Is SSD recommended for M17xR2?

Hi all, i've just placed an order for a new M17xR2 and the specs are in my SIG. now im thinking of getting a OCZ Vertex 2 SSD to compliment the system.

however, after some searching and reading through the M17x threads, i found mixed bag comments on the use of SSD for M17xR2. some say M17xR2 destroys SSD after some time, some say their SSD are slower than even a 5200RPM hdd drive!

there are also some saying SSD is makes their system a lot faster than using mechanical hdd (which is what it should have been in the first place).

before i invest further to get a vertex2 ssd, can you guys shed some light on what is really going on with M17xR2 and SSD? is it recommended for me to use a SSD for my system? or should i just save the $ and get a 7200RPM drive instead?

 

Take a look at this before you proceed with an expensive SSD
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/508052-m17x-r2-bios-a07-discussion-thread.html

There are performance issues with the R2 and SSDs

 

that is one of the threads that i've read before posting this thread. really in a mixed bag situation now.

 

Yeah what I would recommend is to not proceed with a SSD purchase yet. Wait till there is an official answer from Dell concerning this matter and then decide.
There is no point to pay a premium price for a SSD when you can buy a much cheaper one that would perform the same because of the laptop.

 

An SSD is a requirements for a gaming laptop compared to an HDD. I strongly recommend the vertex 2 SSD from OCZ. It's simply the best for the value.

 

i point you here sir.

 

does it play well with M17xR2? from what ive read it's ok with R1, but not with R2. see the above comments

 

no do not get a ssd until dell fixes the issues.

 

I thought Dell did fix the Trim issue back in May?

SSD Trim Support - Desktop General Hardware Forum - Desktop - Dell Community

I have two drives that are SSD without trim support. Sure I would like that feature but not worried about. By the time my drives fail I could replace them down the road for much cheaper.

SSD's don't have moving parts, they don't generate heat, and they don't waste PSU power. They are ultra fast compared to HDD. The only purpose for HDD is for storage of large files like images, or video. For operating systems or games SSD is a far better choice.

Low ram + HDD + slow processor + Heat + taxed PSU + Raid = ~A~L~I~E~N~W~A~R~E~M~1~7~x~

High Ram + SDD + fast processor + low heat + stable PSU = ALIENWARE M17x

I agree with everyone else that if you are techy and can install your own SSD you are better off buying yourself. The drawback of installing your own SSD is that it requires a lot of work to rebuild your operating system and drivers. I would give the Samsung SSD a score of 8/10. Samsung drivers don't score as high on the Windows Experience Index but this has no impact on real world performance and is just a reflection of how windows measures drives.

Have had no peformance issues what so ever with SSD and highly recommend them irregardless of what some say.

 

read the posted thread, then bench your drive, 100% confirmed the 4k speed is at the best half of what it should be. the issue sint with trim its with the speed of the drives, which is the entire point of getting one. irregardless of irrelevant posts, you're wasting your money until the problem is fixed

 

When Intel released that version of their storage drivers, their release notes said that TRIM was supported on SSD RAID arrays. However, they came out later with an errata that said that this wasn't the case. So the TRIM problem remains.

It's not so bad. Windows 7 has a nice built-in backup program that can be used to easily restore your current system onto a new drive. There are a few steps you need to do.

• Defrag your hard drive using the Windows Disk Defragmenter.
• You need to shrink your main HDD partition to something smaller than your SSD's size. To do this, click on the Start button and start typing "Computer Management", and click it when it shows. When that shows, go to Storage > Disk Management. Right-click on your C: drive and select Shrink Volume. The size after shrinking needs to be smaller than the size of your SSD, otherwise you won't be able to restore the backup. If you've got too much data, uninstall some things that you can put back easily, or copy files to external storage, and start again.
• When this is done, click your Start button again and this time start typing "Backup and Restore", clicking it when it shows. Click on the Create a system image item on the left, and follow the instructions to create an image on either DVDs or an external USB HDD.
• At this point you can swap out your old hard drive and install the SSD. I won't go into those details here.
• The next time you boot, insert your Windows 7 DVD and let the system boot off that. Once you get past the language selection screen, hit the System Recovery Options link. From here you can choose to restore your system from an image. Follow the prompts to restore from the image you made earlier.
• When the system reboots you should have everything back to normal. The last step you need to do is to go back into the Computer Management tool, but this time you choose Extend Volume. This will let Windows use the rest of the disk.

I know there are a lot of steps, but it's not really that hard. The bonus is that you don't lose anything, so you don't have to go through the hassle of installing everything all over again. And you have a backup in case your system has problems in the future.

 

the trim problem inst the issue, which is why we link the thread. TLDR; the 4k speeds are half of what they should be in the m17x-r2, ssd's in most other machines are GREAT,but in this particular machine they are not working properly, so again read the post.

 

Yes, as cleverpseudonym mentioned, the problem is not the TRIM support.
You can buy the fastest and most expensive SSD availiable in the market today but you won't see any difference from a much cheaper one. So unless you don't care about the performance/money ratio you can proceed with a purchase.

 

I followed the link but the point was lost over many pages. If someone needs a RAID array on a gaming laptop they should probably review why. SSD replaces the need for Raid 0 and it seems silly to back up data in Raid 1 for a gammer. Reviews and benchmarks will only take you so far, at some point you need to try yourself and compare in real world circumstances. Benching under certain hypothetical instances you could find fault in SSD. But you can find fault in anything if you manipulate the data the right way. SSD's are phenomenal for gaming and most of the complaints are from people that don't own them. Most people that have SSD love them. Have never read a thread where someon has posted that they are gaming with SSD and complaining about performance. The complaints are always about reviews and benchmarks which are hypothetical. SSD's are ideal for gammers.

P.S. Why do I need to read anything when I am using the product for 18 hours per day? If there was a "problem" don't you think I would have seen it by now?

 

The point is that I paid $800 for an SSD (the fastest I could buy with that amount of money that time) to run multiple instances of VMs and test server setups and on the R2 the performance is not what it should be, all the comparisons performed by me, were first on my R1 and then on my R2. Not on a server or using a random desktop. Benchmarks are the way to prove my point and the way for others to confirm the low performance which is irrelevant of the SSD brand.

 

the benching serves as proof of the failure. no one is doubting that SDD's are WAY better than platter drives, no one. we are simply providing accurate info for the question asked. if your to lazy to read the thread than that's your issue, and you shouldn't try and provide info to people who want accurate answers. so go ahead waste your money that's your prerogative,. but your not getting what you pay for, the facts are rig there in front of you irregardless of your opinion. and FWIW i do own a few SSDs. for every other computer they work GREAT. but this question wasn't " are SSD's awesome?"
it was in the M17x-R2,is a ssd recommended?. and the obvious unequivocal answer is a resounding NO

 

wow thats alot. i assume you should read beacuse you don't want to give faulty advice / information to someone who wants an honest accurate opinion based in fact not perception.

 

guys, please, keep it cool. dont start flaming each other. the purpose of this thread is to understand and decide whether or not to get an SSD for M17xR2. we dont need batboy step in here and close the thread.

currently, i am not thinking of using RAID in anyway in M17x. what im planning is to use SSD as a primary drive then get the biggest mechanical drive as data storage drive for my M17xR2. so RAID will not be much of a concern.

as for TRIM support, (i am new to all this btw), AFAIK, as long as the OS and drive supports it, that's good to go right? but i did remember reading from somewhere that intel RST driver is also required for TRIM to work (think from anandtech). now to answer whether TRIM is required or not, the question is, is the 4k speed test degrading over some time in M17xR2 or is it bad even before you start using it?

also, does it matter which SSD brand you are using? what im seeing here is samsung ssd sold by dell gets the OK, and ocz vertex gets the NO GO. definately need more input from you guys.

 

The 4K performance is capped from the very beginning no matter what brand of SSD you use. TRIM works either with the default windows drivers or the RTS from Intel. If you buy an SLC based SSD you don't need TRIM.

 

thanks for the info. good, that out of the way, is the chipset PM55 the culprit? how does ssd perform in other well known systems such as asus and clevo with the same chipset?

 

I don't think it is the chipset. It is most probably the BIOS. (I suspect the power saving features but these are speculations from my side)
About the rest of the systems I am not sure you have to do some research in this forum and ask people for more details.

 

I have been away from the forum for a week so please cut and paste the original "benching failure" data rather than just link to a large thread. Each thread should stand alone rather than having to jump through 3 or 4 threads to follow a topic. I am sure there are others joining the thread that don't have a clue as to what some are talking about.

I think Mark Twain said it best, there are "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". Numbers can be persuasive particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. I have read dozens upon dozens of independent reviews about SSD and I still favour them in spite of their limitations. Yes there are trade offs. I just keep reading one chicken little arguement after another and that is not being objective or helpful to someone building a new rig.

SSD's have come a long way in the past year. They are dropping in price by 1/2 every 12 months. Those who bought a year ago obviously should not expect their SSD to peform as well as someone who bought yesterday. People looking for value are not going to find it buying cutting edge technology.

It would be very easy to debate all the advantages of owning a Honda Civic relative to say a Ferrari, better gas mileage, better service, more dealerships, better parts networks, better warranty, et, but I would still rather own a Ferrari. Certain bechnmarks will show HDD to be better but those do not warrant the use of HDD under certain applications as the SSD will outperform in other more important areas. I think the vast majority of people buy M17x to play games not simply to bench...although I am starting to wonder.

Stamatisx your 4K point is interesting but you haven't correlated that to the real world. Are you having trouble loading applications? Are you having trouble saving data? Are your game levels during game play not loading fast enough? Are you losing data? What is your point? How does this 4k cap effect the average user? Windows boots incredibly fast for me, my games load lightening fast, I don't have any performance issues at all.

I'm buying another M17x today and it will be 256 SSD. I would have bought a system with a 2'nd SSD drive if Dell would allow me to configure it that way. I would not even consider HDD.

 

To see the difference take a look at those screenshots:
---------R1------------------R2-----------


Check the total score, the 4K random reads/writes and the access times.
Almost 3x slower the read access time on the R2 and 3.5x slower the write access times compared to the R1.

For the rest of your post I wont bother to make a comment, I will leave it for someone else

 

There is a very simple explanation for your bench. There is a trade off between performance and longevity with the latest generation of SSD. My Nephew has a R1 with HDD and it takes him 2 minutes to boot the computer. My R2 and Samsung SSD takes about 1/10 that time or better. But thanks I do appreciate your post and will look into it further. There are also advantages and disadvantage between intel and samsung that will show one to be better than the other depending which benchmark you use.

P.S. Alienware does not sell Intel SSD. Again too many people have jumped on the benchmark bandwagon, automatically assumed Intel was better. Is your issue an Alienware or Intel issue? There are not enough controls in your study to make a conclusion one way or another. Other things to look at are whether this is a controller issue, a brand issue, an Alienware model issue or and SSD vs HDD issue, or a generational tweak in SSD to help longevity.

 

I have already answered that (as a note, I don't consider myself an average user and I didn't pay thousands of dollars for a laptop to perform some average usage)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6584343-post15.html
If you don't know how 4K affects performance you can always use google's search engine and find out, there are many helpful articles out there that will enlighten you.

On a side note, imagine if everybody measured computer performance (or SSD performance in this particular case) the way you measure it? (based on how fast they feel it performs) we would still use abacus.

In case you missed it, I provided you data from the exact same SSD. What performance trade off are you talking about and what longevity?

We don't compare SSDs here, if that's the case you are posting on the wrong thread.

If it's a Dell BIOS issue or an Intel chipset issue (it's not an SSD issue) is not my job to find out, I will leave it for those who are accountable for that. They are getting paid for that, I don't.
Here we are talking with facts and numbers, not with senses and that's what I provided. Either Dell or Intel are more than welcome to provide us with their numbers, prove their point and convince us that there isn't any kind of performance issue.

 

I am really not in the arguing mood but some of you just don't think this through.

Here is the truth: GET AN SSD...

Yes it is slow on the R2 and yes the 4K speeds are close to half than on the R1 but SO WHAT. It's still about 10 times faster than an HDD.

Of course get an SSD or you will simply regret it. HDD are things of the past especially as a main drive to have windows and games on.

 

I agree with JOE!!!!

 

Im not sure how you tested the drives. I you bought an R1 and used it for 18 months and than bought and R2 and recycled the SSD than obviously that has a big impact on performance. As SSD age they do not peform as well across the board but if they are 10x peformance and they fall 50% as they age than 5x is still better than 1x. I always thought Dell chose Samsung do to value and price points but maybe there is other issues we are not aware of.

 

looks like the samsung's 256 ssd is working well with M17xR2 and the rest of other branded ssd are not doing so well. FalconMachV, i see that you have a 128GB SSD, and i presume that it is sold by dell as well. what brand and model is that ssd? also, those with vertex2 ssd, can you please give some comments on how well it works with M17xR2?

if M17xR2 cant deliver the full speed of an ssd, i dont really see a point of getting an expensive ssd here. no doubt, ssd are far superior compared to mechanical hdd, but it also depends on how well M17xR2 can utilize the resources available.

 

My Samsung SSD is model PB22-JS3 2.5 on my Alienware. On my Falcon I also have a Samsung. My understanding is that Intel and Samsung have advantages and disadvantages and ssd vs hdd there are advantages vs disadvantages.

My understanding also is that as all SSD age the performance will slip and there could be problems down the road. But there are also problems down the road with Hdd as well just a differente set of problems. Another control variable is the size of the SSD vs the available space. I am currently have 24.6 GB free 104Gb used and the balance is a hidden partition. My understanding is that as these GB fill up the performance also will lower.

I have often wondered the advantage of buying an SSD from Dell vs doing it yourself. If Dell does it they are loading everything in a logical, efficient, and orderly manner. If you reinstall the operating system yourself you may lose some efficiency as the hard drive and software may not be optimized as well. In theory SSD don't fragment the same way HDD do so not sure what performance IF ANY you would see from a factory installed driver vs a do it yourself installation.

On my last computer I probably spend $1000 over 3 years swithing the Operating systeming, bying registry tweaks, utliities and and defragementation tools all just to make the darn thing run faster. With SSD you don't need to defragement and buy those extra utilities. That being said Diskeeper does have a special program for SSD to improve their longevity. I have not purchased it (yet) as an independent review didn't think the product helped.

The spead of your OS system booting is also dependant on many other variables such as bios, #ram, ect so you have to be careful when comparing A vs B computer if they are different configurations.

 

If you can save money doing it yourself than it is certainly worth doing. SSD are still expensive no matter how you look at it. Personally I don't think having cutting edge technology today is really a good investment as something so much better will usually come along next month or next quarter so not worth keeping up the Jones so to speak. I wouldn't spend $1000 on the worlds best SSD today as a medicore one a year from now will be way better for a fraction of the price of todays best so to speak.

 

that's what i thought and that's why im looking at ocz vertex 2 60GB SSD right now. not too expensive and the performance is extremely reputable. however, with the same price, i can probably get 80GB intel SSD (slower than vertex2), or even cheaper value ssd since any ssd is a gain compared to mechanical hdd. my biggest concern now is whether M17xR2 can squeeze everything out from vertex2 or should i go for cheaper alternatives (or probably even a 7200rpm mechanical hdd IF ssd is actually slower on M17xR2 as some members have mentioned here).

 

Hi, im not familiar with the model in question and not really concerned with the vertex, intel, vs samsung as I am sure they are all great. What I am concerned about is your selection of size. I think 80GB is too small as Alienware will use up 20GB right off the top for the partition. Windows 7 will use a another large chunk.

I had a server at work once eons ago that was 40GB. That was huge at the time of purchase. 7 Years later we finally had to replace it as the operating system had grown so big that there was no room left to put any windows patches. 90% of the drive became the operating system. Other than that the system was running fine as we had put very high technical specs into the machine to future proof it. What we didn't anticipate was the size of the server OS and the size of the Utilies. You don't want to be in that boat a year from now as windows gobbles up your hardrive. Yesterday alone I had 38 windows important patches to download.

I would not go less than 128GB for said reasons.

Alot of people are under the impression that you can put your OS on the SSD and your applications on the HDD. Yes you can do that but it defeats the purpose. You need to install games on the SSD to take full advantage of the spead. I would use HDD for just pictures, or video, or archiving. If you only have a small percentage of free space left that will also shorten the life of the SSD driver as it will write to the same areas more frequently.

Perhaps you could buy the 500 HDD today and wait until Christmas for a cheaper SSD and than flip the drives. Back to school specials should also lower price a bit.

 

thanks for the suggestions FalconMachV. i had no idea alienware will take a good chunk of 20GB off right from the start. add in windows and other programs, games, there is barely anything left... mmm..

my system already comes configured with a 640GB HDD, but that is a 5400RPM drive. and im really sick and tired of all the slow downs, lockups due to waiting for hdd to perform random 4k read etc..

the plan is to use ssd solely for OS, programs and games and HDD strictly for data storage only. so im not too concerned about installing apps to hdd, but after you mentioned it, ssd size begins to matter.

 

I realise that TRIM isn't the big problem here. I was simply responding to Falcon's query about the TRIM issue being fixed.

I would honestly love to put an SSD in my lappy when it arrives, as I can get OCZ drives at a reasonable price. However, unless this 4K issue is fixed, I may have to stick with the default spindle drives.

 

Hi Alexnvidia

Your original installation will be backed up on that partition that is why it is so big. I think all the Alienware M17x HDD are 7200. 5400 found more on generic systems at lower price points. Dells price for the 256 is around $450 less what ever you negotiate. Have gone online and that is about as low a price as I can find for an SSD that size. Some run up to $1000 dollars. So I appreciate it is a very hard decision to make.

Edit: to save you money I can pass along a tip. I was told today that they had run out of standard drives and that we were getting a BD drive at no extra cost in order to prevent a delay.

 

its pointless to continue the thread. Falcon keeps answering like were saying SSDs are bad. OBVIOUSLY they are not. but the question is akin to this, if you bought a car that was advertised to have 300hp, but you discovered it was really only putting out 200,which puts it far ahead of the average vehicle, but significantly lower than advertised in that specific model of car, would you just let it slide beacuse its still more than the other cars? nobody with commonsense would do this. in this instance its the same issue. the ssds are faster than spindle drives in most areas, on the m17x-r2, im not referring to any other computer, its hindered. but im sure truth will fall on def ears yet again, as majority opinion rules over facts.

 

+1 on that. no point to continue this thread anymore. SSDs outperform HDDs but this is not what the OP is asking about. Enough data, benchmarking results and opinions were provided through out the thread for alexnvidia to decide, so I would also request Batboy or any other moderator to close this thread.

 

Stamatisx,

Have honestly tried to help you and although I haven't told you what you wanted to hear at least I made the effort. I noticed you placed a request for help on the official Alienware forum with a rather poignant title (linked below). On one hand you ask for Dells help and than you insult Dell and ask if it is Dells fault or Intels fault, as it couldn't possibly be your fault...too funny. I read through the thread and had a 6'th sense the whole time I was reading that they would not give you the time of day for several reasons. First you were rude, secondly you are adding 3'rd party hardware, and thirdly you are benching and everyone on this site knows full well Dell won't comment on bench marks, and fourthly not all hardware is compatible, and fifthly hardware specs change from generation to generation. All SSD are not equal so no point in lumping all SSD's together and advising new people to avoid them. I see this scenario day, day in, day out on this forum where people buy expensive add on hardware because they have read some benchmark somewhere and they can't pathom why it doesn't peform the same on their laptop. For someone that has a 9 for a repution I am a little surprised that you are still in the dark that some hardware simply isn't compatible with other hardware. Posting on this forum is a privledge so please show more respect for others and live up to your repution. I appreciate you are a little jaded you spent $800 for an SSD which now sucks but no point in taking your frusterations out on others. As a matter of point you are always better buying hardware that Dell recommends as that hardware is tested and certified to be compatible. Hence they are currently recommending the Samsung 256 SSD. I wonder why Dell recommends Samsung?


Alienware M17x - R2 Killing the SSD performance - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

 

guys guys, calm down. there is really no need to start a flame war. everyone has the right to voice their opinion and i value each of your comments throughout this thread.

i started this thread to answer the hardest question which is the title of this thread. however after reading through your comments and looking at benchmark screenshots posted, my question quickly turned to questionS.

questionS like
1. does ssd generally improve laptop responsiveness and loading time of M17xR2?
yes they do. by how much is not clearly answered here because i get mixed bag responses.

2. can M17xR2 fully utilize the full speed of ssd especially in 4k random data?
no it can't. benchmark provided shows poor 4k random data handling which is the main cause of lagging and unresponsive pc. so buying the fastest ssd will be a waste of money.

3. which ssd work best with M17xR2?
no definite answer but dell sold samsung ssd seems to be getting the nod while Intel based ssd performs badly. if someone could provide benchmark result for samsung ssd, that would answer a lot questions and arguments.

4. minimum size of ssd for M17xR2?
obviously the bigger the better but money is a constraint on my side so im thinking of something above 80gb to 120gb as recommended.

i do value each comments and input from all real life users and i still need more feedback before making any ssd purchase decisions. thank you

 

Cheers,

1) OS system load time is a function of bios, SSD, and hardware. For example, same system with 8Gb ram will take a few seconds longer than a system with 4Gb ram. OS will load many multiples faster than HDD.

2) The benchmark provided was of a well used 64Gb $800 SSD. Do not even have to look it up to know that is not the latest generation based on $$/size ratio. SSD degrade over time so again many conclusions drawn with very little data. Samsung and Intel are completely different technologies so you would have to research which characteristics the flavour of the week bench highlights. Same goes with the windows experience score.

3) no definate answer as some are very happy with their intel drives and others are grumpy.

4) price of SSD falls by 1/2 ever year so a price drop should be comming soon.

Edit, http://communities.intel.com/thread...6B49DFDC92359B29DB62BE88FD3.node6COM?tstart=0

If neither Alienware nor Intel are willing to comment than it is pretty hard to draw any meaningful explanations on the R2 : X-25 E : 4K question.

 

Why is it you don't need TRIM? I thought SLC was mainly for read/write longevity while TRIM was to prevent slowed performance as the disk filled? Or is there some aspect of SLC that prevents the need for TRIM?

 

from the URL above, it seems consistent that the 4k random data issue plauges all the ssd that were benchmarked. i dont think samsung ssd will be excluded from the list.

well it's not fair that M17xR2 (or other PM55 laptops) are not able to deliver the speed promised by ssd, but what i can see is a general improvement compared to hdd. even at half the 4k random data (18-20MB/s), that still way faster than any hdd out there. so it's save to say that ssd does improve overall responsiveness and reduce lagging problems related to traditional hdd in M17xR2. and since one of the fastest (vertex2 and intel x25e) etc will not be able to shine with our system, might as well settle for a mid range ssd that dont cost as much. and as you mentioned, price is contantly falling for ssd, so an expensive one will not be a wise investment for us right now. i know it's probably gonna take a very long time for either alienware or intel to correct this problem but right now, what is important here is to improve responsiveness of M17xR2 and ssd sure can deliver (though not fully) on that.

thanks FalconMachV, stamatisx, Joebarchuck and cleverpseudonym for all your useful feedbacks. if there are other ssd m17xr2 users who would care to post some feedback, please do so.

 

"Unfortunately, the sequential write performance comes at the expense of poor small file write speed. Remember that writing to MLC NAND flash already takes 3x as long as reading, but writing small files when your controller needs large ones worsens the penalty. If you want to write an 8KB file, the controller will need to write 512KB (in this case) of data since that’s the smallest size it knows to write. Write amplification goes up considerably."

Thought the article was ineresting and this explains why SSD sucks at 4K. The article is a couple of pages long and more interesting as you turn the pages. Perhaps the author of this article may be answer your question or provide you with more insight. Just curious whether you changed firmware between R1 and R2?

Not sure what impact filling the SSD up has but surely it must degrade performance at some point as there becomes less and less free space to write to. Also have read that various OS like Vista vs Windows 7 can also effect performance. I know my newphews R1 came with Vista last fall so wondering if when you switched to R2 whether you changed to Windows 7 and this as well could be another variable to look at.

Perhaps try a newer or older firmware and see what impact that has.

The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

• There is no need to tell me what I want to hear, as long as you provide this forum community with facts, I will be more than satisfied because we will have data to compare, and discuss, not opinions based on "senses".

• If you read my post on Dell's official support forum, you would see that I don't ask for help but for an explanation. An official one and so far, after 15 days, I have received none.
• If the title is your main concern, offends you, or believe that it is misinforming in anyway you are more than welcome to ask the moderators on Dell's official support forum to change it to a more suitable one.
• Maybe my humor is limited (trust me it's not) but I clearly fail to see the reason of your laughter at something so serious. Maybe it's funny to you, but not so funny to all those people who posted their replies concerning that matter. If you could explain to me with facts, scientific ones, not using your sixth or seventh sense, how could the low performance be my fault, I would really appreciate it. In case you can't, please spare me from the reading.

• Maybe you shouldn't pay so much attention to your sixth sense and listen to your logic for a change. The fact that they didn't reply is quite simple. They would have denied the existance of a problem, from the very beginning, if they were sure that there isn't a problem at all. I am pretty sure that they would use the exact same method that I do, to prove me wrong.
• The fact that they didn't reply me, could possible mean two things, either they have to perform more testing before acknowledging the problem and its nature, or that it's not on the top of their priority "todo" list right now since they have other issues to resolve first.

• the perception of someone's sayings defers from human to human, in the same way you see the situation funny while I don't.

• Your very laptop is a result of 3'rd party hardware, combined into a single product.
• Dell doesn't forbid the usage and installation of an external or internal HDD or SSD of any brand. That's your assumption and stop misinforming the people who read.

• If you can find any other way, without using benchmarks, to support your opinion please do so.
• On the other hand, if you can prove that the benchmarking programs I used are not representative of the situation, or that they provided false data, or that there is a Dell policy on their official support forum that prohibits the usage of such kind of programs and their employees to not respond to such kind of posts, please be kind and indicate them to the rest of us.
• If you plan to provide us with sixth sense's results, I can assure you that they are not widely accepted in nowadays.

• First of all we are not talking about hardware in general, we are very specific on what we are talking about. That hardware is called SSD and we are not discussing about SSDs in general, but on a very specific aspect of them, the 4K random reads and writes.
• Second, did you see any list, official, from Dell with a compatibility list?
• Since when, a SATA II disk, is not compatible with a laptop that uses the SATA II interface?
• Check Intel's specification on their website concerning their chipset first and then talk about compatibility.

• So what you are trying to say here is that since the PM55 chipset of the Alienware M17x - R2 is a different generation compared to the Alienware M17x-R1, its hardware specifications changed in a way that affect the performance of the SSDs and make them slower. And after that, you want people, who read your posts and have even a slight idea concerning technology to believe that as well?
• So far, every next generation provides better, faster and more efficient hardware, I don't see why this shouldn't apply to the Alienware M17x-R2. Maybe your 6'th sense is confused in this particular case.

• I personally don't advice anybody NOT to buy a SSD. I encourage them to buy one since I consider it the best investment they can make in order to improve their everyday usage and experience.
• What I advice them, is not to buy an expensive SSD that is faster than what the laptop can currently handle. It's up to them to decide what they will buy, but I provide them with facts and back up my sayings with benchmarking results and numbers not with "6'th" senses or premonitions

• When you buy something, either this is called CPU,RAM,SSD,GPU,etc. or laptop, you expect to perform as stated by the manufacturer. If not there is something wrong and while you are obviously OK with that and accept it, there are others that don't. But as I said before, since the only proof you provided to this thread so far is your sixth sense, don't expect me or anybody else to take you seriously.

• We are not talking about compatibility here, this laptop is SATA II compliant and supports SATA I and SATA II disks (SSDs or HDDs). Get this straight, so I won't have to repeat myself.

• here is a bench mark using Dell's Samsung SSD

http://forum.notebookreview.com/5657351-post15.html

• You can read this thread for more info.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/444979-alienware-owners-samsung-pm800-ssd-trim-now-available.html

• Has it ever occured to you that Samsung SSD from Dell cannot reach 4K random reads and writes above 15MB/s and 25MB/s respectively? I remind you also that they were sold for the R1 as well, not only for the R2.
• Intel SSDs (X25-M,X25-E), OCZ, Mercury,etc... can very well reach and exceed by far those limitis and that's why people who own those SSDs realize that something IS wrong.

• Get your facts straight, use real world applications, benchmarks, whatever you want to call them, perform your own research, present your facts and your reputation will increase as well. Sixth senses and feelings have no place in computer science.

• When I read this comment of yours I convinced myself that you clearly have no idea of what you are talking about.

• In case you haven't heard, there is feature called SMART which provide us with very useful data (apparently to those who know what SMART is) about the status and the health of the SSD. Take a look at the screenshot below

• Now after taking a look at that screenshot and seeing that the status is 100%, the Media Wearout Indicator being 99 with a threshold of 0, on a SSD based on SLC NANDs designed to maintain the same performance on Enterprise environment running 24/7 on servers for years, tell me, do you still believe that it is a well used SSD that operates on a laptop and apparently not 24/7 (check the Power On count)? Seriously?

• Yes, I don't expect an answer any time soon but when was the last time you saw two multinational companies taking responsibility for a problem that contains too many variables that could affect the final result (BIOS, drivers, chipset, SSD, etc) and especially when there is only one consumer involved?
• At this point I need to remind or inform you (pick whatever applies in your case) that the DPC problem on the Alienware M17x-R1 wasn't exclusively Dell's fault, it was mostly Nvidia's, though, it took them both a few months before they decided to acknowledge the issue and fix it.

To OP, if you want an SSD buy the one from Dell, big capacity and it won't reach the 4K reads and writes limit. Don't bother to buy a faster one because you simply wont enjoy it.

 

Stamatisx,

The original thread was a very general open ended question regarding SSD in general. Your topic is very interesting but just one facet of a multi facetted discusion. It is a well know fact that SSD's are far slower than conventional disks during small writes so why get your bun in a knot? What is important is the fact that when large-volume data accesses are required they perform better than HDD. Obviously there has been a change in the algorithm when comparing performance on the R1 vs R2, perhaps firmware or OS changed.

For anyone joining the discussion and wondering whether SSD are right for them, here is a quote from Intel. "Is Intel SSD a good fit for the game-development environment? “Game development is enormously taxing on a PC’s I/O resources because we work with enormous quantities of data—game content, compiled code, and so on,” Sweeney said. “The use of these resources is largely random-access, with frequent writes, which is the worst case for ‘Rusty Spinning Media’ technology like hard drives. Intel’s new SSDs provide an enormous boost for overall I/O performance, and for random-access writes in particular. When compiling thousands of source code files or loading game content spanning hundreds of megabytes, the opportunity for increased performance is dramatic.”

Notice how they don't talk about any peformance increase from 4K read or writes.

 

It's not worth the bandwidth of this forum to respond to those quotes. Those who know will understand.

I stop our conversation here.

 

Golly gee I wonder why you have never had any official help from Dell or Intel. Those of us who know understand, good luck.

Edit, in theory all form factor hardware is interchangeble and should be compatible but that is not always the case. This is why some people avoid building their own system and rather have someone else do it for them. You can drop $10000 on state of the art computer parts and build the perfect system only in the end up with a less than perfect build. Although your question is interesting it unlikely you will get a serious answer from anyone.

 

I am not taking sides here but Falcon I am sorry to say that everything you said is NOT true and you are mis-guiding people without technology knowledge.

SSD perform better at EVERYTHING compared to a 7200RPM HDD.

The question of this thread was Is an SSD recommended and no one here besides you would say No it is not.

Absolutely everyone would say Yes it is and not based on opinion but on facts.

Again I strongly call for the closure of this thread as the truth is that you may be responsible for a user to purchase and HDD and he will regret it.

At the end of the day you also have an SSD and I am sure you would never go back to an HDD.

Please stop mis-informing people base on opinions and start bringing FACTS, Benchmarks, etc... before making any further points.

We all thank you for ruining the credibility of this forum.