SSD drive WOW its FAST

[Douglas McDonald]

WOW is all I can say WOW. Just install a Crucial 128gb SSD on a win7 x64 pc and it makes a big difference. From logging in to full boot up is 11 seconds. This is on a SATA II mother board with a AMD Athlon x2 in IDE mode.  I can't afford one but won this in some contest entry. Think there around $250 new. But If i was building a new system for serious use I'd plan on adding one.....Yes its that good. Like having a new PC. Don't need 128gb, If I bought one it would be 64GB and I'd only have the OS on it.

The SSD supports the new SATA III 6mb/s and ACHL (different from IDE). I needed a new MB anyway so I got a MSI board (870A-G54) that has SATA III and USB 3.0 plus it supports ACHL format. Putting in a AMD PH II x3 (3 core). The board also lets me unlock the 3 core CPU to the full 4 cores. It works, I have the same setup at work. The AMD x3 is about $40 cheaper than the x4. So if you can unlock the 4th core on an x3 you save $40. They are the exact same chip made on the same die. AMD does it for marketing reasons and in some cases a bad 4 core is sold as a 3 core....so you take your chances. An internet search will yield x3's part numbers that are good 4 core chips 99.9%

Can't wait to see how much faster the SSD is in that configuration. But....11 seconds is fast do I really need 7 seconds...NO.......I'm putting in the board for a different reason. BTW the board was $60 from Newegg in the "open Box" section. returned items but with full warranty. Most thing there are 50-75% off normal price and fantastic deals.

Sorry for the long post but I know many people are wondering about these new drives and how they work. Beware.....the older SSD's use an old chip set and are not that fast and are not SATA III. If you get one be sure to get one with the newest Intel or Marvel chip set. Many retailers are trying to sell off the old ones as the new ones so do your home work and double check the part numbers I've seen adds for the SATA II next to the SATA III and there is only $5 difference. For the extra $5 you get more than 50% better performance but its very hard to tell from the add. READ THE SPECS

Hope this helps. BTW I do not do gaming but there is a lot of good info about this kind of stuff in the how to build a cheap great gaming PC kind of forums.

I'm a believer of building my own PC. for $500-650 with an SSD drive you'd pay $1500-2000 for the same Dell / HP ect....... Thats with higher quality parts.

While I'm at it...got a LG 23.6" monitor full 1080P HDMI for $134 w/free shipping........open box of course, LOVE IT

Again sorry for all the pc hardware stuff but for those that write software we really need to keep up with the hardware and not go broke doing it.

I'll be happy to answer any questions but I doubt I'll have the correct answer. Just an opinion .BTW I'm not part of NewEgg and I seldom buy anything from them that is not "open Box" or at least free shipping. Thats were the deals are at. I've never had a problem go unsolved so yes I'll support them and 99% of the time buy from them.

Doug

[Paul Squires]

Cool post - I've been curious about those solid state drives for a while now and what kind of performance they generated.

[Douglas McDonald]

Well I put in the new MB that has SATA III (6MB/S) and USB 3.0. Got a AMD Phenom II x3 3.0 ghz. Told the bios to unlock the 4th core and auto over clock the chip. Now its a full 4 core running at 3.45 ghz. With the SSD drive its DAMMMMM FAST.

I tried to set up the SSD using ACHL but I can't seem to do it. I think it has to but set up that way before the OS is installed. MAV, thoughts?

Was it worth it....NO.... The SSD was well worth it but moving to a Phenom II 4 core @ 3.0ghz  from a Atholon II x64 2 core @3.0 ghz  and DDR2(4gb) to DDR3(8gb)  didn't make enough difference to justify the money.  Total boot time went down by 2 seconds. Not worth $200 but as I said before the money is not coming out of my pocket.

The big difference may show its self in the USB 3.0 but I can't test it since I have no USB 3.0 devices.

So....a SSD drive with the newest chipset is a big thumbs up:D:D. Moving to SATA III just for the SSD is not worth it. Adding DDR3 is not worth it. Moving from 4 to 8 gb ram....not worth it.

Bottom line it if your talking milli seconds then the upgrade is fantastic. but if a few seconds don't bother you then its not.

The single biggest thing that made the system ROCK was the SSD no doubt.

BTW this system over clocks to 3.54 ghz and is very stable. For an $80 cpu thats supposed to be 3 core @3ghz and a $60 motherboard its not a bad deal at all.

Just my thoughts
Doug

[Douglas McDonald]

One last thing...Of course SDD's cost a lot and the best way to use them is to only put the OS and your most used programs on them (until they are as cheap as HHD's). Every thing else goes on a HHD. Now thats a real pain in the butt, you move a program out of  'program files' to another drive now Windows doesn't now were to find it and your screwed, have to re-install the app.........If I move all seldom used program / data to the HHD then I could use a 32-64gb SSD and save lots. Could use a $120 64gb instead of a $300 128gb drive.

Well there is a great answer to this problem..and its FREE. there is a program called "App mover" (do a Google search) and you just select what you want to move, were you want to move it to and click GO. It fixes the windows registry to update the new path. The only problem I've seen is I have to redo my shortcuts.

I moved the hardest thing there is to move . Visual studio 2010. I selected VS 2010 directory from my SSD drive and told it to move it to the HHD. I couldn't believe it but it did everything. no problems.

Did I say it FREE.........well I for one am going to donate to the guy that wrote this software. its worth a lot to me to be able to do that, he's getting my $50. Think how hard that must be. Move something like VS2010 or Office 2010 from the main drive program files x86 (win7 x64)  directory to a different drive and different directory name and it fixes all the paths and corrects the registry........Maybe to someone like Paul or Jose this is easy but for me its magic almost.........and its fast. I hope I explained it correctly, its not just copying and moving, its letting windows know whats moved were and it all works.

It is perfect if your adding an SSD or just another HHD.

Pargon(the hard drive management GURU's) has beta software thats supposed to migrate you OS from a HHD to a SSD. The idea is to only move the OS and required files from the old HHD to the SSD. Everything else stays on the HHD and Windows knows no difference....Its is beta but wow it $ucks and doesn't come close to working. It would be great if it did. So forget that until its out of beta then be prepared to pay.

App mover does work. You just have to move things one at a time. sounds like a day long job but I moved 60gb of data and programs in just over an hour. Windows found all of it. No reinstalls. No error messages. No I can't find this or that. Its great....hope you get the idea here

Sorry for the long post

Doug

[Thomas Cone Jr]

Doug, I'm very interested in the the "App Mover" utility you mention.  My search turned up several with slightly different names, I'm wondering which specific program (and version) you had such good results with?  Thanks. -- tom

[Douglas McDonald]

Well it was very simple to get ACHI to work. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

This works with Vista & win7 only as I understand it. As you'll see in the knowledge base site there is a one click fix and it works. Simply run the "fix it" program on the site, re-boot to change your BIOS settings, mine was under the RAID settings, and then reboot as prompted (twice in my case) . Now all my drives use ACHI drivers.

Hope this helps someone. I thought I was in for a total re-install. Instead the entire process took less than 5 minutes.



One last thing, the windows experience went from 7.5 in IDE mode to 7.9 in ACHI mode. That may not sound like much but its a pretty good increase for 5 minutes work. My Video score also increased by .1 was 6.7 and went to 6.8. I thought the video card with 1gb DDR3 ram wouldn't be effected by the drive speed but I guess it is.

So over all moving to the AMD Phenom II x3 (4th core unlocked) from a AMD Athlon 64 x 2, changing the mother board to one that supports SATA III & USB 3.0, 4gb DDR 2 ram to 8gb DDR3...same video card.

windows experience Score (index)

OLD New W/O ACHI W/ACHI

CPU 6.3 7.4 7.4
RAM 7.0 7.5 7.5
Video (Both) 6.8 6.7 6.8
Drive(SSD) 7.3 7.5 7.9

Old WD(black edition) SATA 500gb HHD had a score of 5.9

I think this shows that the old gigabyte/AMD Athlon 64 x II system was pretty good and if I had to pay for the upgrades its not worth it except for the SSD. Is it worth bringing the video score up....NO....unless your really into gaming or Blue-ray movies. I have a middle of the road video (ATI 4670). Moving to a 5000 series or the new 6000 series would cost $100-250.

Total price for new system upgrade including SSD was $525. I'd guess a Dell, HP ect............. to the same specs is in the $1500 range.

Well that's my experience with SSD and a system upgrade. As you can see by the windows scores (if they really mean anything) it a pretty well preforming system overall.

I hope this helps anyone thinking of building a new PC or just updating an older one

Doug

[Douglas McDonald]

Tom, here is the link to the site:  http://www.funduc.com then look for the APP MOVER program. there is a free version that works fine or you can buy the $15 version that gives you more options for ether x32 or x64 OS . I ended up buying the $20 version that supports windows x32 & x64 versions so i can use it on various systems if needed. Worth $20 YES YES it is....Very simple to use. Read the help file as it goes into some details that could be over looked.

Doug

[Thomas Cone Jr]

Thanks.

[Haakon Birkeland]

According to an article I read recently, the SSD winners these days â€" unless one wants to spend ridiculous amounts of money, would be models based on the following controllers;

• Crusial/Marwell - RealSSD C300
• Sandforce SF-1200

If I where to purchase a SSD-drive today, I'd go for a new system disk; Crucial RealSSD C300 2,5" 64GB | SATA 6 Gb/s, ~355MB/75MB.

Now thats a real pain in the butt, you move a program out of  'program files' to another drive now Windows doesn't now were to find it and your screwed, have to re-install the app

Why would people like us ever let Microsoft decide where applications and data goes?! Their lack of separation of system-files and data-files is plain ridiculous. Putting all eggs in one basket ...

I've done my file separation for years, also for tons of clients and that have from time to time saved me from shitloads of tedious work â€" that I really hate. My routines in conjunction with Drive Snapshot has played me well!

[Mike Doty]

I've been using a 30 gig OCZ from NewEgg since March 2010 without a problem.
Actual free space came down to 29.8 GB.
They are down to $69 with rebate (the rebate is a debit card that takes a long time to get.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393
Get rid of page file and disk optimization (no longer needed.)

With only 30gigabytes is no problem.  I installed both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows on it.
Just using an SSD just for booting  is a great way to go and you can test anything on it
and later move to a larger drive (if needed.)  By having less space made me organize and
get rid of tons of junk that accumulated and is now just sitting on another drive.

The backup is very fast without all the clutter.
My next system will definitely have two of them.
By the way, be sure to get a mounting bracket for the drive.  I had to buy one later.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817995010

This drive is now old, but is still in use and blows the doors off my Raptor X without any noise or heat!