Thinking about switching to a Solid State Drive; have very basic questions

Hi,

I am thinking about adding a small SSD into my netbook. I am considering making the jump because it will increase speeds such as boot-up time and application launching which I am interested in specifically for this computer as it is used for browsing, office tasks, and things of that nature, and I don't need much storage space. I just have a few questions that will help me decide on an SSD. I'm a pretty big noob so sorry if these questions are kind of mediocre.

What type of SSD should I be looking at in terms of speculations other than size? I have a 12'' netbook, should I just be concerned if it physically fits in the computer or do I need to determine if I have a SATA II or SATA III interface and what not?

What is the actual size of say, a 64 GB SSD going to be once installed in the computer? I have a 320 GB Scorpio Blue (stock drive) currently, and it only has about 293 GB of usable space (with a 5 GB recovery partition). I think a 64 GB SSD would be plenty for me, but only if I can actually use all 64 GB of storage.

What kind of maintenance do I have to preform on a SSD to keep it healthy? Should I avoid a SSD if I am not really educated on them? It's quite an investment for me considering it's about 50% of the cost of the netbook itself, and I am just wondering what I am getting myself in to as far as things like garbage collection and firmware and all of that stuff I am reading about. I really don't have much besides a clue, but I am trying to learn more on them.

Finally, could I expect to see a decrease in price of smaller SSDs (or all SSDs for that matter) within the next few months? My likely transition will be after that amount of time I do believe. The reason I am asking now is because I am just starting to read up on SSDs and getting more involved in the possibility of moving to one. I know that this question cannot be answered for sure, but with just starting to look at all of these drives, I haven't been monitoring prices as long as others have. Have SSDs been dropping in price considerably at all?

Thanks everyone.

 

For a netbook, you likely only have SATA 2. You can put a SATA 3 drive in a SATA 2 just fine though, you just won't see the full sequential transfer speeds (which don't matter for application launching anyway). Most every SSD is a 2.5" drive, there are a few 3.5" and several 1.8". Check which size your computer uses, but 99% it is a 2.5" which is normal for these drives.

A 64GB will format to around 60GB, and you don't want to fill an SSD over around 80-90% of capacity to ensure there is some over-provisioning space. 64GB drives typically have no over-provisioning so this is important, you can format the partition to a few GB less than full and then not have to worry about it as well. There are 80GB drives as well if 64 is a bit tight for you.

If you are running Windows 7, there is little you need to do for the SSD. Install the drive, format it (Windows 7 takes care of proper alignment, so if using XP you have to align properly), install Windows. Run the WEI and make sure that defragmenting on the SSD is turned off completely. NEVER FORMAT AN SSD!

Also, make sure TRIM is running. On Windows 7, this should kick in fine after running the WEI, on XP you have to use Garbage Collection I think. How about you say which OS you are using and if it is 7, then we can ignore those issues

That is really all you have to do with one, there are some other things like disabling search indexing which isn't really needed on an SSD that you can do as well. The important one to do is to make sure you turn off defrag (running the WEI on Windows 7 usually does that by default, but it is good to check anyway) and make sure TRIM is running under Windows 7. Otherwise you have to do garbage collection maintenance along the way.

Recommended drives:
Intel (320/510/X25-m, there is a pending firmware update for the 320 that fixes a rare bug)
Crucial (C300/M4(aka C400)) -> both benefit from SATA 3, but both run fine on SATA 2 and are awesome drives
Samsung 470.

DO NOT GET AN OCZ despite how good the price looks. A HUGE percentage of OCZ's Vertex and Agility drives fail either immediately or a couple months in. We're talking double-digit percentages here!

 

Thanks a lot for the reply!

I will be running Windows 7 64-bit if and when I install the drive. I am currently running Windows 7 32-bit under 2 GB RAM and the 5400 RPM stock drive. When I get the funds and the confidence to void my warranty (RAM/HDD are not user-serviceable; hence my speculation to wait a few months to possibly make the switch) I will be going "all out" and upgrading not only to a SSD but to 4 GB and 64-bit as well.

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is WEI? I'm somewhat new to Windows as well and don't really recognize acronyms. I'm a little confused; you say install the drive, format it, and then say never format a SSD. Would this 'WEI' make it simple for a user like me to do the things you mentioned such as turn off defragmenting, enable TRIM, and disable search indexing?

Thanks for the recommendations as well, I really appreciate that. I was eyeing the Crucial M4, but when the time comes I will most likely be on a tight budget.

What do you think about the SATA II Kingston SSDNow V+100? A helpful user on here mentioned that it often goes on sale (the 96 GB drive), and in fact I got an e-mail from Newegg this morning promoting just that. I wouldn't buy it now, but this looks like a pretty cheap drive for how much storage it is on this deal. It was going for around $120 I believe. I think 96 GB would be plenty, and maybe I would be able to catch it on sale again when the time comes.

Thanks again for the reply.

 

WEI=Windows Experience Index. That mostly-useless benchmark built into Windows Vista and 7. When you run it, it will typically recognize you have an SSD and turn off defrag and enable TRIM, but I've had cases where it didn't turn off defrag. It might have been confused by seeing 2 HDDs in the system now that I think about it though. Checking for defrag is easy, you can disable it (force it to manual) in the services.msc page.

Search Indexing is turned off by right-clicking the drive in My Computer and going to properties. Uncheck the box for allowing search indexing. Note this isn't a required move with an SSD, but it does help minimize the read/writes to the system.

And as for me saying never format an SSD, that was supposed to say NEVER DEFRAG AN SSD. I've made too many typos today, lol. Formatting is fine.

I highly recommend the Crucial M4. I love mine. But they are limited in sizes to only 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB. With a tight budget, the leap to a 128 can certainly be a concern. That said, the prices on them have come down a fair bit since launch 4 months ago. They ought to come down some more, right now the best I've seen a 128GB for was a shade over $200. Versus the 64GB at half that. If you can get all you need inside of 50-ish GB (got to give Windows 7 a decent amount of room to install updates and all), it's a good way to go.

As for Kingston drives, some use Intel controllers IIRC, so you should be fine there, just confirm it isn't a Sandforce controller. I've seen some of their 96GB drives drop in under $100 once or twice, which is an awesome price. Avoid ANYTHING with a Sandforce controller, there are so many issues with both generations of them plus the company has only been around for less than 2 years. Give them time.

 

Ah, never defrag, gotcha. : ) I have been reading just about everything you are informing me of from other sources as well, and will promptly avoid Sand Force drives, amongst other things.

I *think* that 64 GB will be enough. I mean, looking at the HDD that I have in now, I am only using 16 GB of space, which is 1/4 (a little more once formatted) of a 64 GB drive. That's with Chrome, Open Office, and a few other system applications installed. The only space I need/want beyond that is for wallpapers and of course, the point of the computer, text documents as it is a machine for office work.

I'm thinking 64 GB. If you're saying that it will format to around 60 GB, then I will have 44 GB after installations, and if I don't want the drive to get over ~80% capacity in use, that's about 30 GB of actual storage space for some wallpapers, text documents, updates, etc which should be plenty. In any case, I'll use 64 GB as a minimum and try to find the cheapest non-sand force controlled drive.

Thanks a lot for your help.