Need an SSD for £100

Deehjay · 28 Jul 2014 at 18:16

So it's been 3 years since I've gotten my current system and I think it's about time to get an SSD in there. I have £100 to get a decent one. I know nothing about SSD's or anything so obviously there are a couple of questions I have in mind.

- What is 'RAID'? I always hear it spoken about in association with SSDs
- My biggest concern is that how would I go about storing my operating system on the SSD on a system where Windows is already installed on my hard drive? When I get the SSD I will more than likely be formatting my hard drive as it's got a lot of useless stuff on it so I just want to wipe it clean to further improve performance. How would I go about uninstalling the operating system from my HDD and then installing it onto the SSD?

I'm not too fussed about having tonnes of memoery on the SSD, I just want it to be fast and be capable of holding a few of my most played games/applications, so if there's one with less memory but faster for the same price of something that's slower with more memory, I'd like to go for the former (preferably a minimum of 128GB)

Thanks

Grimley · 28 Jul 2014 at 18:31

You dont need raid for starters, AFAIK SSD raid isnt supported by windows unless 8.1 supports it.

Put your OS (windows) frequently used progammes on the SSD, fresh install is preferable. Keep the old hard drive for your files, job done.

A very good SSD for the price, I bought the 120GB version a couple of weeks ago for my backup rig.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £104.99
Total : £112.73 (includes shipping : £6.45).

Deehjay · 28 Jul 2014 at 18:38

Grimley said:
You dont need raid for starters, AFAIK SSD raid isnt supported by windows unless 8.1 supports it.

Put your OS (windows) frequently used progammes on the SSD, fresh install is preferable. Keep the old hard drive for your files, job done.

A very good SSD for the price, I bought the 120GB version a couple of weeks ago for my backup rig.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £104.99
Total : £112.73 (includes shipping : £6.45).

So I should just format my current HDD and then install W7 onto the SSD?

snips86x · 28 Jul 2014 at 18:42

Deehjay said:
So I should just format my current HDD and then install W7 onto the SSD?

Doesn't matter, but it would be better:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel 335 Series 20nm 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail (SSDSC2CT240A4K5) £79.99
Total : £88.69 (includes shipping : £7.25).

Deehjay · 28 Jul 2014 at 18:48

So what's the difference between those two? If I can save the extra 20 quid then that would be nice. I have free delivery also.

Andy7 · 28 Jul 2014 at 18:57

Deehjay said:
So what's the difference between those two? If I can save the extra 20 quid then that would be nice. I have free delivery also.

The Samsung is a faster drive. The Intel is cheaper though.

The choice is yours.

Grimley · 28 Jul 2014 at 18:57

If there is a difference I doubt you'd notice. The Samsung does include 'data migration' software & its own SSD performance management software (I think the intel version can be downloaded though).

I've owned an intel SSD (x25) & it was very good. I only upgraded because I wanted Sata 3.

Yes, just install W7 onto the SSD & format the old HD (backup the files you want to keep 1st though)

Deehjay · 28 Jul 2014 at 19:44

Looks like I'll go for the Samsung one then, might as well since it's on sale.
Cheers guys

wazza300 · 28 Jul 2014 at 20:02

if you can stretch to £50 more you could get the crucial mx100 512gb ssd

double the space for not much more?

Andy7 · 28 Jul 2014 at 20:28

wazza300 said:
if you can stretch to £50 more you could get the crucial mx100 512gb ssd

double the space for not much more?

I am thinking of getting one of them myself for my games on steam.

Cracking price for a 512GB drive.

Deehjay · 28 Jul 2014 at 20:28

wazza300 said:
if you can stretch to £50 more you could get the crucial mx100 512gb ssd

double the space for not much more?

Unfortunately not

Andy7 · 28 Jul 2014 at 20:38

Deehjay said:
Unfortunately not

Get the Samsung and enjoy the speed.

When I bought mine I was shocked by the difference to a mechanical drive.

The speed will blow your mind.

wazza300 · 28 Jul 2014 at 21:04

any ssd will be light years faster than mechanical so you cant go wrong

just want to pick the best £/performance/size/reliability

Samsung are good tho,but crucial are better value right now (DO A PRICE DROP SAMSUNG

)

Deehjay · 30 Jul 2014 at 16:38

Decided to go with the Intel one instead to save some extra money. Is there anything else I needed to purchase? I had a look inside my case today and I'm not sure if there's a 2.5 in bay in there.

Deehjay · 1 Aug 2014 at 13:50

It's here, (thanks OcUK for the speedy delivery) but I'm not sure that I can use it right now since I don't think I have a SATA connector

Deehjay · 1 Aug 2014 at 15:54

It seems like I don't have a SATA cable spare anywhere, so would I be able to use the SATA cable that I'm using for my optical drive with it? It's still an L connector, and it's plugged into a SATA 3 slot on the motherboard. Would this be OK?

Resa69 · 1 Aug 2014 at 15:59

Deehjay said:
It seems like I don't have a SATA cable spare anywhere, so would I be able to use the SATA cable that I'm using for my optical drive with it? It's still an L connector, and it's plugged into a SATA 3 slot on the motherboard. Would this be OK?

Yes it's fine

Deehjay · 1 Aug 2014 at 16:12

Resa69 said:
Yes it's fine

The connector seemed to be the other way round and wasn't keyed correctly in order for it to go in. I think I'm just going to use the connector from my main HDD for now and order an extra.

Resa69 · 1 Aug 2014 at 16:16

Deehjay said:
The connector seemed to be the other way round and wasn't keyed correctly in order for it to go in. I think I'm just going to use the connector from my main HDD for now and order an extra.

Well that's what I done. I only had 2 sata cables, one for the hdd and one for the DVD drive. I done a clean install of windows which needed the sata cable of the DVD drive and it worked fine for me then later when the install was done I used the ssd to boot and hdd for extra storage

darael · 1 Aug 2014 at 17:11

Deehjay said:
The connector seemed to be the other way round and wasn't keyed correctly in order for it to go in. I think I'm just going to use the connector from my main HDD for now and order an extra.

Just turn the SATA cable round. All SATA cables are the same, other than you might get right angled connectors - but even these just need turning.