Spinpoint F1 VS SSD (M4)

Relentless81

Relentless81

Relentless81

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Is this still considered a decent drive? It was supposed to very good when I bought it

I'm still considering ordering the M4 while the offers on and relegating the F1 to a storage drive

The PC is gaming PC and media centre, so I'm not sure if I'm wasting my money?

Also, I'm dreading the Windows install :o
 
I've just done this.

Boot times on the M4 is about a thrid of that on the Sammy F1.

Once you're in windows, honestly, its not that different.

Game loading times however are considerably faster. My BF3 level loading is night and day compared to the F1.
 
I've noticed that people are literally playing the game before I've had chance to spawn at the start of the map in BF3, they must all have SSDs

I'm not sure I want to part with 90 big ones when the only benefit will be waiting a minute or so loading a map
 
Relentless81 said:
Is this still considered a decent drive? It was supposed to very good when I bought it
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The noise from my F1 was beyond acceptable. Slightly louder than my previous Hitachi 7200rpm drives in raid combined. But not quite enough for me to think a OCUK chap would definitely sign off the RMA. Aparently there are just some loud F1 drives.

Moving to an SSD + 5200rpm drive gave me my sanity back. Sure I could have bought an enclosure for the F1 but the benefits of an SSD are massive.

Relentless81 said:
The PC is gaming PC and media centre, so I'm not sure if I'm wasting my money?
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SSDs are amazing for gaming. The level/zone loads and all the SSD people appear (and the dude with 2 ssds in raid appeared 2 seconds before you). 5 seconds later the people on magnetic drives start to slowly appear and >10 seconds later the people on laptops.

Does my head in waiting for people on laptops.

Relentless81 said:
Also, I'm dreading the Windows install :o
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Sounds like you need the practice. In my day you were forced to reinstall windows after letting about 5 magazine CDs near your machine.
 
I dont think my F1 makes any noise, its not noticeable anyway

I dont think there is much in the way of practice required as I dont intend to reinstall Windows on a regular basis, more the case that its setup exactly the way I want and to get it back to how it is now will take a lot of time and effort

I'm still contemplating the idea but in all honesty I personally think there will be a new wave of SSDs not too far off hence why the current generation seem to be getting cheaper and I'm not 100% convinced of the benefits vs reliability at the current cost if all thats going to happen is I'm going to appear on a map 10 seconds quicker than other gamers, that really doesnt bother me
 
Relentless81 said:
I'm not 100% convinced of the benefits vs reliability at the current cost if all thats going to happen is I'm going to appear on a map 10 seconds quicker than other gamers, that really doesnt bother me
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Reliability of SSDs is now irrelevant as they finally match magnetic drive failure rates.

And no, you don't buy one purely to get a game level loaded faster. I just mentioned it because you talked about gaming. They load games faster. They load steam faster. They load Origin faster. They load the whole of ******* Windows faster.

SSDs are like smart phones. When you finally join the revolution you will kick yourself for not doing so a year or so earlier.
 
The huge speed increase in Windows alone is worth it, just get one.

Best upgrade I've ever done
 
Its even worth it if you only have SATA II on your mobo.

Last night I backed up my gf's Spinpoint and put the 128Gb M4 in there instead. Makes a big difference, not as fast as my new machine, but still significant enough in loading windows and day to day usage :)
 
Agree with the above, I bought a Vertex 3 when it first came out (was one of the lucky ones with no issues) and decided to sell it as thought I could live without it.

Month later I bought two M4's as I was fed up of waiting for things to load.

If you have a decent CPU, memory and gfx card it's a no brainer, your HDD is the slowest part of your system and you will notice a difference.

I now have an SSD in my main system, laptop and my HTPC, they are fantastic.
 
bledd. said:
The huge speed increase in Windows alone is worth it, just get one.

Best upgrade I've ever done
Click to expand...

Likewise!

Relentless81 said:
Damn it, I'll get hold of one, decided I was going to spend the money on my car but stuff it I'll get an M4 instead
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I went from an F3 to M4 too, you wont regret it. You think loading times aren't important but once they're faster you wont want to go back :)

Just makes the whole machine that much more responsive.
 
Set your SATA ports to AHCI mode in the BIOS, only have the SSD in when installing Windows.

Then upgrade the firmware (I've made a thread on here saying how)
 
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