M17X-R3 dual-SSDs: worth it?

Hello everyone,

I've been browsing these forums since the Intel SB fiasco delayed my initial m17x-r3 order (which was then cancelled by my US agent) and finally I have my r3 delivered about a week ago and absolutely loved it. The original specs are: 2820QM/4GB RAM/320GB stock HDD/460M + 3D/Nebula Red.

I then got myself an Intel 510 128GB SSD and did a clean install. After several days and numerous BSODs and troubleshooting I finally located the problem(s): one with my realtek SD card driver, the other was most unexpected: my stock HDD . I tried several diagnostic tools and they all indicate that my stock HDD's spin-up time are WAY too low and temperatures are too high (I moved it to HDD module 1 but I don't think it would cause such a problem) which sounds really astounding but I obviously have no choice so its taken out of the system.

Now the thing is I need a second internal hard drive for documents and my steam games. I have a 3TB WD USB3.0 external hard drive for all my other data so I don't really need one with huge capacity and low rpm. I have enough budget to consider a second SSD but i'm undecided. Here are the several questions I currently have in mind:

a) Should I go for a 500gb Seagate Momentus XT hybrid, or should I get another SSD? I'm leaning towards the SSD because frankly I'm scared by the fact that my stock HDD have failed so ridiculously quickly and suspect there might be overheating problems for HDDs on module 1.

b) Will two SSDs from different manufacturers work alright together?　(no RAID here just gonna use ahci)

c) Are the Crucial M4 SSDs the best value for money among the sata3 ssds? I'm living in the UK so will probably purchase from amazon. They have the 256GB M4 at £350 and the 512GB model at £690. The 512GB model is much cheaper than their OCZ counterpart but £690 is still a lot for a hard drive. I can afford it but of course also want my money spent wisely. In terms of reliability & futureproof do you think the 512GB model will be worth it? Any input would be appreciated.

 

In all fairness an SSD has a higher failure rate than a standard drive. Plus if it does fail forget getting the data off it. I'd say stick with a standard hard drive, I have two in mine and dont have any issues with either. What I would say though is that your SSD should be in port #1 as that is the port which always runs at 6GB/S according to these forums.

 

Unless you have a Sata II drive right? They do not run at 6GB/S

 

Get a 750gb Scorpio Black, that is what I am going to do when I get my M17X in June. I am going to have a Crucial M4 as my main drive, and the two are quite similar. The XT will not really increase load time because the SSD part is for booting up and programs like FireFox. Games will actually load slower because the hard drive part is slower, and you aren't using it as a boot drive. SSD's will work fine from different companies but just get a hard drive.

 

I am thrilled with the performance of my Samsung 810 and 750GB Scorpio Black.

To answer your question, I would say no for dual SSD. Not really worth the money. Especially if you are not going to raid them. I would use an SSD for booting and swap file and a larger fast drive like the Scorpio Black for storing files. I don't notice a difference between game play on either the SSD or Scorpio on my m17x R3. There is point of diminishing returns when it comes to data access. I have not found the Scorpio Black to be a bottleneck in game performance, at all.

Both drives are more than acceptable.

Here are the results from last night's disk benchmarking:

Samsung SSD

Scorpio Black 750GB

USB 3.0 1.5TB

 

I have a Corsair 256gb Extreme SSD and a 1 tb Secondary Samsung Drive, IMO this is the best combination, I love it, way better then my R2 setup. I get a Fast Boot Times, 256gb of SSD storage is more then enough for all of my games and applications and andhe 1 TB drive is plenty for my downloads and media.

 

I agree, a ssd is great as a boot drive but I dont see the value in having a pair of them.

 

I had tried the Corsair F120, returned it after experiencing issues from the start. The drive kept freezing while opening applications, even just apps like Firefox. I ended up going with the Momentus XT and quite honestly I do not see a performance difference in day to day tasks between it and the F120 SSD. The Momentus is a very fast drive, Windows boots up instantly, and my MMOs load insanely fast. Obviously the SSD is faster performing other tasks, but for the price the Momentus is a good compromise between SSD-like performance and storage capacity. I will probably reconsider an SSD drive in the future once the price drops.

 

In my 2nd week now with the Corsair x256 Extreme Series SSD (256 GB) and it's working fine thus far, no real complaints from me.