SSD - not that impressed

daztrouk

daztrouk

daztrouk

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Joined
24 Dec 2005
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811
Location
London
I bought a 30Gb vertex as i wanted to test SSD, and i didn't want to spend too much on what is a new, constantly evolving technology. At the moment, after installing the OS and the programs i use, i have 3GB free. It's shaved my boot up time from over 1 minute, down to roughly 36 seconds, so it's a definite improvement, but i'm not that impressed with it in all honesty on the whole, and i'm glad i didn't stump up more than the £100 i paid for it. I don't play games, all i use the PC for is web surfing, downloading stuff, playing around with virtual machines, and listening to music and watching videos. I don't really sense that things are that much snappier when loading applications. I previously had 2 Samsung 1TB F1's in a raid1. Part of me thinks it's down to what i use the pc for, and that i would get more out of it if i bought a couple larger SSD drives, as then at least i would be able to feel the difference when transferring files between the two etc. Maybe i should have bought a larger SSD drive in the first place rather than my 30GB vertex, as then maybe i could have put everything i needed on it, rather than installing the main things on the SSD, and the rest of my stuff on the F1's. Don't get me wrong, it's a great improvement when booting up and shutting down the PC, but surely i can't be the only person to question whether it's worth the money to shave a second or two of the time it takes to open Microsoft Word........
 
Very impressed with mine, windows boot time is much quicker, game levels load much quicker, for example my level load time for BF2 has almost halfed and thats comming from 2x 160gb Raptors in Raid.

Well worth the cash imho, you should have gone for a bigger drive, my 2x 64gbs in Raid 0 are just over half full.
 
miniyazz said:
Have you tried going back to using a mechanical HDD for a while? That tends to highlight the improvements better than just moving to SSD..
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To be honest i would have thought you would know its a lot faster being on a regular HDD for a long time, obviously you would get used to SSD speeds but not straight away

maybe people are buying them expecting to speed up everything possible not just file transfers/loading ? :p

The reason im getting one is purely for the uber fast game loading times & windows, everything else is just a bonus imo. and i agree 30gb is way too small, 60gb would be the bare minimum and i think even that is a little small but depending what you want installed probably can be just right.
 
I hate it when people complain about ssd's not being as fast as they expected but still not posting their own specs.

Anyway. Since you only have 3gb left, you should probably run the wiper tool at least once a month if not more. It will not take long for your OS to write to 3gb and slowing down your ssd. Be lucky you bought an ssd that supports this kinda thing because most do not as of now. And if you have any kind of second hdd, that has any files on it that your programs need/use, you are still at the mercy of that hdd. Lastly their are also tweaks that need to be done especially if you only have 3 gb left to preserve the longevity of the drive and boost performance. If you had done them already you should have posted that.

Please in the future, if anyone buys an ssd and doesn't think the speeds are that good, post your specs, tweaks, and an ATTO benchmark. The benchmark being the most important thing.

cheers.
 
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Gotta agree with Ninja Please!

If you were to actually show specs and say what tweaks you have applied then perhaps people would be able to suggest ways in which you could look to improve on the perceived performance of your setup, as it is there is nowt to suggest other than what Ninja already has - and as you say you are transferring between drives etc then the mechanical HDD's will be the limiting factor.
 
Hefner said:
The lack of noise is a major plus for me, but I was using 4 raptors before :)
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A very true but often overlooked aspect of SSD's - I bet you are glad to get your hearing back Hefner?!

I can hear a definite mechanical noise as my pair of F1's spin down into power saving - and I suddenly realise that there was also quite a noticeable background hum all along, albeit at a very low level - but there nonetheless.

Silence really is golden! :)
 
FaceplantSi said:
Gotta agree with Ninja Please!

If you were to actually show specs and say what tweaks you have applied then perhaps people would be able to suggest ways in which you could look to improve on the perceived performance of your setup, as it is there is nowt to suggest other than what Ninja already has - and as you say you are transferring between drives etc then the mechanical HDD's will be the limiting factor.
Click to expand...

That's why I'm going complete ssd once I get my student loan :D
 
Got a SSD and not impressed? I don't believe it personally. Windows feels like a whole new animal going from HDD to SSD. I was house sitting the other week for a friend and his PC was painful to use compared to mine! And he has a similar spec machine, except for the SSD of course.. Made me realise how much difference it really does make.
 
Tweaks and setting up done:

I've done the wiper tool
updated the drive to the latest firmware
disabled indexing and hibernation
64 alignment
disabled windows prefatcher, vista superfetch, defragmenting, and system restore
also used a utility called ssdtweaker which i believe does some of the above (just to be sure)

some other stuff as well, which escapes me now.

I've been on the ocz forums, and done a lot of reading on SSD's, so if i've missed anything (which i doubt) let me know.

My system spec is:
athlon 64bit x2 4400
4GB ram
vista x64
1 32GB SSD, and 2 Samsung 1TB F1's

not the latest or greatest system, but no slouch either

my benchmark is below:

latest.jpg



any advice welcome.
 
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