256GB New SSD, What do we know?

I have the same Firmware(please let me know if you get an update) as you and I called Dell( and I emailed samsung) to see if there was any update and they are supposed to call samsung and get back to me today. but after I used the SSD tweaker tool it seemed to make quite a difference.

 

I ve got a 1530 with samsung 128ssd and it is GREAT FAST SILENT
boots vista(clean install no bloatware ), in 20 sec after os selection

 

ssd tweak tool is a tool designed to help you adjust the settings on your computer for an ssd

Code:

http://members.westnet.com.au/elpamyelhsa/elpamsoft/SSDTweaker.zip

here is what it looks like:


now if you have vista you may want to play around with some of the other setting, but for me on windows 7 7077 I just checked the one box.

Also in case you do not know how to do a screen shot just press print screen then go to paint and paste what you copied. if you want just that window then you can press alt+print screen for just the active window. show us your results before and after ssd and see if perhaps you computer just needed some adjustments. Also I turned off page file, defrag,indexing, and system restore, since the studio has a least 4gb of ram you should be ok unless you run maya or some complex picture in PS

One other thing I noticed about this xps 16 is that the RGB screen is better then my dell 30inch 3007 WFP that I paid 2k for when it came out. I heard the reviews but I was surprised at the quality of the screen compared to the to other laptops I own as well as the Monitors I have.

 

anyone have any word on the firmware update? After I updated to windows 7 rc 64 bit from build 7077 I noticed a large drop in my read rate with the same settings, they said win7 is supposed to be optimized for ssd but its not, at least not yet. hopefully the oem or RTM will be.

 

I think it's going to take a while. I will probably follow-up Monday to see what happened and why I haven't heard back.
I think what it will take is to keep pushing the OEMs to start making them available from multiple customers. It may take months, I doubt we will see any action anytime soon. We don't even know how Samsung is releasing them or with what frequency.

There is a VBM1801Q drive floating around. I'm curious what other firmwares there are and what they do. The problem is this info right now is very internalized.

 

ok Guys I have some really weird results and I need you to test to check to see if you have the same. for some reason I get faster test for CrystalDiskMark in Safe mode, which would make me think some driver is causing a slow down of my disk but I cant seem to find anything, so those of you that have this drive can you test and see if you have faster results in safe mode. Please run the test more than once to insure accuracy

One more thing and this is a little off subject but for Boris since you are running win 7 7100 do you notice that when you shut down or restart just before you shut down you get that 1/2 sec delay and then the waiting for background things to close with nothing listed? Well if you are getting that I noticed it is from my bluetooth when I dont start that software it shuts down faster, anyone know a work around?

 

Here are my benchmarks for my Dell Samsung 256GB SSD...

This is on an established OS with software installed and running in the background, also dual booting so got some space used up.
ZoneAlarm and Avast AV were left running so it's an 'as is' kind of benchmark.
All default settings.

Performance went down a little over time but not much and the real world performance is great. Having to deal with slow transfers to non SSD storage is real downside to SSD's.

System:
Studio XPS 16
Windows Vista64 Home Premium
C2D 2.66
4GB DDR3
Samsung 256GB PM800 (firmware:VBM15D1Q)

 

I haven't tested it yet but I don't find that hard to believe at all. Remember windows is consistently polling the I/O performance counters. Then you have substantial drive activity going on when doing nothing when in Windows. There may even be some effects on how the software itself runs. In fact I'd expect it, but I will check to see how big a gap.
BTW, you're results look quite better than mine in some benchies. But I think as we use it over time we will see some pref drops.

I actually didn't notice that. For me, bluetooth is one thing I didn't load on on Win7. I also disabled it on Vista. Thanks for the heads up though. it's likely the way the service itself is shutting down, so I doubt it's likely there will be an easy workaround. There might be a reg tweak to automatically kill processes that hang but don't know if it's worth doing for and side effects. Right now I have a NDAS driver that is causing a 2 1/2 minute shutdown problem when using wireless LAN so consider yourself blessed.

 

Thanks for the reply. Also I was thinking of doing a clean wipe and seeing how if that changes anything. Here is the program:

Code:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=129

From this guide:

Code:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=11

The only question I have about this, is the bios options in dells studio xps1640 (a6) options contain only ata and I cant remember the other option right now but is the ata option the same as legacy?


Boris does it seem odd to you that you cpu usage is at 14% and 23%? mine was about after I installed 7100 but before it was like 1-4%

 

Yeah, i didn't quite understand the cpu usage either. Unfortunately been too busy on other stuff to check into it. Maybe something else was running or interfering. I did have AV and zonealarm running.

One of the other reasons we never see the potential of SSD's on these laptops is power savings, specifically EIST.
That may be why going into safe mode looked better, certain OS powersaving options get disabled.
See here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-power,2170.html

If you find an easy method to disable them all, then let me know, what I tried in the BIOS and software like Rightmark hasn't worked.
It's also well known that multi-threading suffers from power savings, effecting performance of high CPU usage apps.

 

If you find out some tweaks to turn off the powersaver features let me know because I'm getting a X25-M 80GB in a couple days.

 

This is the one you're talking about, correct?

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...x?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=341-9999#Overview

If this is the Samsung drive, then why is at almost $ 200 cheaper?

And is it compatible with the E6500?

 

Anyone with any advice?

 

I have the same question as previous poster.

I see the following on the Dell web site right now (09/23/2009):

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=us&l=en&cs=&k=256gb+ssd&cat=all

256 GB Serial ATA Solid State Hard Drive
Manufacturer Part# J246M
Dell Part# 341-9999
Price: $479.99

256 GB Encrypted Serial ATA Solid State Hard Drive for Dell Latitude E6400 Laptop
Manufacturer Part# VG2N2
Dell Part# 341-8981
Price: $749.99

256 GB Encrypted Serial ATA Solid State Hard Drive for Dell Latitude E6400 Laptop
Manufacturer Part# VG2N2
Dell Part# 341-9942
Price: $479.99


So I'm curious what is the difference between the last two drives, except for the price? I presume there is none.


Second, it would be nice to know what actual drives does Dell sell under J246M and VG2N2 and which one is better. I'm ordering one of each at $480 and try to do my own benchmarking, but it if someone knows the answer already, it would be greatly appreciated.