SSD vs 7200 RPM HDD

Ok thing is, I only have the BB version of the G73JH, and I did a fresh install to remove all the bloatwares, updated BIOS/vBIOS (Chastitys). Now hardware-wise, I was thinking of replacing the hdd 5400 to either an SSD or just a 7200 RPM HDD. I kinda noticed that when I'm playing games, the loading icon usually lights up (not blinking) when the game stutters for like 2-3 secs, so I thought changing the HDD to a faster one would remove or at least lessen the stuttering. would this work? or does the SSD and 7200 RPM HDD only help on booting/loading times.

 

SSD helps Boot time and load times and if you think of it like that then it does not seem like a lot. But it is.

From turning on my laptop I boot within 20 seconds fully loaded all of my startup programs and gadgets and im running. Also if you need to run updates restarting is no problem at all. If my laptop crashes and I need to urgently get back into an online game im back within a minute.

Then you come to general software load times. Instant. No messing about you ask for something to load its there bing bang bosh. If you want to copy a large amount of data or transfer files they read and write at more than double the speed even with a budget SSD like mine. If you cough up the bucks you can be running very very fast.

Then gaming is next to none, load times are near extinct. Maps and general loading takes a couple of seconds tops. Games like Anno 1404, Deus ex which have horrible load times. Both take seconds instead of half a minute.

It all adds up and its a great upgrade. Next to the 920XM the performance increase and general responsivness are marginal.

Here is my Thread to help you decide http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/601886-g73jh-ssd-newb.html

Compare my cheapo budget SSD to a 7200RPM



I rest my case

 

Holy...that big of a difference? SSD it is. Dyou know any good sites that sells SSDs?

EDIT: Wait, I'm kinda having doubts about the SSD. I know it would improve GREATLY on loading times, but how about the stutters? would SSDs remove it?

 

I just got mine from a reputatable seller on Ebay and it was a very smooth transaction. But you might want to shop around for best price and deal offered.

One thing I will say is do not go for a used one it is worth paying the extra for a new one because without seeing the health of the SSD you dont know if the owner has abused it by repetitive writing/formatting. If you are in the US im sure you can get a very good price on a C300 M4 Intel etc my post gives you information about what SSD is best and also what problem occur from certain SSD, in the UK here prices are a lot higher sadly.

I picked up the Kingston 96GB V+100 mainly because it is literally plug and play it came with no problems at all for a very good price however it is only mid range those results (above) are a lower than on some high performance SSD's which can see upwards of 300gb/s reads in some cases.

 

those results are only mid range?! wow, that's a big dif. I'm craving for an SSD now.

Anyway, chipset-wise, I don't know about those SATA II and SATA III. I don't know if my chipset supports SATA III. Are there even SATA II SSDs and SATA III SSDs?

 

Our JH only supports SATA II but those results ^^ are SATA II and yes its only really mid range but gives good READ/WRITE. You can normally see upto 280Mb/s Read with a higher performance SATA II SSD.

You can buy a SATA III SSD though if you intend to keep it, it will just run at SATA II speeds.

 

After you will run a SSD in a laptop/desktop, you will never want to run anything else.
Luckily for us, we have 2 bays so we can have both ssd speed and hdd capacity
For example, i use the hdd only for storage, archiving and backups. The things i run (programs and games) are on the 120GB SSD.

 

Most computer users are familiar with Hard Disk Drives since they are presently found in most computers and laptops. An HHD stores data on rotating magnetic platters which have different speeds, that's why you often see 5400rpm and 7200rpm associated with Hard Drives. Data is written to and read from these platters by a block of read/write heads, which are controlled by a micro-controller.

Since your information can be stored in different parts on a Hard Drive, the time needed to get and retrieve data, Duplicate File Finder can significantly vary. Keep in mind, these devices are movable mechanical parts so they are prone to all the problems associated with moving parts and can sometimes fail, i.e. crash. Most of us have been there, done that!

 

mine is awesome...worth the money

 

(mods: The poster above polish_pat seems to be a spammer?)

I love how fast an SSD is. It really could add years to your life when you think about all the load times you usually go through, and it's only going to get worse!

I'm on a 120GB Corsair SSD. A lot of newer (and much less optimized) games, like Dragon Age 2, are not quite instant, but a few seconds instead. The latest Photoshop version takes about two seconds to load -- not quite instant, but pretty good.

One thing you should be aware of is that SSD quality seems to vary widely, not just between manufacturers but between firmware versions and different batches. You just don't really know the quality until it dies, though. I would strongly recommend to keep all your important data backed up on a different (secondary) rotating HD, just in case -- or perhaps get Windows to store your Documents folder there if you can jigger that up.

 

He is not, and also making this claim to the mods to get someone in trouble without any reason to back it up is not appreciated here.

The time is takes you to inhale and exhale the program is loaded I would pretty much call that instant, also I would say that a mechanical hard drive is much more likely to fail than an SSD so I would rather keep my documentation backed up on an SSD rather than a Seagate. tyvm.

 

Just a thought about keeping important files ... I think places like Google Docs or any Cloud solution seems quite the best way to back up your important docs.

 

I too have the Best Buy G73JH. The SSD is simply the best upgrade you can do for our laptops. The gains you get are the "best bang for the buck" to say the least. Even If you get one big enough for just the OS, it's worth it. I load up into Windows in 20-30 seconds and all my main programs load up in an instant. I have programs I use the most on the SSD, and all my other stuff on the 500GB hd the laptop came with. The 500GB SSD is now mainly my Steam games drive, with another partition for storage and backups.

Here's some numbers to look at after a fresh install of Windows 7 on my SSD.

 

I have to agree with all the posts here about the SSD.

I have a G73 and replaced the 5400rpm drive with a 7200rpm drive, and really was not impressed with the speed... Took forever to load windows with the 7200.. Took one of the 64gig SSD's out of my desktop, clean reinstall of windows and OMG.. Windows loads in 15seconds tops... also the few games I have on the SSD drive (DDO) loads really fast.

I don't think that you will look back after installing one

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but SSD manufacturers forums (including my own Corsair but also Intel and others) are full of scary stories regarding SSD suddenly becoming bricks or getting mysteriously erased between a shutdown and a reboot.
Also, from a failed HDD you can always recover your data... Good luck doing that from a SSD.

So yea, a SSD is marvelous and I strongly recommend anyone to make the step forward and use one. But, there is always a but, since SSD reliability is still in the stadius of a russian roulette, i strongly advise regular backups on hdd or other media.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is rubbish there is not always a way to recover the data from a mechanical hard drive that fails. I have a friend who's mechanical drive just conked out and he has tried everything including sending it off to a lab to recover the valuable data for his University course and spent hundred of £ to try and recover it and there is nothing they can do for him.

Although some SSD have problems not all and I would still say if you get a reliable one IMO you are just as likely to have problems as you are with a Seagate I personally have got through 2 with my JH within a year and had no issues with my SSD which has been confirmed as reliable and cheap by reviews, clearly power isn't everything with an SSD reliability is just as important.

 

Oh, you can, you can.

A failed hdd means: failed electronics (easy to replace by anyone), failed heads (doable in a lab), failed motors/actuators (also doable in the lab).
The company we are working with in this field, charges 300-400 Euro for a full recovery involving lab work (bad heads/actuators/motors) and less than half if only the electronics has issues. More important, they managed to recover our data each time we used their services

With a SSD, a firmware glitch or controller issue or something - which is actually happening - can blank a ssd without any possibility to recover your data. That is a fact and it is happening more than it should.

If you (and others) had luck in this matter and never encountered a blanked ssd, well... i actually did. It was an intel 320 series and it got the dreaded 8MB bug the second day it was installed in the sistem.
Not to mention that it was before the bug was advertised on the 'net.

 

This is not 100% possible. Because I will happily ask my friend for a copy of his lab report which confirms their attempts to recover his data was not possible with his mechanical drive. He paid the £400 as well for this to be done and lost his money as their is no guarantee.

Which also makes little sense spending out 8 times the cost of the hard drive when you could just buy a top of the range SDD.

 

Ok, you say it may not be 100% possible. But still it is a big enough percent (maybe more than 99%), else there will not exist a business out of data recovery labs.
With a blanked SSD in which the nand cells gets flushed, there is no way to get your data back no matter what.
And it can happen even to the top of the line ssd.

But forum readers, please, don't get scared by my posts. I do use a SSD and I'm not advertising against it.
On the contrary, the speed gain outweighs the reliability risks especially if you employ a solid backup policy.

 

Strange discussion IMO, there´s an outstanding back-up function in Win7, why don´t you bright people use it, and stop arguing about when the "sky will fall"?

SSD´s is the way forward, a bit baffled that people can´t see this, we write year 2011!

For storage use a regular HDD surely, either inside, or external..

Use it for back-up, storage, movies etc.

 

Yea it doesn't look like you can't save a copy of those important files to an external HDD.