Upgrade to SSD

octoberred · 9 Mar 2010 at 11:03

Hi guys looking to upgrade to ssd just not sure which one to get maybe set up a raid 0 and get two there is so many out there now to choose from . Was looking at the Intel ssd will they work in an amd based system? Maybe spend up to 200 pounds on each drive on an ssd any advice guys would be gratefully. Size wise 100 GB to 150 GB would be about the size am looking to install in a raid 0 Any advice would be great guys.

Zarf · 9 Mar 2010 at 11:12

Lots of good choices about atm, a couple of Crucial m225's would fit the bill. With the latest firmware it supports background garbage collection (keeps the drive in top condition like TRIM and works in RAID, just make sure the drives are left to idle for a couple of hours occasionally). With your budget you could probably even spring for three - 180GB at >600MB/s reads, >300MB/s writes) *

The intel SSD's will work in an AMD system, don't think they have background garbage collect though (still, even "degraded" they are very very fast , probably faster 4k writes than a blank indilinx drive)

* before the "sequential performance isn't what matters!!!111" train comes along, I do know what i'm talking about. Provided you have a decent level of 4k performance to provide the snappy responsiveness associated with an ssd, sequential performance differences are what you will actually notice improving your system performance. Once your 4k performance is up in the tens of MB/s, your computer is spending so little time (unless you're running a database or benchmark) on the 4k operations, that you can't percieve the improvements. I'm planning to put together a thread with some rough numbers to justify this later.

octoberred · 10 Mar 2010 at 12:26

Thanks for your advice

Cheers mate thanks for your advice . New to the forums but it looks like a good place to look for some good advice from real Experts and guys who know what there talking about thanks again Zarf for your advice your the only one who reply out of 97 who looked at the post . Thanks David.

roachyuk · 10 Mar 2010 at 14:45

ok i am gonna wan the same 2 to run in raid 0.....are these m225 better than intels...ie garbage collection what is that......and trim......i persume they have the same function in mind? let me know thanks.....2 64 in raid or 1 128 which would be better.....thanks

Speed · 10 Mar 2010 at 14:54

I'm using a OCZ Vertex 120Gb and I'm very pleased with it, the OCZ support and warranty is also excellent. If money is an issue you may be better off with one larger drive rather than two smaller drives in Raid. Yes it will be slightly slower, but space these days is an issue, especially if you play lots of games.

My 120Gb fills up quickly, even with the large files, video, music, photos etc on a 1TB HDD.

If you budget is £200 per drive, I think the best you will get is 2 x 64GB or 1 x 250GB.

Zarf · 10 Mar 2010 at 16:56

Speed said:
I'm using a OCZ Vertex 120Gb and I'm very pleased with it, the OCZ support and warranty is also excellent. If money is an issue you may be better off with one larger drive rather than two smaller drives in Raid. Yes it will be slightly slower, but space these days is an issue, especially if you play lots of games.

My 120Gb fills up quickly, even with the large files, video, music, photos etc on a 1TB HDD.

If you budget is £200 per drive, I think the best you will get is 2 x 64GB or 1 x 250GB.

With RAID0, which I assume was his intention, both capacity and speed scale up with drives, so two 64GB drives give you the same capacity as a 128GB drive.

It is less reliable, but not drastically so in the case of SSD's - The most likely part of a drive to fail is the NAND chip, and 128GB drives have twice the number of chips as a 64GB drive. This means that reliability is more a factor of total capacity than number of drives. Still, RAID0 or no, I always recommend you keep a regular backup to an external or networked drive in another location.

Speed · 10 Mar 2010 at 17:22

Zarf said:
With RAID0, which I assume was his intention, both capacity and speed scale up with drives, so two 64GB drives give you the same capacity as a 128GB drive.

It is less reliable, but not drastically so in the case of SSD's - The most likely part of a drive to fail is the NAND chip, and 128GB drives have twice the number of chips as a 64GB drive. This means that reliability is more a factor of total capacity than number of drives. Still, RAID0 or no, I always recommend you keep a regular backup to an external or networked drive in another location.

Yeah that is true, but after owning a 120GB SSD I'd give my left arm for more capacity. I guess it depends on what he uses his system for. I guess if money was no object I'd go for two large SSDs in Raid 0 as well.