OCZ Vertex drop-in replacement?

Hey guys. I'm most likely going to splurge on an OCZ OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 60GB SSD drive in the near future. Is this a simple drop-in replacement on my P-7811? I'm aware of the tweaks, FW uopdates, etc I need to do. I'm more concerned with it dropping right in the bay. Do I need other hardware, etc, like you do with the Samsung drives?

Thanks in advance!

 

No you do not need any other hardware. It will fit perfectly into the bracket and into the bay. Nice choice of SSD, I want a 120GB Vertex next.

 

Very cool. Thank you!

 

Just keep in mind before you "drop it in" and start using it that you're gonna want to update the firmware. That won't be hard as you can just put it in as the secondary drive. One question, I don't know if the 7811's do RAID0, but if they do why not spend a bit more for 2 30GB's and RAID them.

 

I just got a 120gb vertex and put it in my 6860fx, and all is well. It came with 1199 firmware, which is apparently two versions behind, as there was 1275 and now its 1.10. grrrrrrrrrr

Too bad it didn't come with that little jumper thingy required to do a firmware upgrade, otherwise I might've done so.

 

From what I read that jumper is no longer required. Not sure if its for new drives with new boards or not. You didn't feel enterprising enough to wrap some aluminum foil around the pegs to "jumper" them? The performance difference is that big I'd say its worth it. I suppose you could solder them together too.

 

Have you not got an old motherboard or 3.5" drive which will have some you can use?

 

Any benchmarks! It would be nice if someone will post them or just a smal review how it with OCZ Vertex

 

There is a review on the home page!!! check out the hardware forums and the ssd sticky for some real info and read anandtech's latest SSD article. it's all there jsut gotta look...

There is a good chance of data curruption ussing the 1199 firmware. if you do back up daily at least. I would make it a point to upgrade to latest firmware... also the latest manufactured drives don't need the jumper. I def wouldn't solder the pins! how would you get it off!?

 

Just ordered the same Vertex (needs some weeks, before it will hit my 7811 fx though).
Can we collect some input and experiences here usable for all those bold enough to go SSD already.
I will use the Vertex as the OS drive and put my favorit game on it.
All the other stuff I am planning on putting on the inbox HDD (which I will use as a slave - if this is possible...) Has anyone done this allready, and if yes, please let tell, how it worked

 

I will be getting mine soon. I'll keep everyone posted.

tului, I have a 200gb drive in the secondary drive bay for data, so no RAID here.

 

One question I had... My OS and apps are currently on the stock 200gb Seagate Momentus. OS is on a 100gb partition and apps on a 100gb partition. Can I transfer all that to the new drive using Acronis, even though the partition sizes would be different (30/30 on the 60gb drive), or is it highly recommended to start fresh? I'd rather not start over again. That Seagate drive was just completely reformatted with a fresh OS install just a few months ago.

 

For a single blob of solder you'd take it off about the same way you put it on. With the iron

 

I have samsung slc for os and app drive and use my 7k200 stock for any other crap. I'm thinking of replacing the stock drive with a vertex though to run my games faster... and use stock drive to back up my system or maybe external data drive...

 

Well, I just pulled the trigger on my 60gb Vertex. $201 delivered from TigerDirect. Should be here in a few days.

 

Coulda got it 189.00 at newegg haha sorry i'm a little late. scroll about half way down...

 

Gratzi to your Vertex Baby!
I bought mine last week in germany at Amazon. Nice deal though a bit more expensive than your's in the states. Got it for € 180, now it is on Amazon for € 240

I am planning to start completely fresh, no transfers, etc.
As it reads, the fresh install of OS is much quicker with a SSD anyway, so I'd rather spend an hour longer, but am sure, that it is fresh and clean.

The setup you have in mind is exactly what I am planning to do. As I am not a geek at all, would be most appreciated, if you give some summary of your install and set up experience.

By the way, does it make sense to partition a SSD at all?? (unless you have 2 dual boot OS on the drive)??
If it actually makes sense, would it thus make sense to seperate OS and apps/game between 2 partitions?

Many thanks!

 

It really doesn't make any sense at all to partition an ssd the entire drive is the same speed and ~.1ms access times (fragmentation is not an issue). the only reasons that make sense for partitioning is keep media (AKA music/pictures/movies) seperate, that way if you OS is currupt all your data in untouched when u reinstall (apps that require installs will still need installed). or if you are dual booting. I peronally don't bother with it.

 

Here is some good stuff on partitions...

 

I have my SSD split up.
C: is protected by EWF
E: is a MFT partition

I also have a bit of unallocated space leftover, but it doesn't matter because that space is being used anyways, even if it's 'unallocated' in windows.

 

Just curious... What does that calculation mean in your sig?

 

It means that by using MFT on my SSD I hit transfer speeds over 1 gigabyte per second.

However I recently discovered through daily use that the EWF protected C: partition actually transfers data faster than the MFT partition. Next time I reformat, my setup may be a bit different, and I may wave goodbye to MFT due to the success Ive had with EWF.

 

How is that even possible... There is no ssd with a write or read speed that even hit the Sata2 limitation of 300mb/s... do you have a bench of hitting those speeds?

 

Yeehaw I found a jumper thingamajig in an old computer (pulled it off the cd-rom), and was able to flash my Vertex painlessly. So glad that our Gateway P laptops have two hdd bays.

Now to re-install Windows again...

 

Yes I have several benchmarks hitting those speeds. The speeds are insane because MFT is mainly utilizing the RAM, and essentially benchmarking the ram, even though you are technically benchmarking and using the partition on the SSD. The EWF is even faster because 100% is going to the ram and not the SSD, then when I want to save to the SSD I simply run my Save batch file.

There are also several raid setups with 3-4 SSDs getting close to or passing 1 gigabytes per second, without the use of MFT or EWF.

 

It is symantics, 3 GigaBits or 300 or so megabytes............

 

Post edited for clarity.

 

So I've got Vista64 back up on my Vertex with 1.1 firmware, and I have a quick question... is it good to be checking the 2nd box that says "further improves disk performance" ???:


The reason I ask is because I've noticed that setting is always un-checked by default in all the computers I've seen, and I've always been wary of that warning about dataloss if the power is cut. It does appear to cut my cold boot time to about an even 40 seconds, which is the fastest I've ever had Vista be completely loaded and ready to go. With the laptop's battery in place and charged, I shouldn't have to worry if the ac power cuts out, right?

And going from 1199 to 1.1 firmware cut my drive's capacity from 121 down to 119 gigs. Though I already knew about this "feature" from reading the ocz forums.

 

Yes Advanced Performance should be enabled.

As long as your battery is charged it can be considered a battery backup.

 

I believe that affects write back/write through setting of the cache, but I could be wrong and am too lazy to look it up. That would make sense as to why its off by default though.

 

Yippi, mine will be here after the weekend.
Thus, I have to bombard you with some questions, thos that have allready successfully installed.
Regarding the Vertex stuff, I will figure that out in the OCZ Boards, none the less some questions from a "noob"

I am planning to use the Vertex as the drive for Vista 64 (incl. necessary drivers, etc.) and LOTRO. All the rest I will put on the allready on board HDD.

1. Flashing the SSD with the 1.1 firmware: do I just need to slide the SSD in the second (now empty) HDD bay? Do I need a jumper now, or is it possible to flash without? Well hopefully I will figure out how to flash then.
2. Master (SSD)-Slave (7k2 HDD) set up: Does the location of the SSD and the HDD in the respective drive bays matter? Or can I just after flashing install Vista on the SSD (in whichever bay it sits)? Should I take out of the bay the HDD when installing Vista on the SSD (I would like to keep one partition of the HDD with a Vista/Windows 7 backup installation)?
3. Dual Boot ability: As said, the SSD will be the prime OS system, but I would like to keep a Vista or a Windows 7 installation on the HDD specific partition (and use the remainder of the HDD for data, etc. Anything I should be aware of while setting this up?
4. Anything else I should be aware of, that you guys have experienced while setting up/installing/running the SSD?

Many thanks for any guidanxce and sorry, if some of these questions seem "mindblowing", but I rather "ask first and shoot" than "shoot and ask later".

 

Regarding the firmware:

There are 3 major versions in circulation: 1199, 1275 & 1370 (which OCZ also designates as 1.1).

If you get one with the older 1199 firmware, like I did, then the only way to flash it (at least for now), is to put the jumper on. With the jumper on, just put the ssd into the 2nd drive bay and boot into Vista from your main hdd like normal. When you're in Windows the Vertex will be detected as something with a funky name like YATAPONG or whatever. Download the 1.1 firmware from OCZ and run the "start" executable from the folder with your Vertex's drive size. When its done turn off the machine and take off the jumper. This method will ERASE everything off the Vertex.

If you get one with the 1275 firmware, you can also flash like mentioned above, or... OCZ just recently released a way where you burn an iso boot disk, and when you boot with it, it'll flash your drive, AND will not erase the data. But it is a BETA, and could still mess up data. http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55054

Also, I think some people have gotten drives with the latest 1.1 (1370) firmware on it already.

I don't know anything about having two Vista OS installations on at the same time...

 

Read red replies

 

So basicly you have a RAMdisk that you save to ssd? sounds like you could do the same thing with hdd if you wanted. y waist money on ssd if thats what u do? and yeah RAID ssd's is a whole nother story you can pretty much see infinite gains RAIDing more and more ssd's...

 

Yes that is correct, and for SSDs you want to enable this to help boost the write speeds.

No it is not a RAMdisk. MFT is software that can be used to create a MFT partition(s) on a SSD. The difference between the MFT partition and a regular partition is that (In simplest terms IIRC) the MFT translates ALL the reads/writes into sequential reads/writes. So where a normal random read or write would be slower and just go to the disk, instead it is sent through the RAM where it is then reconfigured to be sequential, so you get extremely fast transfer speeds.

The EWF should not be considered a RAMdisk either, because the only data that is going into RAM are the writes.

You CANNOT do the same thing with a HDD, even if you copied the EWF setup for a HDD you will NOT have the blazing read speed or the extremely fast access time of a SSD, you will be stuck with the slow HDD access time and the slow HDD read speed. It is not a waste of money in any way, shape or form. Everything we have been discussing is basically to improve write speeds, since that is the weak link of SSDs. Where they shine and the reason people buy them is because the access time and read speed. What I have done with my complicated setup is basically removed the weak link from the SSDs.

I rarely write to my SSD, Im ALWAYS reading from it. Windows starts insanely fast, programs open insanely fast, and programs run insanely fast. Everything is instant and I never have to wait for any delays or any kind of random freezing like you see with a HDD. Once you change over to a SSD, HDDs will feel slow, delayed, and you will never want to go back. TRIM will be out soon and fully supported, and once the prices are low enough for the average consumer for large capacity SSDs, HDDs will be a thing of the past.

The gains with SSDs are not infinite, most are maxing out their controllers around 600-700 MB's with 3 Vertex's (And have found that adding a 4th Vertex may show nearly no gain). There have also been several reports of RAID cards are overheating because the SSDs IOps are much higher than the cards are used to seeing, most were not made to run at their maximum throughput at all times.

Hope that clears things up. My EWF and MFT partitions are both faster than a RAMdisk (I tested with RAMdisks when I first got my SSD).

 

@ Mormegil83: many thanks for your guidance!

Another question, as I get quite confused by several posts in the OCZ forum, heading in several difefrent directions:

I read, that before the Vertex can be recognized and aligned, one needs to change the Sata setting in the Bios to Ide. Is this correct?
If it is correct, the steps to loading OS would be:
1. bios setting change from sata to ide
2. slide SSD into bay
3. power up and change SSD alignments via Vista / partitioning
4. reboot
5. install Vista on SSD via Recovery CD (will the Recovery CD endanger data on the original HD if left in the bay?)

At what stage here, would I reset in the bios Ide back to Sata, if I have to reset it at all?

I will first check, what FW is on the SSD. If it is acceptable, I will wait for OCZ to figure out a more userfriendly way of flashing than the current one via jumper (you still need one), etc.

Many thanks!

 

Good points. SSD discussion has been so focused on random writes recently i forgot the main reason even I got one was for the reads

 

I just got the 60gig version (should be here tomorrow), I only plan on installing vista 64, adobe cs3 suite, and a couple other sign programs. I am going to set my 320gb hard drive for temp files and games. That way I can try to keep writing to the drive minimal.

 

No that is not correct. The only reason people use the IDE mode is because when they try to install XP they get a blue screen. They get a blue screen because the SATA drivers are missing from the XP cd. They are supposed to slipstream the sata drivers onto an XP cd, to AVOID using IDE mode.

If you are installing Vista, you do not need to worry about IDE mode or alignment. Vista has SATA drivers already included, and Vista will align automatically. You simply need to follow steps 2 and 5 only.

Vista will not endanger your data on the other hard drive, however you must be sure you are selecting the correct drive when you install Vista. Choosing the incorrect drive or modifying the other drive in any way could very well result in data loss. If you want to be safe, just pull the other drive. You'll only add about 5 minutes to the time it will take to do all this, and that 5 minutes may very well be worth peace of mind.


arstron: Be sure to check out the OCZ forum for tips/tricks/tweaks. There are several more things you can do to mimize writes from the OS drive (Turning off indexing, superfetch, etc.)

 

Ok, thanks to all the help.
Got my Vertex yesterday, FW is 1275. I will not upgrade FW untill there is a save way to do this without flashing.
Installation and aligning was pretty easy (actually I don't know, why I posted so many questions here retrospectively speaking).
Slide in bay, I had to change to IDE in Bios for it to get detected, boot into an active Vista, follow the aligning steps in the OCZ Forum, reboot, install Vista on the new drive, tweak as explained in the OZC forum, and its done.
Took me yesterday ca 2,5 hours all together (including 2 Vista installs, as I had mistakenly formated my first one .

I am a noob in this respect, and it has been pretty easy I must say, I expected much worse! Single important thing, know which OCZ thread you want to look at while you're setting up your Vertex (there are about 3-4 you need).

Many thanks to all the help!

 

Same here. I aligned mine, and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7. Definitely a noticeable improvement in performance! For $200 it was well worth it!

I was lucky, my drive came with the 1370fw, so I am completely up to date there.

Out of curiosity, what kind of transfer speeds are you guys getting? Thanks!

 

I have to check again later, if I make it out of the office in time, but compared to those on the OCZ Forum, very much in line/at the top end of single 60Gb Vertex:
Read Speed (only one I am interested in right now) tops out at 230 (with the majority of OCZ tweaks applied).

Great with your FW, I will wait a bit before I even think about upgrading. Only thing I remember was the Trim that came with the latest FW, and I can't use Trim anyway

 

Yeah, I'm not getting int eh 200's for read speeds. I'm hovering around 190 I think (at work now, and my memory sucks). What tweaks can I look at to squeeze more speed out of it? THANKS!

 

Hi there,
I followed this guide:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=318773#post318773

I did all the tweaks until Ramdrive (will do this later in the week).
The offset I choose was 128.
I run it on Vista 64.

I did not run Atto before I tweaked, so I cannot really say if the tweaks helped a lot. The drive is pretty clean install: Vista, SP1, the essential drivers, and LOTRO was loaded last night. Will make another run tonight with LOTRO on it.
With the new FW you've got, you should also be around 230.
Maybe Windows 7 is an issue? Which version are you on? (I had 7057 on mine and the up-to-date graphic Beta Drivers, none the less, the Graphic card got so hot after ca 1 hour with LOTRO, that my system went black screen. Since this happened several times, I stay away from Windows 7 for the moment).

 

I'm on 7077. I'll look into it later tonight. Thanks!

 

Due to some posts in the OCZ Forums, Windows 7 and Vista SP1, there is not much difference performance wise yet with a Vertex (in fact there is basically none...).

 

128 Sectors or 128KB

You do not have to change to IDE mode for Vista. That was a mistake. You DID read my post... right?

If Vista did not recognize your SSD, you were doing something wrong.

SSDs work great with Windows 7 and it will be the first OS to support Trim. You shouldnt see any noticeable performance improvement/decrease in the benchmarks when going from OS to OS. If you do, something is setup incorrectly. When Trim is finally released with 7, 7 will have an advantage when it comes to long-time performance of SSDs.

 

128 sectors (is supposed to be best for gaming performance on games like LOTRO, etc.)

I've read your answers, but must admit I forgot them with all the OCZ Forum Threads I have read as well prior to installation.

I had to change to IDE mode, as Vista would not recognize the Vertex after placing it in the bay. Well after I did change to IDE, it did not detect the old system anymore. Before getting too much into it, I just did a clean install of Vista and I haven't checked since then, what mode I am in (IDE or Sata or AHCI..)
As the Vertex works nicely (tops out ar 220 reads with everything tweaked and installed), I rather leave all the settings as they are right now (don't fix it, if it's not broken ). Strange thing is, that some processes seem to be running over my secondary 7.2k disk as well, when I am just playing LOTRO and have nothing else going on that should demand the attention of the 7.2k disk.
Anyway, new gaming experience is great, I am a happy customer and the installation seems to have gone pretty well and fast.

Thanks for all the help and regards

 

I already did most of the tweaks anyway, wether I am using xp, vista, or my windows 7 beta, I like a plain jane operating system.

I would say I have read over 100 threads on the ocz forums the past few days, as well as various other sites. After a couple reformats, I have decided to stick with xp for now. It just runs better, plus I was reminded that half the programs I need dont work on vista 64. This program though, is great for new and experienced tweakers, ive always done mine manually, but this just made it so easy:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49779&highlight=tweak+tool

Here are some of the tweaks that I remember, that I have done (although all in the tweak utility are done as well).
alignment set to 128kb
Indexing, disabled
Hibernation disabled
System restore, disabled
firefox cache moved to HDD
firefox downloads default to HDD
pagefile, off (although I might move it to the HDD)
all temp files moved to HDD
Entire Documents and Settings folder moved to HDD
default program files install directory set to HDD

I have two partitions setup, a 10 gig for the OS (using just 2 gigs) and a 50 gig partition for programs, which right now only has combat arms, steam, and world in conflict installed on. I plan on installing flexisign and adboe cs3 on that partition as well and everything else to my 320gb hdd. I also plan on doing a second install of world in conflict on the 320gb hdd to test and see if there is any speed diffrence in game.

Thats all I remember off the top of my head, but I am sure I missed a couple. So far my 6860fx is extremely fast (everything else is stock), I feel my 60gb vertex was well worth the money and am now considering a raid of vertex's for my work computer.

edit: Here is my findings with World in Conflitcts in game benchmark. Resolution is set to 1440x900 and graphics detail is set to very high. I am using Doc's 185.68 nvidia xp driver.

With windows and WiC on the SSD: Average - 18, Minimum - 7, Maximum - 39

With windows on the SSD and WiC on the HDD: Average - 18, Minimum - 7, Maximum - 39

I would like to note, the load times was twice as fast on the SSD. I didnt expect much difference in performance here, however you never know until you try.

Test with windows on the HDD and WiC on the HDD Average - 21, Minimum - 9, Maximum 42

Test with windows on the HDD and WiC on the SSD Average -21, Minimum - 9, Maximum 48

This test really supprised me, both windows installations are fresh with indexing, off, but page file and all the cache tweaks still enabled, I wonder what exactly is causing this...

Last edit:
I went back the the windows on the SSD and turned pagefile on, set it to 8,000mb on my HDD. Here is the results:

With windows and WiC on the SSD: Average - 21, Minimum - 9, Maximum - 45.

I guess the page file does help even with 4 gigs of ram, however the only difference the SSD will make for gaming is faster load times.

To add to this, here are some results from testing load times on flexi sign (a graphics program for sign designs).
The PC is a core 2 duo E6550 @ 2.33ghz, with 4gigs (3 useable) ddr2 800 running xp sp3. Using nForce 630i onboard video.

The Laptop is using a core 2 duo t5550 @ 1.83ghz (64 kilobyte primary memory cache 2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache), with 4 gigs (3 useable) ddr 667 running xp sp3. Using a geforce 8800gts with 512 dedicated ram.

The file I am using to test on both computers is a 310 mb tiff file, with the file loaded onto each computer directly.

Test one is opening the file in flexi sign:
Laptop: 0:00:30
PC: 0:02:20

Test two is "ripping" the file, the computer preparing the file to be sent to the printer:
Laptop 0:02:20
PC: 0:13:38

Saving the file to the same drive:
Laptop: 0:00:18
PC: 0:00:33

The drive doesnt seem to be a lot of help for gaming, but looks like it can save me a ton of time for graphics desining. So far I am extremly pleased with my purchase. I would say its money very well spent.