssd's + 5 year warranty.
 
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