Solid State v Velociraptor ????

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Hello all, at this moment in time I have a 300gb Velociraptor hard drive and was wondering if I upgraded to a solid state drive will I notice much difference in speed? PC load times? better in games ?
As they a still pricey I was thinking about purchasing a 120gb SSD.
If I am likely to notice a fair difference what would be one of the best 120gb drives to buy????
cheers all
mrix
 
You will notice a big difference.

Anything with Sandforce or Indilinx controllers appear the way to go at the moment - so OCZ, G.Skill and Corsair.
 
as long as you don't put Steam on it, steam folder gets huge!

I am using a fresh install of Win7 right now, with just Adobe photoshop and a few other small programs(nero, powerdvd, etc) and its 20gig approx used.

so add two large games and it should still be ok
 
re:

Just ordered mine and the caddie :)

Reading around it appears I might have to tweak these drives to run better in Windows 7 ?

Any useful pointers at all with installing / tweaking etc.

Cheers all
mrix
 
Just ordered mine and the caddie :)

Reading around it appears I might have to tweak these drives to run better in Windows 7 ?

Any useful pointers at all with installing / tweaking etc.

Cheers all
mrix

I haven't done any tweaks in windows 7, it sets the alignment correctly anyway and disables defrag, some people make changes to increase lifespan, personally I think it will be out of date old tech before it stops working.

Enjoy the speed and best of all the silent running.
 
re:

Hi there reading though the downloadable firmware manual it explains something about being better if the operating system is installed in AHCI Mode :confused:
Has anyone done this? is it really important ? can it make a difference?
Cheers all
mrix
 
Most people who have a SSD run in AHCI mode or have the controller in RAID mode (which runs a single drive essentially in ACHI mode). Supposedly it's slightly faster and has a few added feautures over IDE. As said almost all the tweaks you see are to make the drive last as long as possible or to free up a bit more space not to increase speed. You will notice quite a difference and will probably be amazed how small the drive is when you see it.
 
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Can you clone your existing mechanical hard drive to SSD using something like TrueImage ?
 
re:

Hi all, I was reading somewhere that Solid state hard drives do not need to be defraged ???? is that right:confused:

Cheers
mrix
 
re:

They will degrade over time though if you don't have TRIM support.

My drive has trim support :)
Is this something I have to enable somewhere in windows? or it just works auto ?

cheers
mrix
 
re:

Well I have had the drive a few days and very happy with it :)
I basically got the SSD for windows 7 only and my steam folder and just a few important programs.
Everything else goes on my velociraptor 300gb ;)
Also made a quick video to give people an idea of what these drives are like if you decide to purchase one :)
Also getting a Windows Experience of 7.5 on the SSD Drive! as opposed to my velociraptor raptor which was just 5.9

 
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formatting ?

Hi all, I think I may of messed up :(

Basically I installed the vertex limited edition 100gb which went totally fine with windows 7... on installing windows 7 I did not get the option to format the disk as it was greyed out:confused:
It did allow me to install windows without a problem though:confused:
I have now everything installed and find out you are meant to format these disks right????

But normally if a disk is not formatted you cant installed windows?

Everything works fine and I have a windows experience of 7.5.

Cant I miss the format side of things?

cheers all
mrix
 
It's fine, it would've formatted the partition during installation. You can't use an unformatted disk so you've got nothing to worry about :)
 
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