Considering a SSD

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Been thinking about this for quite a while now and am almost at the point where I can afford it. Ideally looking for something that's 80GB+, as I'll have a fair few things that I want to go on it and I'd like something that performs quite well. I can spend a decent amount of cash on this, I guess. :)

Things I've been considering so far are the Intel X25-M 80GB, Kingston SSDNow V+ 128GB and Corsair Nova 128GB. I'd like one of the latter in terms of capacity, to make sure all of my applications will fit on the drive, but if the Intel was to be vastly superior, then I'd go for that (or put a few more months' saving in to it and get the 160GB model). I've also heard positive stuff about the Kingston, though in fairness I've heard a lot of good stuff about the Intel, too. Does anybody have any experience or opinions on these? Or if not, perhaps a recommendation for something else?

Maximum price at the moment is around £250, but if I save more then I can push that up a little. I'm just looking for a significant upgrade from the Western Digital Caviar Blue that I'm using at the moment.Will be running Windows 7 if that makes a difference here.

Thanks in advance for any advice offered. :)
 
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I'd probably go for a Kingston V+ out of those. It reviews well and it's very competitively priced. A couple of 64GB Novas might actually be the cheapest and fastest if you're prepared to go RAID. Don't worry about losing TRIM, RAID0 speeds more than make up for it.
 
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Soldato
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i dont know if this is a option but you could get two 60gb corsair reactors and pair them up in raid 0 for faster speeds for read and write? this gives you 120GB (unformatted) but it does mean you lose the trim support if that matters to you.
 
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Just how fast are we talking? I have to say, I'd be reluctant to go down that route as I've been stung by RAID 0 failures twice in the past. I'd also get one less regular drive, since I planned on using my current OS drive as extra storage later on. However, if the performance is significantly better, I'd consider it :)

How good are the Reactor drives? I can only seem to find one review out there that goes in to any detail.
 
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Ah right, I see. Worth considering I guess. I'll spend some more time reading through reviews and see what people have to say about those, too. :)

Another question, albeit one of very little importance, I guess. Is there a significant benefit of going down the SATA-III route? Is the speed difference between II and III noticeable or is it not as great as the difference between a mechanical 7,200RPM drive and a good SSD?
 
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Quite a few questions coming up on SSD and bandwidth at the moment. Maybe the dedicated SSD sticky at the top of this forum should be updated. Not been since Jan 2010.
Basically with a £250 budget you can easily pick up a good SSD. You could take the Raid 0 route and get a couple of the new Corsair C300 64GB drives. That would give you 120GB for £240 with reads exceeding SATA III bandwidth (can't get faster until SATA III get's improved or you use PCI-e bus via PCI-e card)
 
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Quite a few questions coming up on SSD and bandwidth at the moment. Maybe the dedicated SSD sticky at the top of this forum should be updated. Not been since Jan 2010.
Basically with a £250 budget you can easily pick up a good SSD. You could take the Raid 0 route and get a couple of the new Corsair C300 64GB drives. That would give you 120GB for £240 with reads exceeding SATA III bandwidth (can't get faster until SATA III get's improved or you use PCI-e bus via PCI-e card)

I'm confused. Running a SATA-III drive through a PCI-e SATA-III card would be better than running them through SATA-III ports on a board? It would have to be a card, as my board only has SATA-II ports on at the moment, but obviously if it's not worth it then it's not worth it.
 
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I mean unless a PCI-e card gets invented that can utilize faster than SATA III speeds. Probably not possible without creating a newer SATA "4" standard.
 
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So, I think I'm gonna go for the Kingston SSDNow V+ 128GB, since it looks good all-round. Just one question, though (because there's an offer on OcUK right now I think): would it be worth paying the £70(?) more for the OCZ Vertex 2E 128GB? Is the performance significantly better? I know all the benchmarks show it as being right up there, but is the performance difference going to be noticeable?

I really don't think it's going to be worth it, but thought I would just check. :)
 

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I still don't understand how ssd speed things up ? if I get a solid state but all my games and apps are on standard sata drives ?
 
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Ordered it, will post benchmarks and stuff when it turns up. :)

I still don't understand how ssd speed things up ? if I get a solid state but all my games and apps are on standard sata drives ?

It will speed up system boot times, loading/saving documents that are on the drive and loading any applications and games that are on it, but anything that's on a regular mechanical drive would still be limited by the speeds of said mechanical drive.
 
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Okay, just got the drive and about to install Windows 7. Some people have said that I shouldn't use the whole drive and leave some spare. Is that the case and if so, what for?

Thanks.
 
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Okay, just got the drive and about to install Windows 7. Some people have said that I shouldn't use the whole drive and leave some spare. Is that the case and if so, what for?

Thanks.

that was the case for ide/sata drives..dont know if it applies for ssds too.
usually to allow windows to write to the drive for whatever reason / disk management / cleanup / virus checkers etc.
 
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