Transcend 32GB SSD, should I install it?

I've been getting a bunch of complaints on this SSD and read a couple of bad reviews on how slow it is. I decided to cancel the order I made on Amazon, the seller wasn't very cooperative and shipped it anyway. I contacted Amazon explaining my story and was adviced to ship it back asking for a full refund. The thing is, I'm in Kuwait. Shipping and currency exchanges both ways would make me lose a lot of money. I'd rather keep it than return it.

The question is, should I install it on my X60s replacing a 40GB HDD 5400rpm? Or is it really that bad and I would be better of with my good ol' HDD? I already attempted upgrading to another HDD and back again and the agent is OK with warranty wise.

Vote away

 

Since your disk is only running a 5400rpm I think the ssd should definetely improve the performances.

 

It'll improve performance, but I'm astounded that people have less than 30 GB of data on their computers.

 

how much space do is available after formatting? around 30gb?

 

I was just rounding, but I would guess it would be ~30 GB after formatting, then a few more for an OS.

 

No, don't do it.

http://www.tpuser.idv.tw/wp/?p=217

The page is in Chinese, but you can see the graphs in English. Basically the author tested the 16GB unit, and had to use compatibility mode instead of AHCI mode to be able to boot off the Transcend drive. Plus, the drive is not native SATA (bridged from IDE to SATA) and cannot support SATA low power states.

The 32GB only has MLC chips rated at 26MBs/13MBs (read/write), where the 8/16GB uses SLC chips rated at 30/28MBs.

Having that said, SSD does offer no noise, no vibration, higher shock resistance, lighter weight than spinning drives. Just that a shame this drive does not offer the performance benefits (it is cheaper than say an mtron).

What I would do is use it in an external USB enclosure, where it would seek really fast and the USB2.0 interface would be just fine with the speed. Or if you have the dock.

My 2 cents.

 

Thanks guys, still uncertain though. I don't need space on the machine, I'm currently only using 20GB of my 40GB HDD. I have an external 250GB HDD. What uw said might stop me from switching. But all those extra benefits sure sound tempting, I would have another machine as a main laptop and this would be my shock resistant, silent, light weight, portable safe.

 

This is the one I'm talking about BTW. It says SATA.

 

I think I'm going for it.

 

If you are purchasing it, dont waste your money. You will see some areas of improvement but I just yesterday saw a post which showed a great example of how slow write speeds can become very obvious. The poster was complaining that putting Vista into hibernate took a very long time on a Sandisk. This would make sense as the write of the Sandisk is at 14mb/s and hibernate saves your entire system to hard disk before shutting down.

If you have it..test it and use it but if not, you might look around for a bit. What are you looking at paying for a SSD?

 

And the votes are even, just in time for your comment flamenko I wanted faster boot speeds and durability, I want this X60s to last a lifetime

 

Both IDE and SATA interface have absolutely no difference in performance for notebook drives. Simply because even with the added bandwidth from SATA, a notebook drive will never take be able to take up all the throughput of even IDE bandwidth of 133MB/sec. The bottleneck is the notebook drive speed. Any SSD drive will have much lower power consumption than any SATA HDD, I don't think the SATA Lower Power states will add any benefits to an SSD drive.

Right, when it comes to pure transfer speed performance, it will be slower than most drives. However, keep in mind that this drive will always be constantly that speed. In comparison to an IDE Hitachi 7200 RPM, the performace lowers on the inner cylinders. See pic, even a 7200RPM drive is 26MB/sec read at times so I'm sure a 5400 RPM would be even slower.

The seek time will be closer to 0ms on the SSD drive whereas the 5400RPM notebook drive would be closer to 18ms on average. This would still be a huge performance increase, as booting Windows or loading applications would be greatly increased despite the slower transfer rate.

I'd say, install a fresh new windows on the SSD drive and test it out and see if you see a huge performance increase first before calling any shots.

 

D3X, very valuable, appreciated input. However, I gave you rep for your avatar!

 

D3X I respect your view but I would have to suggest you look at the articles and tests conducted below my signature block.

I have to admit that I don't understand your statement of:

"Both IDE and SATA interface have absolutely no benefit for notebook drives. Simply because even with the added bandwidth, a notebook drive will never take be able to take up all the throughput of even IDE bandwidth of 133MB/sec"

There are not only benchmark tests and first hand users (of which I am one so my impartiality is nixed here) that render this statement incorrect, but also, a ton of Utube videos that show first hand the speed difference in not only start and shut down times, but also application loading and usage.

The SATA SSDs walk all over any hard drive flat out. They are now hitting around 110mb/s in the read and write tests. They also show far superior results in every other area to any hard drive... (gulp...except for price)

As size is going to be someones return immediately, I should point out that Mtron and Memoright are both in the process of getting me 128Gb drives and STEC-Inc is similarly shipping me out drives of which Im hoping are either 256 or 512Gb as they were just released. The size race is on!!!!

(What a thought...a 512Gb SSD with over 100mb/s read and write!)

Could you explain to me your point a bit better as I really am trying to understand the statement?

 

Correction if I may. I said "Both IDE and SATA" which is wrong, what I meant was the difference between IDE UDMA-6 and SATA at the moment have no benefit for notebook drives. Also when i meant "notebook drive" I was referring to the traditional notebook HDD with spinning platters. Not SSD in that statement. You are correct, the SATA SSDs can eventually take advantage of SATA I throughput bandwidth, but even with your stated 110mb/s in read and write tests, that still within EIDE/UATA/PATA/ATA133 headroom numbers which proves my point that the connection interface really doesn't affect performance(yet) and that the drive is still the bottleneck. See chart below:

ATA Bus Transfer Technology
YEAR Transfer Mode Standard Transfer Rate (Mbyte/second)
1997 Ultra DMA 3 / ATA-33 33.33
1999 Ultra DMA 4 / ATA-66 66.6
2000 Ultra DMA 5 / ATA-100 100
2001 Ultra DMA 6 / ATA-133 133
2002 Serial ATA 150
2003 Serial ATA II 1.5 Gb/s

 

D3X, I agree with you on your points, but it's just that I wouldn't use that Transcend 32GB drive as my main. At best, it will be performing on par with the OP's original drive (with the added bonus of no noise, no vibration, higher shock resistance; which are good), but I would also want the true performance benefits of an SSD.

But yeah, it wouldn't hurt to try since there's already one on hand.

 

Agreed. Even I'm not sure what I'll end up settling with if I was in the OP's position. However, all the benefactors lead me to believe that there will be absolutely no loss in going with the Transcend SSD since he already has it and with no intention to return it. Foremost the benefits you mentioned already are good enough reasons alone; no vibration, shock resistance, and noise as well as others like access speed(0.2ms), power consumption/battery life, heat, and weight which are more important factors not mentioned.

If this was an upgrade for a desktop, I would surely recommend to keep the hard disk. However, this will be going into a notebook and these factors are what most of us Notebook users would want in a notebook. Yes transfer speeds will be slower, but do we even know the benchmark numbers of the old drive that the OP had? Perhaps that would weigh this out more.