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64GB Crucial RealSSD C300 2.5-inch SATA 6GB/s?

Sponge

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Chav Newbie

Chav

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do you have a fast cpu? eg i7 or highly overclocked i5 etc...?

if not, you wont notice the difference between most of the high end ones. typically the 128gb models are best price/performance compromise, but a few mb/sec in benchmarks makes naff all difference. anything with a read speed over 200mb/sec will give you an orgasm compared to a mechanical drive.

eg a disk read speed of 7000mb/sec only gives me a 10% improvement on loading performance versus a 240mb/sec ssd (i7 overclocked)

even the slower write speeds of 70mb/sec arent slow when compared to mech drives, as its consistent across the drive, whereas mech drives have variable densities on the platters.

(the 7000mb/sec is a ddr3 ramdrive btw)

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Sponge Newbie

Sponge

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More choices:

OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G) [] Internal Hard Drives Solid State Drives 30GB - 100GB

Capacity: 60GB

- Controller: SandForce SF-1200

- Maximum Read: 285MB/sec

- Maximum Write: 275MB/sec

- Sustained Write: 250MB/sec

- Max I/O Per Second (IOPS): 50000 IOPS (4KB File)

- NAND Flash: Multi-Level Cell (MLC)

- Interface: SATA-II

- TRIM Support (Requires Windows 7)

- Warranty: 3 Years

£162.98

OCZ Vertex Limited Edition 50GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1VTXLE50G) [] Internal Hard Drives Solid State Drives 30GB - 100GB

- Capacity: 50GB

- Controller: SandForce SF-1500

- Maximum Read: 270MB/sec

- Maximum Write: 250MB/sec

- Sustained Write: 235MB/sec

- Max I/O Per Second (IOPS): 50000 IOPS (4KB File)

- NAND Flash: Multi-Level Cell (MLC)

- Interface: SATA-II

- TRIM Support (Requires Windows 7)

- Warranty: 3 Years

£139.99

The latter is cheaper, utilises the SF-1500, but appears to have slower read/write and has a smaller capacity. It's all very confusing to me.

Review

If you were waiting for SSDs to get cheaper, you’ll have to wait even longer for the transition to 25nm MLC NAND flash in Q4

(NB I wouldn't buy from overclockers. Only used for comparison purposes.)

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Sponge Newbie

Sponge

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I've just ordered the Crucial 64gb C300 mentioned in my original post. Price was the overriding factor. I should get 9% Quidco cashback, which works out at just over £9. Bringing the total price down to £109.57.

I'd have loved a 128gb SSD, but despite their better vfm, at under £200 they're too rich for me at the moment.

64gb should be enough for my OS and a few apps, so once everything is on there, read speeds are primary. The rest of my stuff will be on HDD/NAS.

Thanks for the advice chaps. +++

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Sponge Newbie

Sponge

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I've not made a not of the code yet. I'll get back to you.

I have AHCI enabled at the moment. I thought it had to be to enable TRIM in Windows 7?

I don't suppose you know if you can get 2.5" to 5.25" adapters, do you? At the moment, the SSD is screwed in (to 5.25" bay) via one side only. (I can find, and already have, lots of 3.5" to 5.25")

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Mac Apprentice

Mac

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Disable it, boot, and see if problem goes away. If it does, apply all the updates from WinUpdate, then turn it on again.

Ref adapter I wouldn't bother. Secure fitting isn't as important with an SSD. A couple of my boxes just have the SSD taped to the side :grin:

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Sponge Newbie

Sponge

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I think it's sorted. I think the switch from SATA - RAID to SATA - AHCI had screwed up the pre-existing RAID 0 (non-os) that was present. (I'd only disconnected the old OS HDD for installation of the SSD.) One disk had 'dropped out', so I decided to delete it completely in the BIOS and also disconnect all HDDs. I kept AHCI enabled. I had another go at installing W7 and so far, no BSOD. So I'm hoping that was the problem and it's now sorted.

I've been installing a few bits and bobs and have just benchmarked the drive. :grin:

PS Motherboard is SATA II

post-10548-137914449884_thumb.jpg

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Paul Newbie

Paul

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Ref adapter I wouldn't bother. Secure fitting isn't as important with an SSD. A couple of my boxes just have the SSD taped to the side :grin:

My Intel 80Gb SSd is just velcro'd to my pc chassis. +++

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Chav Newbie

Chav

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I think it's sorted. I think the switch from SATA - RAID to SATA - AHCI had screwed up the pre-existing RAID 0 (non-os) that was present. (I'd only disconnected the old OS HDD for installation of the SSD.) One disk had 'dropped out', so I decided to delete it completely in the BIOS and also disconnect all HDDs. I kept AHCI enabled. I had another go at installing W7 and so far, no BSOD. So I'm hoping that was the problem and it's now sorted.

I've been installing a few bits and bobs and have just benchmarked the drive. :grin:

PS Motherboard is SATA II

You should have got a 128gb one with 220/200...that write speed is terrible for a "high-end ssd"

To maximise performance ensure you disable last-file-access update in windows 7 as that doubles the effective number of writes required.

check write caching enabled too.

This may sound crazy but as your disk writes so slow I think you'll get an increase in overall performance if you compress the entire drive via windows built in disk compression. this will effectively increase write speed by 40-60% at the expense of some cpu which you can afford as compression/decompression no problem for a core2quad whilst windows doing other things.

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Sponge Newbie

Sponge

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Like I said earlier, a 128gb would have been at least another £100 and that wasn't in my budget. I'm a lowly civil servant, don't ya know! :P

Thanks for the other tips, though. +++

Disable Last-file-access Updating Feature

As you access a file, it will create a “date stamp”. You can disable this feature (if you don’t need the information) and open your files slightly faster.

* Open the registry editor as before (Windows key, type regedit)

* Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem

* Double click on Double-click NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate

* Change DWORD value to 1

Is that the stuff?

Edit: I've been looking into SSD optimisations and so far have done this - I've set defrag to manual (not disabled, as I still have mech. HDD) and have disabled Superfetch and Windows Search.

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Chav Newbie

Chav

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Sure - but you could have got a 128gb for well under 200, but anyhoo......

yep thats the reg key

try the compression - you'll be surprised.

you dont need to worry about other ssd optimisations as win7 formats the drive with correct alignment and sets a few options automatically

under no circumstances defrag the hard disk-ever.....that will trigger millions of writes and i think you've been concerned with longevity before now - this is the thing to avoid.

also the disk compression will physically reduce the number of block writes as the disc compression generates less random writes.

never had any problems with longevity myself so i wouldnt worry too much

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Chav Newbie

Chav

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with a compressed drive many benchmark apps wont work right - as above

the question is does it appear faster in real world??

i think anything over a core2duo at approx 2.5ghz is fast enough to counteract the extra cpu overhead of compression - typically you have an idle core during loads/saves anyway - so may as well put it to use!

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