M1330 w/ Samsung SSD SATA I

I bought this notebook about a month ago and honestly I think the SSD performance stinks in quite a few areas. Whats even more annoying is the recent announcement of the new SATA II models that Dell is bragging will correct these performance issues that many are having. (They admitted this)

Thats fine and dandy but what about the people who are suffering with the SATA I drive? Will Dell allow us to exchange our SATA I SSD's for newer SATA II models with performance we should be getting and expecting in the first place for the $900 price premium we've paid for it?

I love my M1330, couldn't be more happier with the notebook itself, but something has to be done about these slow SSD's. MTron has been making some really nice disks for a while, which the SATA II is expected to near match in performance. Both literally wipes the floor compared to the SATA I.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/18/consumers-returning-ssd-laptops-in-droves/

 

There's always newer technology coming out..people buying their notebooks now can't expect to have them upgraded to Montevina when it's out in the summer or whatever.

 

How is this disk slow? I have this disk in my HP NC8430 laptop and I'm happy with the performance.

 

Well, I'd really like it if Dell could upgrade my screen, HD, CPU, ram, MB, optical drive, etc since new technology has come out since I bought it a year ago, but are they? should they?

 

Just got mine and it rocks. I can boot vista faster than my core2 duo desktop can boot XP. Everything is snappy, and my own benchmarking shows that it's 10-15MB/s faster than a 5400 laptop drive at their best, synchronous reads. Couldn't be happier. By the way, that link might point to issues with older SSDs, the samsung 64GB in brushed aluminum are fairly new. The older ones, and ones from other mfgs like sandisk don't have nearly the performance. If you think the performance stinks, you must be used to desktop drives, try downgrading to a 5400RPM laptop drive and see if you want the SSD back.

By the way, going to SATA II won't make a difference. There isn't a single drive available today that will hit the 150MB/s cap of SATA I, and some of the features that SATA II brings like NCQ are designed to help out spinning platters.

EDIT: the brushed aluminum drive I'm mentioning is in fact the SATA II version you mention. I still don't think the SATA II makes a difference, but maybe the flash in it is better. Just thought I'd put that out there, so we are indeed talking about two different ballparks, and so future readers of this thread know that this is no longer an issue.

Samsung's 64GB SSD: better, faster, stronger
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/samsungs-64gb-ssd-better-faster-stronger/

 

I have heard that Samsung 64GB SSDs with SATA II feature nearly 100 mb/s read/write speeds. Isn' that a significant improvement?

 

It is indeed significant over the ~40MB/s read/write speeds of the older SATA I series. This is more than twice as fast. You are right that its all about the improvement in the flash rather than the interface itself. It's just Samsung's naming scheme.