Upgrading my m17x R3 - SSD's and possibly more

Hi Guys!

First, I checked the first 5 pages of the forum for any R3 SSD information and didn't find any.
I know I can search, but I'm also going to need a post for the other upgrades that I want to do after the SSD's, so I'm planning to roll it all into one post

So, I have a 3D Vision 120hz Geforce 460m with 2 HDD's in Raid 0.

I believe my harddrives are dying as my performance in games (D3 and Sc2) has recently been affected when the games need to stream data from the drives.

I'm aware from reading this forum in the past that there were some issues with this machine and SSD brands.

Can someone please advise me what SSD's I should be getting?
Also, any advice on what format they should be installed in would also be a big help
(Raid 0, or 1 smaller fast drive for OS with a bigger drive for storage)

If any further information about my build is required please let me know and I'll provide that info.

Thanks in advance,
Greg

 

I personally would stay away from the sandforce based drives, but thats just me. I heard the new Vertex 4 drives are pretty nice. Crucial M4's are also pretty nice and rock solid. I would probably get an SSD and then get a 750gb standard HD for storage.

OCZ 128GB Vertex 4

Crucial 128 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s

 

Crucial M4's and the new Kinsgton HyperX 3K are looking promising. I can't testify to the M4's, but I have a Kinsgton HyperX (one with a sandforce controller) and I can swear I have been nothing but satisfied with its performance. I have never had any lagging issues or BSODs.

 

Thanks a lot guys!

Going the 128 + 750 route is a lot cheaper as well, so thats what I think I'll do.

I'll look up information on both the suggested drives, and I've already been looking at the Crucial M4 today.

I seem to remember that there was issues with these computers and the Sandforce (or non sandforce, but that was the deciding factor) drives...?
Has that been resolved? or am I just crazy to begin with?

 

I have two Crucial M4s, and I've been very pleased with them both. Crucial is a brand of Micron, who makes the chips in a lot of different brands' drives. Being able to make everything in house, including the controller, gives them a leg up on cost and quality control over some other brands. Samsung is the same way, but more expensive.

 

So this is what I'm thinking of getting.

Crucial M4 SSD Micron C400 128GB 2.5IN Solid State Disk Flash Drive SATA3 - $125cdn

Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB 2.5IN 7200RPM 16MB SATA3 - $109cdn

 

I can guarantee you will not be disappointed with your choice. I can personally vouch that the M4 drives are great!

I would suggest that you fit your SSD into the #1 slot and then alter BIOS to boot from the #1 slot as opposed to the #0 slot. The reason is that sometimes on some R3s the #0 slot will not always operate at SATA 3 speeds.

Also I think you will find that the Western Digital is a SATA 2 HD which operates at 3 Gbit/s while SATA 3 operates at 6 Gbits/s. That will not cause you a problem and is exactly what I and a lot of other people have. Enjoy

 

I've got the Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB. Its been great so far. But I've already filled it up 75%.

 

are you 100% sure that the lag in those games is caused by your HDD?
if yes, when was the last time you did HDD tuneup/ defragmenting, when was the last time you clean format your HDD, and are you aware of RAID0 data failure rates but not the HDD failure itself?
just trying to save you some money if in fact your lag is not actually caused by a dying HDD. i still have D3 occassional lags btw, even using my latest rig.
just don't want you to get dissappointed if getting that SSD didn't actually solve your gaming issue.
still i would recommend everybody to use an SSD, windows boot at 20 secs!!! once you go SSD you won't go back to HDD.

so, if you're bent set on getting an SSD, i would really recommend crucial's.

 

You are correct, my search string was for Sata3 drives and it found
"Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB 2.5IN 7200RPM 16MB SATA3GB/S Notebook Hard Drive"

SATA3GB/S, is obviously not 6gb/s.

Thanks a lot for the post/information!
+rep!

You're right, I haven't really done anything to fix the issue asides from deciding to throw money at it.

I know for a fact that my D3 issue is a HDD read/error rate.

It happens at a set interval and lasts a set amount of time and always corresponds to when the game is streaming data off the HDD.

To fix this issue after a lengthy back and forth with their customer support and a number of D3 users (it's a pretty common issue for certain HDD brands it seems) I moved the .mpq folder to a USB stick and just linked it via the command prompt. This fixed the issue about 85% and certainly proved that a faster drive less prone to errors when reading is the fix.

SC2 ran perfectly for a long time, and only now has started to exihbit the exact same issues as Diablo. I haven't really looked into why this is happening. But I'm willing to bet that a full reformat, an SSD to install it on (SC2 - is the only reason I have this computer) and a full driver refresh will more then fix this issue.


Thanks again for your post! +rep!
And if you feel that I can fix it totally by doing a full refresh of my OS and drivers by formatting, I'm not really against doing that before I get the drives to test it out.