Is it worth getting an SSD?

FWIW, the only issue I've had with my Vertex 2E 120GB is that I get a blue screen when resuming from S3 sleep. From recent threads at the OCZ forums, it seems to be an issue with the RST 9 series drivers and the RST 10 series drivers might be the fix, but OCZ doesn't support the 10 series yet so it'll be a bit of a wait before it's fully resolved. I haven't had any problems with the BIOS, SATA controllers or firmware flashing.

The only annoyance for me is the P6T Deluxe V2's awfully slow BIOS POST. These are guesses but I'd say it takes about 25s before reaching the Windows 7 logo (~15s before anything appears, ~10s sorting out USB devices, HDDs, etc.). I still get a reboot time of ~45s though, down from 1:30-1:40 with an HDD.
 
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Hey Dragon Q

I have the P6T Deluxe V2's and i know what you mean about the slow boot up's although if you root around in the bios you can avoid things like the marvell storgage and the full screen logo etc which shaves valuable time of the loading.
FYI my system is up and running in 65seconds, and thats using a samsung spinpoint F1.
 
Personally, its a lot easier to see the difference when you use an SSD machine for a while, then go back to a mechanical HDD machine.

When you get used to SSD, waiting for mechanicals to spin up and find your file is agony. :o
 
greymack said:
Hey Dragon Q

I have the P6T Deluxe V2's and i know what you mean about the slow boot up's although if you root around in the bios you can avoid things like the marvell storgage and the full screen logo etc which shaves valuable time of the loading.
FYI my system is up and running in 65seconds, and thats using a samsung spinpoint F1.
Click to expand...

Yeah I've used every tweak I know of:

- Turn on Quick Boot.
- Disable full screen logo.
- Disable "Express Gate".
- Set first boot priority to SSD.
- Disable unused hardware (floppy disk, second ethernet port, Marvell storage controller, firewire).
- Disable "Legacy USB" so that external HDDs aren't powered on and then off again during POST.
- Set "Add-On ROM Display Mode" to "Keep Current".
- Turn off auto-detection for empty SATA ports.

It still takes ages though. I wonder if it's just coded like that or something - there seems to be a ~2s gap between different message types during the POST screen (e.g. between where it detects the RAM, then USB, then HDDs).

It's depressing, especially compared to my two Dell laptops (one of which is over 4 years old), which both get to the Windows logo 2-3s after switching them on!
 
Your 1 minute 30/40 is still considerably slower than i'm achieving but perhaps different hardware or something like is making the difference.
I'm hoping to get a bigfoot SSD at xmas so i'm hoping to get the speed down to around the 40 second mark from my current 65-70 seconds
 
No question it is the single biggest improvement you can make. I have an Intel G2 in the laptop at home and take it for granted but whenever I use a comparable laptop i.e. £400 range they are soooo slow. Buy one you won't regret it...
 
greymack said:
Your 1 minute 30/40 is still considerably slower than i'm achieving but perhaps different hardware or something like is making the difference.
I'm hoping to get a bigfoot SSD at xmas so i'm hoping to get the speed down to around the 40 second mark from my current 65-70 seconds
Click to expand...

I read some tips on a few other forums and have now done the following also:

- Disabled monitoring of fan speeds and voltages.
- Reduced the IDE timeout to 0s.
- Set DRAM timings manually (they were actually set to 9-9-9-27 and should have been 8-8-8-24).
- Set "Plug and Play OS" to "Yes".

Absolutely no difference. I think it's to do with the video card you have but I dunno.
 
In short YES. Faster Boot time, faster feeling system overall, I have a 30gb Vertex and have enough room for OS, key apps. I wouldn't go back.
 
16-19 seconds from power button to working desktop and IE open. Amazing





My speeds were abit better when whole system overclocked but at present all defaulted. Quickest ive had is 14 seconds when SSD was new and fresh.
 
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Does that include BIOS POST? If not then I get similar speeds during boot up. If it does include BIOS POST then zomg life isn't fair.
 
Not much you can do with the BIOS sequence. Still, you save about 30 secs starting up windows :) Plus the added responsiveness after boot and starting up programs.

PS : my times are about 8 seconds longer for some reason, and it's not the drive. Probably all the crap I've got at boot.
 
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memry checks`

yes there is, you can enable fastboot, so the memorycheck will normally be passed :-)

and yest it's worth upgrading to an SSD .. i was always a speed fanatic and used a RAID 10 of SAS 15K rpm hard discs..

i just bought the OCZ Vertex 2 Ex. SSD (120GB) last week to test it..

and i can say: WOHOOOO :-D

*medison
 
So I got my SSD! I've installed it and got win7 onit I can feel and see a noticeable difference! It's good. I need to bench mark it now to see what I'm getting! :D
How do I know if TRIM is working?
 
You can check on the status of TRIM at the OS level (Win 7) and also enable or disable it via command line:

TRIM Commands

Go to the Command Prompt and type:

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (Windows TRIM commands are disabled)
DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)

Though this doen't "really" tell you that trim is actually working!

Basically if your OS, SATA controller and SSD supports TRIM, you should be good to go.
 
forgive me if this has been mentioned but i`d be very careful of getting a 60 gig drive and putting wow and windows 7 on.I did the same thing last year but with al the pre cataclysm download stuff going on i was down to around 5 gig free.So i uninstalled wow and bought a second 120gig ssd and installed it on that.Presently wow takes 30 GIG!! of space with a fresh install (and also remember cataclsym isnt isnt here yet) and my windows 7 install is racking up nearly 18 gig..so 48 gig for them 2 alone! :0.Assuming you dont use a swap file your almost down to 11 gig free before doing anything.

Thats just too close for comfort and you will find as the months go by that the 11 gig will get whittled down pretty quickly.Id be tempted to go for at least 80 gig of above if i was you.

edit...
haha ..opps you`ve already got it,that`ll learn me to read the whole thread ;)
 
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