Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Oct 2008
- Posts
- 6,080
I've asked a few questions on SSD's lately (buried in other peoples threads) and although not a complete convert I have bought one to replace the 7200rpm drive in my Dell XPS 1330Laptop rather than for my desktop machine, I'd rather wait another year and hopefully get at least a 160GB drive for the desktop at half the cost they are today (if that happens). As my Laptop now doesn't need so much storage space, that helped with the decision to try the 80GB one in the Laptop. As the old drive is 18months old and that laptop is well travelled, having a SSD makes more sense especially as the data it carries is also crucial to me.
Anyway, the install was straight forward and easy. The laptop even with the 7200rpm HDD was already configured from the factory to use AHCP. So I installed the new drive, downloaded the firmware tool and burned it to CD and then updated the firmware. That was easy. I then just booted up and installed Windows 7 followed by a couple of the Intel tools mentioned in another thread (toolbox and the drivers).
I'm quite impressed. It has changed the laptop completely and its much more responsive. However, it wasn't slow before so some will ponder the question "is it really worth it?". A question I still say is a "no" for many people, but if a hard disk fails and you need a replacement and dont need massive amounts of space then one of the smaller SSD's is an option. I would have liked the 160gb drive ideally but I worked out how much space I really needed these days and I realised 80GB was enough so I bought one (I wouldn't have bought the 160GB SSD at the moment, a little unjustifyable given the cost)
A few things I have noticed:
The processor can now max out easily now the HD bottleneck is removed.
You now can truely multi-task, it doesn't seem to slow down when doing multiple tasks. For example, installing loads of small files was superfast and I was able to do other things while watching the install in the background and it just carried on creating loads of files very quickly.
Estimage battery life has gone from around 3hours 45 to well over 7 hours. I guess those 7200rpm drives do use a fair bit of power.
I don't know what the common benchmark tool is but I downloaded a free version of HD Tune 2.55. I have listed the results below. It's hard to draw conclusions though as the machine is now running WIndows 7 rather than Vista.
So.
XPS 1330 Seagate Momentus 200GB 7200 drive (Vista 64)
Transfer rate min=30.5MB/sec
Transfer rate max=78.7MB/sec
Average=58.9MB/sec
Access time 17.8ms
Burst rate 57.6 MB/sec
XPS 1330 Intel 80GB SSD (Windows 7 64)
Transfer rate min=98.5MB/sec
Transfer rate max=197.4MB/sec
Average=131.1MB/sec
Access time 0.1ms
Burst rate 96.8/sec
It's worth noting also that the speed of the HDD was decreasing all the time throughout the test after about the first quarter of the test, where as the SSD pretty much stayed constant.
I would like one for my Desktop machine but I think I'll be waiting for prices to come down over the next year or so. I will use the laptop a lot over the next few days so it'll be interesting if I find the Desktop annoying slow (it only has a 160GB 7200rpm drive as the OS drive) . It may not feel as responsive but as I need 160GB in that machine for the OS and Programs, £25 for the desktop HDD vs £360 for same sized SSD? My £25 one still wins in that argument.
Anyway, the install was straight forward and easy. The laptop even with the 7200rpm HDD was already configured from the factory to use AHCP. So I installed the new drive, downloaded the firmware tool and burned it to CD and then updated the firmware. That was easy. I then just booted up and installed Windows 7 followed by a couple of the Intel tools mentioned in another thread (toolbox and the drivers).
I'm quite impressed. It has changed the laptop completely and its much more responsive. However, it wasn't slow before so some will ponder the question "is it really worth it?". A question I still say is a "no" for many people, but if a hard disk fails and you need a replacement and dont need massive amounts of space then one of the smaller SSD's is an option. I would have liked the 160gb drive ideally but I worked out how much space I really needed these days and I realised 80GB was enough so I bought one (I wouldn't have bought the 160GB SSD at the moment, a little unjustifyable given the cost)
A few things I have noticed:
The processor can now max out easily now the HD bottleneck is removed.
You now can truely multi-task, it doesn't seem to slow down when doing multiple tasks. For example, installing loads of small files was superfast and I was able to do other things while watching the install in the background and it just carried on creating loads of files very quickly.
Estimage battery life has gone from around 3hours 45 to well over 7 hours. I guess those 7200rpm drives do use a fair bit of power.
I don't know what the common benchmark tool is but I downloaded a free version of HD Tune 2.55. I have listed the results below. It's hard to draw conclusions though as the machine is now running WIndows 7 rather than Vista.
So.
XPS 1330 Seagate Momentus 200GB 7200 drive (Vista 64)
Transfer rate min=30.5MB/sec
Transfer rate max=78.7MB/sec
Average=58.9MB/sec
Access time 17.8ms
Burst rate 57.6 MB/sec
XPS 1330 Intel 80GB SSD (Windows 7 64)
Transfer rate min=98.5MB/sec
Transfer rate max=197.4MB/sec
Average=131.1MB/sec
Access time 0.1ms
Burst rate 96.8/sec
It's worth noting also that the speed of the HDD was decreasing all the time throughout the test after about the first quarter of the test, where as the SSD pretty much stayed constant.
I would like one for my Desktop machine but I think I'll be waiting for prices to come down over the next year or so. I will use the laptop a lot over the next few days so it'll be interesting if I find the Desktop annoying slow (it only has a 160GB 7200rpm drive as the OS drive) . It may not feel as responsive but as I need 160GB in that machine for the OS and Programs, £25 for the desktop HDD vs £360 for same sized SSD? My £25 one still wins in that argument.
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