Installing an SSD? tips/tricks/benchmarks

I will try that route then. Hopefully newegg will not give me hell for it.

Just did the RMA request with Newegg for a replacement, I hope they will contact me before I send it in.....otherwise this will become much more frustrating.

 

@scook9

Have you tried secure erase? Mine seem to work flawlessly (sig.)

 

The drive is brand new...that should not be necessary

UPDATE: While I still maintain that it should not be necessary, a Secure Erase seems to have recovered the performance. That does not seem like an acceptable solution though....the drive was VERY new and barely used.....

 

is it ok to install an SSD on an overclocked M11x?

 

SSD + overclocked SSD: anyone know if it can be done?

 

I see absolutely no reason why it would not be ok.......

You mean having 2 SSDs? The only way I could think of to overclock an SSD would be to write a custom firmware......good luck with that

 

i meant SSD + Overclocked CPU.

 

No problems with SSD + Overclocked CPU. Just like there are no problems with HDD + Overclocked CPU.

 

is your core i5 OC'd? just curious. i am also looking into getting the same SSD as you actually.

EDIT: Ordered the OCZ Vertex 2 120gb this morning and should get it tomorrow!

 

Quick question.

Which program/method are people using to perform a secure erase?
(I have an oem samsung 810 if that matters)

TIA

D.

 

I am using HDDErase ran from a bootable dos USB stick

It is a pain to do but no one has come up with a way to issue the command from within windows yet (Except for OCZ with their SSD Utility on the Vertex 2 drives)

 

Thanks for the input scook9!

I will download HDDErase now.

D.

 

I already read more than a 20-30 pages referring SSD installation, trick and tips but I am unable to found basic information and what are the steps have to take to have a smooth and fast installation.
What need to be done on bios area, if I have 2 drives which one need to be removed to install the SSD?

I am getting my 160 hd on the next few day and I am preparing myself to do this.

Thank you in advance

 

Couldn't tell you what drive to remove but from desktop SSD installation:

The basics; to have it as a boot SSD follow this guide
How to: Setup SSD boot drive with secondary Hard disc optimization - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

Be sure to set SSD to boot first in the bios boot order if you do that ^^

Disable page file on the SSD, disable or change automatic system restore points, DEFINITELY have your downloads go to the HDD (SSDs have limited read / write, its increasing all the time but still wise)

Those are basic, basic, basics of it. I'll edit the post as I think of more... All in all prepared to be blown away by the speed.

 

The link in the sig of DR650SE has all the tweaks that I use. That is the best single source for all the settings to change in my mind

 

Thanks, Helps to have it all consolidtated.
@ElSerch Check out my RAID 0 sig link. Should find everything you need to get you up and running with some good results.

 

Question regarding Dell's SSDs...

Who makes the 256 GB one?

Is it TRIM compliant?

How does it fare compared to Intel's current SSDs (510 series)?

 

Im pretty sure that Samsung make the drives for these laptops....as to how they compare, the 510 is Sata III 6gb ready (good for the R3 - no benefit for the R2) whereas the Sammys are Sata II 3gb, I think. (dont think Samsung have a Sata III ssd atm.

510's are supposed to get up to 500mb speeds but that will be on Sata III. Cant say what the Samsung Dell drives perform at...

 

Finally I have my first SSD instaled! and it look like that the speed to open the aplications is increased. Now any aplication I open just pop up, amazing!
The removed HD, I try to access via sata adapter, but say that I need to format to have access, the volume does not contain recognized system.
I made a mistake and I remove the wrong HD? I remove the one on 0 port

 

Is HDD erase compatible with erasing C300 drives? - im considering getting x2 256gb for a raid 0 setup and am awre that lack of trim means they will more than likely need to be wiped totally clean every 6mths or so to avoid degredation - unless there is another way?

Do these SSD's in raid really degrade THAT much? - I heard that GC does a good job of making up for lack of trim in this instance.

What d'ya reckon? - am I crazy for even thinking about a raided SSD setup?

 

You can use HDD erase on those,Steve.
But IMO if there's no other way to prevent that degradation i think RAIDing them is a pita. Just put in balance the pro and cons of the situation.

One fails > you loose everything and then what? You'll either have to buy another to regain your RAID setup(but i doubt that) or come back to just using the healthy one as boot drive and add another HDD in the second slot.
It's up to you.
Personally i'm not going back to RAID 0 again.

 

Yeah, I know what you are saying about drive failure. However, they come with a 3 yr warranty and obvioulsy expected life of a SSD is longer than a HDD as no moving parts eh? - it really should be only the degredation/lack of trim that I should be concerned about. Wiping them every 6 mths to restore to new isnt gonna be too much of a pita, that i can see, anyway.

My exisitng setup is Raid so im at just as much risk, if not more because of mechanical drives, of failure.

What a predicament!

 

I am actually getting ready to drop the RAID 0 in my desktop. It is fast and all but I would rather just have the single drive and not have to worry about things like TRIM and multiple points of failure. And the 4k speeds are mostly unchanged with RAID 0 so performance difference will be largely unmeasurable.

I got a few Intel 120 GB drives last week since newegg had a deal on them so may end up selling my 64 GB SF-1222 drives, stay posted

 

how much did you get them for? and i *might* be interested in buying ur SSD's once i get my r3

 

I paid $110 each for them so will be selling them cheaper than that. They are all very lightly used and in perfect condition. I would be selling with the receipt from buying them so you get the warranty.

Not sure on a price yet, will update thread here and make a FS once I have them readyt os ell

 

On top of the PITA of managing a RAID, RAIDing SSD's is well past the point of diminishing returns.

One SSD can max out the SATA2 channel bandwidth on sequential reads (~250MBps throughput), and can come close to maxing out the I/Os per second of the disk controller (35K-40K IOPS from the SSD, on a disk controller that maxes out at 50K). You would need to buy a very expensive SATA-capable RAID card in order to get a disk controller that can handle the IOPS of RAID0 SSDs.

If you are someone that absolutely demands only the top performance from your hardware, then RAIDing SSDs makes sense. But for most people, the diminished returns on RAIDing SSDs doesn't make it worthwhile.

 

ElSerch - Suspect that you had a Raid setup. If true then each of your HDDs will not be usable until you reformat (because Raid spreads the data accross both drives & they're not individually bootable). If you want to keep your Raid setup as backup - then keep both HDDs in a box. If you're done with Raid - reformat & use them for your files.

 

Quick question. Any one know if I run two SSDs that are NOT in RAID 0, will the system run TRIM on both SSDs?

 

That is correct.

If you are running two SSDs as just independent non-RAID drives, then the system will treat them as independent drives - including passing the TRIM command to them.

 

Ok, maybe someone can answer this for me.

I cant seem to get HDDerase to work on my Samsung 810 (oem from dell)

I have tried version 3.3, 4.0 and have switched my HD's to ATA mode in bios, I have even tried the "hot swap" where I boot into dos without HD's then install the SSD then run HDDerase.

Nothing works... It just shows no hard drives installed.

Any ideas??

(M17x-R2, 256GB samsung 810 oem)

TIA

D.

 

There are a few things I had to do on my desktop, first, had to use ATA in Compatible or Legacy mode. Second, had to unplug the drive at boot and plug it in after I was at the DOS prompt (using a bootable USB stick). Once those 2 things were done the drives were visible and not locked.

Maybe those will help you

 

Thanks scook9.

I have tried this and no go.
I will try again tomorrow night after the tech finishes replacing my vid cards (the slave crapped out again..... no idea why)

D.

 

It may be alot easier to do on a desktop than on the M17x.

I use my desktop for all my hard drive maintenance operations.

And for the video card it could just be a poorly seated CF cable.

 

Im actually thinking of splitting my raid set up as well. This way i won't worry about trim. I can load the OS and apps on one SSD and games on the other. Then i can still benefit from trim and have the speed. From my use i don't think im gaining much from the raid set up to make or worth it. Put up some awesome disk benches though.

Total I'll still have three drives on the system. Two ssds's and a 1tb storage drive.

 

I just found that SSD RAID is not worth it as the 4k speeds cannot go much higher anyway and the controller will just get saturated (possibly the reason we are not seeing a raise in 4k speeds)

The data safety is also something of a concern with RAID 0.

As it happens, I am actually dropping all my SF drives in favour of Intel ones. I have a friend that is going to buy my 3 64GB drives and will find someone to sell the Vertex 2 120GB to. I just prefer getting the stated performance no matter what the data - with SF drives you have to use highly compressible data to get advertised numbers. I also really like the reliability of the Intel drives.

 

So what Intel drives you looking for then Scook? 510? x25m g2? or wait for G3?

 

I have all G2's

1 80GB - M11x
1 160GB - M17x
2 120GB - Desktop and HTPC

 

Yea the reliability is something I've been thinking about too. Right now i keep images of my OS backed up weekly. I just don't want to have to wait for an rma to use my system.

 

I am purchasing a Samsung 470 (PM810) to go with my R3.

What kind of games will benefit from the increased R/W speeds of an SSD?

 

Games won't benefit in terms of fps but the will in load times

 

Games like MMOs that have constant disc access like WOW should benefit, specially into logging on into a crowded city or reloging upon a disconnect on boss, etc.

 

What Abula said

Also games like CrystalDiskMark, Atto, HDTune.....lol

 

Yes! And the pcmark series!

 

I recently bought OCZ Vertex 2 120gb SSD drive to replace my 500gb drive that come in my M15x.
I did the custom installation (clean install) on the vertex but after the 5 steps installation (copy, update, etc) the laptop rebooted and after reboot i got the warning "computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed."
I did some research on the internet, someone tells that the problem caused by unrecognized AHCI driver that need to be loaded right before the windows installation. (load driver option on the left lower section in the installation box). I loaded the driver installation file from dell site , also loaded msahci.sys file into my flash drive, but the system did not recognize those file as driver.

This is very frustrating. please someone help mee...
i already updated my M15x BIOS version into A09.
I also tried to enabled 32 bit IDE for my vertex2 in the BIOS option and did fresh install after that, but still got the same warning...

 

What OS are you using?

 

im trying to install windows 7 (i got it from the upgrade program, the M15x shipped with vista). I tried to install vista to vertex, it failed too

 

Those both have the needed drivers for either raid or AHCI, that is not the problem. Could just be a bad drive. Are you seeing any SMART warnings during the post? Do you have a desktop you can test the SSD with?

 

Firmware upgrade fixed it, but i have to buy external enclosure with e-sata connection to do that...

 

if an SSD is "frozen" it can only be "unfrozen/defrosted" with the same PC?

 

Here is my benchmark. I have 2 120gb Intel X25-m in a raid o format. It looks like my 4k qd32 reads are really low. I have followed all the tweaks here. Any ideas what this might be?