Should I even bother with an SSD?

Hi,
I appreciate if anyone could help out an SSD-noob here:

I have a dell XPS 15 with a sandy bridge quadcore and 8GB ram running factory-installed Win 7. I use my laptop for work and need maximal reliability as any down time and lost data cost me dearly. My work is ~80% MS office applications, pdf viewing/making and web browsing, but the remaining ~20% include photoshop and corel occasionally with huge files, as well as database analysis and video encoding. I do not game. My current HDD is a 7200rpm 750GB WD with weekly automatic back-ups to a NAS in RAID 1. The speed of things is ok, but I won't mind going faster...

So given all this:

1) Do you think I should venture into the SSD era? (If it matters, I also have a caddy and I can easily replace the optical drive with the existing HDD and use that together with the SSD in my laptop as additional backup/data drive/etc.)


2) If yes, I like a drive with a size of at least 120GB, in SATA III mode and preferably not costing much higher than $200. Anything other than Intel 510, or crucial M4/Micro C400 to consider? As I said, reliability is of essence...

Thanks!
Mazyar

 

If you don't feel the speed is getting into your way, I would say don't bother.

If you have a bit money to burn, why not ? For reliability, stick to the tried and true like G2/320 or Samsung 470.

 

1. You'll notice a huge difference with an SSD (I just bought an M4 128GB), so yes, get an SSD.

2. Replace your CD/DVD with your HDD, and use this to backup your important data (daily or whatever you feel necessary) - if you ever have a problem with your SSD, it should be possible to sort it so you can boot from your HDD.

 

Good news to hear that you already do the most important step in maintaining reliability: consistent backups.

Sata III ssd's will all show you a faster work mode than your hdd, especially in PS and such. SSD's come in several flavors, 25nm and 34nm. As far as everything I have read about them, the 25nm give a lifetime of about 3000 write cycles, the 34nm about 5000. That being said, I haven't seen anyone on here that have exhausted their ssd cycles, and some of the members here have been using them for years.

The other factor is the controller. For the last couple of years, Intel has seemingly been the most reliable. The X-25m was the stalwart of the Intel line. 34nm and the most (by many accounts) reliable controller, along with a great toolbox to help optimize it.

However, IIRC the new 320 uses the same Intel controller, but 25nm Nand. The 510 uses 34nm Nand, but a different controller. The people that I have seen on here with the 320 seem very happy, and I am very happy with my 510. So who knows?

I have read a lot about the M4/C400, and even the C300. The owners of them all seem to love them too. Disclaimer: I haven't been following as close lately, so I may not be as informed as I should, but it seems to me that you would be safe with any of these. I bought the 510 because 1) it was on my short list and 2) It was the available when I bought it, and the M4/C400 wasn't. So my decision was made for me. But I think I would have been just as happy with those if they had been available to me.

I agree with the other poster, yes, you should get a caddy, and use your hdd for another backup. It will ease your mind, and with your other backup, you will have not only a mobile backup in case you ever hose your system, but who doesn't love double redundancy, especially when something goes wrong. I, like you, use my laptop for work. When something goes wrong, I don't want to find out that the night before my only backup was corrupted.

In short, I have timed some of my workload using a Scorpio Black, and then the same workload using a SSD. Extrapolating the results out over the course of a year, I saved in work time alone enough pay for the drive in less than half a year. That was the clincher for me. Time is money, and if it doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense. For me, it makes sense. Good luck on your decision, and please let us know what you decide to do. And if you get one, let us know how you like it.

 

I recommend the Intel 510 series 250GB and the Intel 320 series 300GB drives for your use (along with your 750GB as the data drive - continue doing your backups! ).

You will see an immediate (and real) improvement with your Office/PDF/Database documents and depending on how much you use the scratch disks in PS, a noticeable improvement there too.

A clean install is highly recommended and I also suggest learning how to move your 'users' folder to the mechanical drive (leaving as much free room as possible on your SSD) with the following link:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...gramdata-folder-separate-drive-partition.html


Forget about doing any 'tweaks' for your SSD - simply ensure that you have installed Win7x64 fresh on your SSD (this ensures that the O/S partition is aligned properly) and that you have installed it in AHCI mode (vs. compatible or IDE mode).

Also, install the Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers after Win7 finishes installing and download and install the Intel SSD Toolbox to ensure your SSD is running at its peak.

So yes, I do think you should venture into the 'ssd era'.

Not only is an SSD more durable/rugged than a mechanical HDD, but the way it allows the system to 'disappear' will make you even more productive too.

Good luck.

 

My perspective is from a performance standpoint is they're not worth it. All SSDs I've seen are gimped in low power mode, meaning if you're running the CPU in low power mode, performance on the drive is muted. You can put the CPU in full power mode, but this has consequences in terms of battery life and heat/noise. There's also a registry hack, but then battery life takes a pretty big hit.

Where SSDs really shine is the noise factor. With the CPU in low power mode and a SSD, most notebooks I've seen run pretty quiet.

 

ZaZ, I would normally agree with you.

However, with his specific workflow (Office - I'm thinking Outlook too..., PDF's and Databases), an SSD shines.

Even in 'crippled' low power mode.

Not in benchmark scenarios, mind you - just, 'real world' scenarios vs. a HDD (a Scorpio Black 750GB in my case).

 

the op would probably do alright with an sata II intel 320 or last gen but still sata III crucial c300.

 

Thanks for great points guys! I do appreciate all your thoughts and advice.

So the consensus seems to indicate that I should jump on the bandwagon... I will look into the models you all mentioned. I am inclined toward SATA III drives merely because my laptop supports them, but I am aware of the fact that newer drives may not have much of track record yet...

Btw, Tiller mentioned a clean OS install. I've heard about many advantages of doing that, but with so many programs I have installed, that may not be practical for me and my productivity will take a hit. I did a little bit of research, and it seems that some cloning programs can take care of the alignment issue... Something like Paragon OS to SSD or newer versions of Acronis... Is that true? I can live with a little bit of performance penalty as long as I don’t have to go through all the pain and hassle...

Thanks again!

 

intel migration software supposedly works well. you don't have to get sata III just because you have it. i settled for sata II with an intel 320 160 gig just because i was worried 120 gigs would not suffice and to have headroom for just in case i need the space reasons and performance reasons. also, $450 or more for a 250 gig sdd was really pushing my budget. from my personal research, it seemed going 160 gigs also bumped the performance up closer to 250 gig sdd's. in retrospect though, 120 gigs probably would've been fine but i don't regret going 160 one bit. after disabling all the unnecessary stuff i've only used 42 gigs. after i install my games i'll still have about 90+ gigs left from 149 usable after format.

 

Not practical to do a clean install?

Today:
Take out your current HDD. Insert SSD. Install Win7x64 'clean'. Install drivers.

Swap SSD with HDD. Have a beer.

Tomorrow:
Swap HDD with SSD. Install programs as needed (don't need to do all of them at one go).

Swap SSD with HDD. Have a beer.

Repeat above until SSD is ready to be used for 'work'.

Have a beer.

Have a beer.

Have a beer.

 

Hey, are you sure you don't go by the name "homer simpson" in real life lol?! But seriously, I think I'll give cloning a try first (although if I may, I'll borrow the beer part from your plan )

 

"homer simpson"

Lol...

I was a huge user of cloning a decade ago - clean installs are the only way to fly.

Go ahead, you'll learn too.

 

to the OP
what programs and how big are the files are you using in ms office? i really dont see any benefits you will get from ms office unless you are using some big database file.
with regards to photoshop, ive never been i/o (disk) bound by photoshop, but i only do photos in 8-12megapix range with 4-5 layers at the most.
with regards to video editing, it depends onwhat your trying to edit (hd, compressed, size, etc) and the specs of your laptop plus the program you use.

oh course an ssd will make your laptop snappier overall. just be sure to back up everything important.

 

Tiller is right. I've been using computers since time began, and the amount of junk that gathers on your HDD is unbelievable, and more importantly slows the whole system down. Getting a new drive is an opportunity to do a 'spring clean', even if it is early summer

Also, installing apps on an SSD is fast... they literally take seconds, and minutes for the few huge apps you have.

 

Would the hybrid drive not be suitable?

 

If you're talking about the Momentus XT's (only Hybrid I know of...) then the answer is a firm 'no'.

(After having 4 fail in less than a year).

 

or get an external usb case for the old disk, install ssd, do what's needed, copy old data over.

have many beer.

 

I am all for any plans that involve many beers; the more the merrier!

 

then i might suggest you to skip the ssd, and

- invest money from ssd into beer
- when ever system is slow
-> enjoy beer

 

Heck, think I'll do a clean install just for sport! I have an SSD already good to go, but you make it sound so easy and fun

My Intel 320 160GB rules all.

 

no my intel 320 160GB rules all.

 

I have an Intel 320 in my notebook now. It's a nice drive but it's not the fastest.

One user with 4 failed XTs in one year... if this is in fact true then it should be a very unreliable drive.

I would like to check the facts. Will you send me the proof that you filed four RMAs with Seagate?

 

Phil, as mentioned by me previously on this forum - Seagate or any other HDD company has never received any drive from me that I had any data on.

Don't have to believe me, but I was the XT's biggest supporter before they died.

One XT died within a couple of months of use. Put that up to a bad batch. Two more died over 6 and 8 month periods. Put that to the users who are known to not be the most careful with these tech things (I honestly thought they dropped the notebook while it was on, or something along those lines). The one I use personally - which I babied - simply gave up 1 month ago?

All of them were not recognized by the BIOS, intermittently - then permanently. All of them were updated to the latest firmware - as it became available. All of them exhibited weird problems in the end while the O/S was running (days/weeks before crapping out) almost like stuttering SSD's.

With only 4 drives showing these issues - I can see why you're cautious about saying this line is bad. On my end; with every single Seagate I've tried in the last 3/4 yrs commiting suicide - I say I've had it (again) with current Seagates for a while.

The 4 drives are resting in pieces (thanks mr HAMMER!) as that is the only way I know my data (and my clients data) will never be recovered (by Seagate, a rogue empoyee of theirs, or anyone else).

HDD are expendable; my backup strategy doesn't rely on any single point of failure. Nor do I consider a Warranty worth anything, after I have put my data on a drive.

So, no RMA's from me. Sorry.

But I know I won't be.

 

Ok so you hammered them. Any other proof, like receipts, showing that you bought four of these?

Forgive me for being skeptical but I have a hard time believing that any single user would experience 4 failures with any drive.

 

I've only owned one Seagate. Only drive that has pooped on me. Regular hdd.

 

Some users are paranoid about who handles their media. If you've got data that could be that much of a problem then it'd be far better to use a drive encryption product instead of just throwing away the drives. At least then the vendor has a chance to see what actually caused the failures. Besides, the likelihood of them bothering to extract your data is damn near nil.

Some users yank others chains posting bogus messages. Who knows what drives their petty little egos.

Others actually handle a lot of different machines on a regular basis and have actual experience dealing with bad equipment. I think every vendor has their run of bad luck. Personally I've had far more failures with WD drives than Seagates (both 2.5 and 3.5 form factors).

 

Once I had an HDD full of confidential patient data (enough to bring down a whole 500-bed hospital if leaked, hehe!) in a laptop that was going back to Dell, and the rep told me to hold a magnet next to it to destroy it, after formatting and deleting all partitions. He also added that Dell would crush all HDD they got back from governmental agencies, hospitals, etc. Any truth to that?
(I did take it to our 1.5 Tesla MRI machine after all just to be on safe side anyway )

 

Regarding the clean install topic, it's totally true. But a better way (at least I think) is to keep three OS images clean installs on your data drive.

(1) Win 7 installed, SP1 installed, All drivers and Windows Updates. Save image #1.
(2) Install core apps and update settings. Save image #2.
(3) Install huge suites like Office, Adobe, games, etc. Save image #3.

Assuming your mobo hasn't changed, you can instantly refer back to any of these clean states that you need. Best part is that you've only installed this crap once.

 

I've had one XT hybrid and it doesn't mount sometimes. Still new enough to likely get it replaced. My officemate had one die in a Mac a few weeks back. That was enough to sour me on them.

 

Hi guys, so here are my updates (and more questions):

I bought a 120GB intel 510 and cloned my 750GB WD disk to the SSD using the intel data migration software (acronis), put it as the primary drive, and put the 750GB disk in the caddy in the optical drive bay. All went smoothly, except for the hard disk not showing up under my computer. After a few more beers, I could see it in bios and in the Windows disk management, so I just assigned it a letter and it came back.

Things seems to be running fast and no complaint there. Here is a screenshot:



Are the speeds ok for an intel 510? (If it matters, I just ran the test after first boot into the cloned Windows 7, without any tweaks or changes made - Should I make any changes?)

Also, the cloning software from intel was very basic and had barely any room for customization, so I just cloned all partitions to the SSD without being able to exclude the unwanted ones. As a result, over 8GB of the SSD space is lost to the Dell recovery partition:



(In the top list it's showing both my SSD and my 750GB WD disk partitions to be clear)

I've heard that getting rid of this partition may be a bit of challenge (at least using Windows disk management), so I appreciate your opinion - should I just forget it and move on, or fight it and reclaim 8GB of precious SSD space? FYI, the laptop is working very well and I don't want to risk messing around with it. Also, I may be wrong, but I remember reading something somewhere about the importance of the order of partitions in an SSD and that it may not be as simple to resize/move around partitions on SSDs?

Thanks again for all your help!

 

The word "BAD" in the AS-SSD results says that alignment is off.

To avoid alignment issues do a clean install or use Acronis True Image Home latest edition > Tools > Clone full disk automatic option.

 

If you want a comparison for the 510 series (mine is a 250gb), take a look here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/7558657-post33.html

The scores are not bad at all but I'd highly recommend exactly what Phil said. Clean installs are always the best way to go.

 

Thanks guys, I had a bad feeling about that "BAD" thing, but wasn't sure what it was.

So here is how it went:

As I said, reinstall was not an option for me. I didn't have Acronis 2011, so I gave Paragon Alignment Tool a try (had it for free from a recent promotion). It detected both OS and Dell Recovery partitions to be out of alignment, but only fixed the useless Recovery partition. So I put the optical drive back and made a bootable GParted CD and there manually resized all the partitions to make sure their first sector was a multiple of 4096. Applied the changes and repaired Windows startup with a Win 7 DVD and all seems to be ok now:



Honestly I don't feel any real world changes in performance after taking care of the alignment, but anyways, it seems to be good now. It still amazes me that intel/acronis did not fix such a simple issue in their “commercial” software...

Anyways, thanks again for all the help and advice guys - and please, let me know if there is anything else I should fix on my drive. Thanks!

 

An update:
I also received (unexpectedly) a new 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD. Based on the serial number, it is the fixed version. I am thinking to just sell the drive and pocket the cash, but before I do that, I would like to hear other possible suggestions about what to do with the extra drive. Any creative ideas that I might have overlooked?

(To summarize my situation, my Dell xps 15 laptop has a 120GB Intel 510 and a 750GB WD drive in the optical bay. I work using the SSD, but back up on the mechanical drive [as well as on my RAID NAS]. We also have an old pentium-D dell desktop that is occasionally used for very light internet browsing and alike - no demanding usage there. My wife uses a 11.6" ULV Acer which has a mechanical drive, but I'd rather not mess around with her netbook as she is happy with what she has and what she does with it - browsing and office applications. Once I replaced the windows XP on the dell desktop with Windows 7 and she nagged so much that after a few months I just gave up and put back the XP, so you get the picture...)

 

replace your hdd with sdd? or pocket the cash.

 

Corsair? Sell it.

 

So tell us your impression of the SSD. Was it worth it?

 

If you already have an Intel 510 I'd probably sell the Corsair.

 

Ok guys, I will sell the drive!

@vsol: The laptop is defintely faster, but given that bulk of my work is Office, I don't see much of a difference most of the time, except when openning files/applications. Ah btw, the startup is also at least twice as fast as before... I am overall happy.

 

glad you are happy with ur new ssd. and yes sell the sandforce ssd.

 

Done. Can I self-promote?!

 

Just once is alright. You can use your signature too.

 

Hey Phil, thanks for the tip.

Also while I have your attention, I appreciate if you (or anyone) could help me on this as well:
It is important for me to be able to resume unfinished work and hence I always use hibernation. Given the issue of SSD wear, and considering that my ram is 8GB, is hibernating 5-10 times a day likely to cause any problems in the life of the drive (say, for 5 years or so)? I know that it is just a matter of calculating total writes versus the rated total write cycles of the drive, but I don't have the numbers for intel 510... I'm just a bit concerned that ~10 times hibernation per day with my installed ram would result in up to ~80GB writes to the SSD per day. Is that ok?
Again, thanks in advance!

 

i think intel 510's are rated for 5000 write cycles as opposed to the 320's 3000 write cycles. i forgot how all that got calculated out, but i think 40GB of data a day for 10 years before you see issues. i forgot which one that correlated to. but i think 80GB written a day should be fine for 5 years. i don't know. but it also sounds like standby would be just as good an option for you too. uses more battery but not a whole lot.

 

no need to worry too much about wear. If you need hibernation, use it.

Though I would suggest use sleep when possible, something like default to sleep(or 15 minute idle then sleep) and hibernation when idle for say 60 minutes. coming back from sleep is much faster too, even you are using SSD.

 

I would certainly advise against hibernation with SSD. If you do it once in a while, no problem. 5 times a day with 8GB RAM is likely to cause siginificant wear. Besides that, 40GB is a lot of waste on a 120GB drive.

I suggest sleep instead.

Personally I don't like to use sleep so I use booting with Chrome placed in my startup folder. It opens a couple of webpages I frequently visit.

 

Hi mazyarjr,

I presume you're running on mains power (not battery)... if so, don't use hybernate, and I'm not sure whether sleep is really necessary, but sleep is certainly the better option if you need to use it.

 

Ok, so I looked at the drive usage, and although it's not even a week since I've been using it, it's already registered over 1TB of writes! As suggested here, I will use sleep from now on instead of hibernation. Thanks for the helpful advice guys!

 

you've used about 1/40 or 1/80 of it's rated life already. your ssd got older quick.