Which SSD for Netbook?

Okay...so i'm about to purchase a Netbook but i'm very confused about which SSD to put in the thing. I've narrowed it down to the OCZ Vertex 60GB, Samsung 64GB and Intel X-25M 80GB.

My biggest question is this. I honestly am leaning towards the OCZ due to the performance to cost ratio but I've been seeing alot of online reviews reporting that the OCZ drives requires some tweaking to really get the most out of them; as does all SSDs but more than the norm it seems. For ex. I see all this talk about "aligning" this vertex drive; something I really don't have the patience for. And also talk about OCZ not having the best reputation etc.

So anyhow, if cost wasn't a factor; out of the three SSDs above; which would you go with to put in a Netbook and why or why not? I just want to hear some different opinions. Any and all replies would be grately appreciated.

 

If cost wasn't a factor we'd all be driving Ferraris and Porsches.

My point being, cost is a factor, so even though the X-25M is the best drive, the Vertex or Samsung would be a great choice and will work out of the box with no tweaks required.

 

IIRC the Vertex (that's the newest one from OCZ?) simply needs a firmware update then it's good to go.
I was leaning towards that one too. The sammy and Intel are too expensive per GB. The vertex seemed to be the right price.

But honestly I'd rather have the Sammy because I like them better lol.

 

Thanks for those quick replies..and i'm glad to see someone w/ an OCZ drive. How has the OCZ been treating you Jlbrightbill? Did you do that aligning procedure?

 

I aligned mine because I have too much time on my hands.

Really all it takes is an extra 5 minutes before installing your OS, if you wanted to do it. Not needed but hey why not. The drive has worked great and hasn't shown a hint of stuttering.

 

i hear vertex is supposed to be the best for the bucks at the moment.

 

I'd actually go with the Samsung (hopefully SLC?). SSDs will never reach their full read/write transfer speeds in a netbook anyway, and the Samsung drains less power than both the Vertex and the X25.

 

I see...one of the reasons that i'm undecided on the OCZ is because from what i've read the firmware updates will force you to re-format the drive every time there is an update. I don't know if I can live with that; at the same time I don't know how often these updates would be coming out.

On the other hand the Samsung MLC 64GB is the cheapest of all three atm at $132.99, but at the same time the slowest overall it seems.

 

Where did you find the Samsung MLC for 132.99?

 

It is pre-aligned out of the factory. The only time it wouldn't be is if you used XP to delete and then create the partitions. If you only formatted using XP, it would still be aligned. Vista and Win7 already align the partition if you create it during install.
It's made out to be a bigger deal (imo) than it really is to align the partition.

 

No SSDs other than the X25-M reaches 150mW active power usage. But on a Netbook, you won't take full advantage of it. Intel products are picky.

 

Hehe..you can't find it right!, here it is --> Click. And from amazon. <-- seems to be the same reseller. So should I bite on this cheap deal or get the vertex instead? I'm not even putting the Intel in this anymore...as Jlbright mentioned..."cost is a factor"

The OCZ is $199 atm at TigerDirect.

 

how big's the ocz for 199? for that price, i was able to find the samsung 128gb ssd.

now i'm thinking of the hp netbook with that ssd in would be an awesome combination..

 

So what's better OCZ Vertex or that Samsung?

 

Ok now be a good boy and share where you found that Samsung deal. Sounds like a 1.8" and not 2.5" to me.

Good question...I want to know this too.

 

jup 1.8" ssd and all my notebooks use 1.8" ssd's so that's perfect.

i buy on ebay. for me in switzerland, it's about as reliable as any shop all over the world to buy stuff. and in switzerland, we still wait for ssd's to arrive officially. okay, untrue, now the first ones get available. but to horrend prices

 

Okay, after reading the article from LegitReviews I think I have a good idea of what i'll be getting myself into if I go for the OCZ drive. I think I can handle it; but for now...on to look for a Samsung review.

 

Here's a good Vertex review by Anandtech
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3535&p=4

 

Yea I was reading through that one last night...I think i've made my decision. The Samsung MLC 64GB drive just isn't convincing enough. It's kinda old and I don't see much support for it where firmware is concerned. So the OCZ Vertex looks like the clear winner overall. Imma get me the Vertex.

BTW, does anyone have any Jumpers laying around.

 

Can't wait to hear your impressions of the SSD on your netbook. I've been considering getting one for mine, just waiting for prices to come down.

 

I have a 60gb Vertex too. I love mine. I was lucky enough to get one with the newest fw (1370), so I didn't have to update that. I aligned it, which wasn't even necessary as I'm using Windows 7, did a few of the recommended tweaks, and away I went. It took a little extra time, but it was all simple and straightforward.

I love the drive, and feel it was easily worth the $201.98 delivered.

 

I must say that I am happy with my Vertex 60GB...I love it!...at first I was kinda surprised that I wasn't getting anything close to the max. speeds that were advertised by OCZ but then I came back to this thread and noticed what Xiphias was saying above in red. Which led me to do a bit of research but got no definitive answer as to why the SSD speeds are reduced in Netbooks.

I've come to my own sensible conclusion that it's a BIOS limitation seeing that I don't even have an AHCI/SATA HDD setting in the BIOS...only option in there is IDE! (my BIOS has the latest firmware) If anyone can confirm this as to why Netbooks doesn't see the full speed of SSDs that would be great.

Nevertheless the SSD makes working in Windows 7 a joy.

Compared to this article "Fastest Netbook Disk Ever?" I think the Vertex is right up there! See my benchmark attached below.

BTW in comparison to the 60GB Vertex the RunCore 64GB SSD is stated to have Read/Write speeds of 215GB/150GB respectively while the Vertex is listed as 230GB/135GB.

Finally i'd like to thank mullenbooger and all the other guys who guided me in my "Which Netbook?" and this thread...I absolutely love my 1000HE and Vertex. Match made in heaven.

PS: I do have the latest firmware on the Vertex...came with 1.10 (1370).

 

i think SSDs are somewhat cpu dependent, i get lower speed if i throttle my cpu using rmclock.

 

I see...any other feedback on the speed difference in netbooks compared to that on notebooks and desktops guys? Can anyone confirm if it is indeed a BIOS limitation?

 

I think its a bios limitation, probably to save power. Some older lenovo laptops have the same issue (my t61,so both my laptops have this limit =.

Glad to hear you are enjoying the new netbook/ssd combo. What are your impressions on app loading on the netbook with the ssd compared to the original HDD?

 

Id not call bios limitation but chipset limitation even the ICH7 for desktops I hear can hold a SSD back, the netbooks use something slower for sure.

But who knows it may be a bios thing, though I see no reason to limit it via bios.

 

Right...that makes sense.

I am absolutely in love with my netbook man...and the SSD is just an added bonus. I honestly didn't mess with the XP and 160GB HDD it came with...I just logged in and started the Win. 7 installation one time

But compared to my work computer which sports 4GB, and a Core 2 Duo processor the little netbook is right on par with the app loading. The only true bottleneck is the Atom cpu.

What is definitely noticeable is the boot times...I don't even see the little blue/red/green/yellow Windows Logo just the blue bar scrolling across for like 2 - 3 secs. But yea..the programs are definitely opening quite snappy!

I see....

 

If you want a SSD in a netbook go for it, if you get a good one its for sure going to be better than a HDD but I cant see the point at all.

Get a $400 netbook and then spend almost half or more of the cost of the unit for a fast SSD that you cant even use to its full potential.

When I say potential I mean in two ways, first being that its not reading/writing at the full speed possible but the other way is that most all the demanding programs that really can take advantage of a SSD like say photoshop, or video editing, those big heavy resource programs will never be used by a sane person on a netbook.

For me its just firefox, media player classic, winamp and zsnes, all of them so light on resources that they open instantly.

Boot times are also insanly fast, keep your installed crud to a minimum and files defraged and its like a 20 second boot time.

Me personally since the netbook is such a great portable media & entertianment machine will have a 320+gb HDD in there to store tons of music/movies/games. That is much more rewarding than a SSD

Having your 50 favorite movies and 10 anime series at your finger tips, along with 1000 of your favorite songs, and over 500 super nintendo games Count me in, no need to make the stuff load faster esp if you dont even have room to store it.

 

I hear your points Vicious, what you're saying is true and makes sense but for me personally I don't ever plan on owning another computer with the primary disk drive being a reguar HDD. (I guess i've had enough bad experiences w/ HDDs) I'm not looking back at HDDs EXCEPT for use as file storage devices and backups. And I have over 400GB of external HDD space...more than enough for me at the moment.

 

vicious, you have wrong priorities. you don't want all your data on a netbook and then have to carefully take it with you. you want something to drop around like a phone, a key, etc. that's one of the potentials of ssds. once you get used to that, you won't understand how you could live without and have taken care all the time.

netbooks are cheap and tiny, they are not the thing you want to saveguard all the time. they are droparounds, quick "can i check my mail for a moment" handovers.

and no, there is no need to have all your 50 movies and 10 anime series at your finger tips. if you need that, take a portable (1.8") hdd with you, with 250gb or so, or a 2.5" one with 500gb, what ever.

ssds have plenty of room, and the performance gain and the usability gain is IMMENSE on a netbook.

500 nintendo games nearly fit on a floppy no need for storage. days of music don't need much storage. my current favourite tv series doesn't need much storage. all you have to restrict is simply not have EVERYTHING all the time on your notebook, just the stuff you actually need.

yes, that's a different way to think, but believe me, you gain VERY much from it. not having to care about hdd failures being the biggest one.

 

I take very good care of my stuff, no droping or baning for my netbook it is my portable media machine. I dont want to carry around a external hdd, I just want my netbook, its supposed to be portable. I guess you may take yours around with a bag full of stuff but me I take just the netbook.

For the last 3.5 weeks straight while my W90 is out for RMA this thing has kept me alive, while I am at work for 8 hours its my jukebox, my movie player, and all sorts of other stuff, not one time during my entire 6 hours of use do I wait for any loading except boot wich is already very fast.

Your wrong in pushing that SSD is the best solution, its not even the better solution, you have to back up and look at what people are asking for and what they need. In my case an SSD would only limit me and be an incredible waist of money.

The HDD is the way to go. Now that said I am not anti SSD I already plan to get one for my W90 but that is only because its a dual hdd machine and I can keep a large 2nd drive in addition to the SSD.

My big laptop I do photoshop, I do video editing, I play games, so I have some stuff that actually can gain from the cost of the SSD.

I really cant think of any general task you would do on a netbook that requires "loading" and if your only worried about failure thats ok on your end. I have only had 1 hdd fail me my whole life and I keep a backup image of my stuff, id rather replace a cheap hdd than pay for an expensive SSD I do not need.

 

the performance gain compared to an ordinary hdd is quite immens on a netbook, boosting it to mostly ordinary desktop speed. so it makes for a much more snappy and thus much more flexible system. that's even great for small stuff. and it IS a huge difference, even if you don't believe so.

and paying 400$ for a netbook and then 200$ for a 128gb ssd gives much space and a system that is amazingly great performing, and 100% shock resistant.

it's nice for you that you never have dropped it yet. but then, sir, you're a minority by FAR

gains from ssd (espencially, in that case, a cheap samsung):

longer battery life. who doesn't like that on an always-on-the-go-device
droppable. who doesn't like not needing to take special care
higher performance. who doesn't like a small system that performs like a big one?

it's not like it's really THAT much money.

and i still see no gain in having ALL your series with you. it's not like you're away from home for long enough to make sence to have it all with you. that's just not happening. no matter how much you state otherwise

everyone who can relax about storage size and has a bit money to spend should get an ssd. for EVERYONE of them, it's the right choise. for people with no money, nothing is of interest anyways except pirated software and old systems someone else doesn't use anymore. for people with too much storage needs, there are better solutions to get the best of both worlds.

 

What are you boosting in speed? I seriously have no programs that even have room to speed up, and dont just make stuff up. Be honest.

I have a feeling if you think the speed boost is so significant you must be doing out of the ordinary tasks, as everything I use is instant already on the HDD. Also make sure you have 2gb of ram.

 

nothing was/is instant on my hdd's. everything is on ssds. and i have up to 4gb of ram.

i don't make it up. in all of my use cases, it made a difference. for notebooks, a quite big one. for small notebooks/netbooks, a huge one, and for pc's, still one (albeit not that big of course).

snappiness enhanced greatly, espencially in multitasking cases, or when you access something the os wasn't prepared for.

one thing that shows what ssd can do for you is the uac secure desktop. in about all vista installations, after some weeks of usage, a uac popup takes some seconds till it appears. with an ssd, it's always instant (around a third of a sec max, no clue).

i have no actual logon time on vista, at least on the quadcore i get direct-to-desktop while the windows start sound still and can boot all my apps directly. i dunno how to explain, but what ever i do, there is no lag-because-of-disk-access, ever, anymore. and there are TONS of those. they're tiny, but make usage annoying once you lifed without them for a while.

 

You totally side stepped the question, netbooks use XP (well most of them) and in my case I use XP and everything is instant already (instant being when I double click by the time I could even concievabbly count 1 second the program is open)

Im asking what programs you run on a normal basis that would warrent a SSD and this great "speed boost" as a netbook is not a program powerhouse its just a net browsing machine originally but I also use mine for music/movies and some games.

In all cases of what I run the SSD is not going to help me, and only hamper me by limiting my storage space.

So on your netbook what programs do you run that you think the SSD is "much better" and if you didnt have the SSD how many seconds of time did you save? If it took 2 seconds before and now its instant, is 2 seconds of time saved to open a program a big deal?? I think your highly intoxicated by the aura of your new hardware and misrepresenting the gains by being to excited about it. Being logical about it and documenting actual real life values/gains I think a SSD in a netbook will do almost nothing for you.

There is no multi tasking done for me, except having winamp play music while I browse the net like I am now...

A SSD is not going to make my reply to this message load faster, or my music play faster, its not going to make the next website open faster. I looked at every single thing a normal netbook user does and a SSD does not really fit, esp considering the price.

 

well, first of all, i don't want the insecurity and instability and general oldness of xp, even on a netbook => no thanks, i use vista on it.

second: f.e. itunes is quite a bit faster on an ssd, and a typical "netbook style app". quickly shopping some tracks, maybe transfering to your ipod (i don't have an ipod, still use itunes mostly for legal shopping).

i use firefox, which has much usability gains over other browsers but happens to be slow. thanks to the ssd, it's instant.

outlook is not my thing, but i know lot who use it, and it's dog-slow when not on an ssd.

i can successfully use traktor studio on a netbook without any problem, ssd makes track loading much faster, thus djing much nicer. it's not fun when half of the time one track plays is spent loading another track. yes, the netbook is just the fallback system if my main one has a problem (it normally never has), still, why have a slow fallback system if you can have a fast fallback system.

essentially, a netbook with a good ssd is just like any other fast pc, except if you want to render something, or convert something, or watch hd. for everything else, it's just as fast and just as good as any ordinary system IF you have have an ssd in.

just because the netbook is cheap and tiny doesn't mean i have to sacrifice usage, it doesn't mean i should have to wait for anything to load.

if you want a netbook that can only do a low amount of things and "is just slow because that's the way it is" (and it is, partly, thanks to the atom ), then, by all means, get one of those slow ones. i want a netbook for portability. for the rest, i want the normal snappiness of all my other systems.

a netbook is cheap, so you have more money left for buying an ssd, which can be quite cheap, too. i payed 200$ for 128gb. that's not really expensive. my notebook cost me 2000$+, my pc 1500$+, my beamer 1500$+, my ultimate licence around 200$. no, sir, an ssd is NOT expensive.

if one has some money to spend it's a good investment.

but for you, storage space is the only thing that matters, so have fun with your hdds for it. for me, storage space on a machine locally doesn't matter. that's why it's a "netbook", because most data is on the net. so are all files that don't matter, like movies and such.

 

So I clicked on firefox here, less than 1.5 sec for the program to open and my home page fully loaded. Thats slow?

Itunes, cant say its apple stuff. I use Winamp because its highly featured and free and it opens instantly. No DRM issues and it lets me use its output filters to intergrate it for other uses.

Traktor Studio... yeah that sounds like a program the average netbook user uses. Considering I never even heard of it.

You only mentioned a few programs, and I expected that because there is not a lot to do on a netbook, you cant even run many programs correctly due to the limited screen resolution.

Firefox
Winamp
Media Player Classic

Thats the core of my netbook, SSD is not going to help, and you obviously have more funds than me to toss around, but no matter how much you have if you break the hdd and ssd into price vs performance the HDD is going to win especially in the netbook where there is so little performance to gain.

just because you spent less on the netbook is not a reason to overspend for the storage device, it was for me and many others the reason we got one, because it was cheap to start with.

Plus the SSD cant even run its full speed on a netbook, thats making it an even worse investment.

 

i've yet to see winamp start instantly on ANY pc i've ever used it. just as firefox NEVER starts at 1.5sec, sir, no. i have tons of systems that i support and it never is that way.

and depending on the ssd, and the netbook, you can get full speed, no problem. just don't get one of the "fast" ones (and btw, the slow samsung ssd is just as fast as the fast one in most reallife usage anyways.. and the slow one is cheap).


and yes, spending less on a netbook means more for other stuff, namely BALANCE your investment. why pay 700$ for a "big" notebook when spending 400$ + 200$ for an 128gb ssd means i get a faster, smaller, more flexible, more stable system? that's investment planning..

of course, if all you want is even less money to spend, don't expect to get an as fast system at all. but that was not the ops idea. he thought about spending a bit more to enhance the system.



i could list more programs, but it's unneeded to do so.

and btw, if i break hdd and ssd into price vs performance, the hdd loses all the time, as the performance gain is huge. and how ever long you say that's not true, it still is. espencially in small systems like netbooks and subnotebooks, where hdd's often are even slower than the ordinary ones.

 

> Because the $700 notebook has a cpu that can actually do something and a screen resolution you can actually work on.

> Firefox, I did it myself right before I posted. I open the thing all night long to browse the net I know how fast it opens. Maybe because my computer is well kept?

> Winamp the same, first thing I do every night is que up a few hundred songs to play and as I right click a folder and hit "play in winamp" instantly the program is open and playing.

I have no idea why you say thats impossible, I have proof infront of me.

Your statements are often unfounded, your stating opinionated material as if it was factual.

But that said I guess we did get a bit off topic (though a good debate) the OP likes the same faster SSD as I do (vertex, intel, falcon) but as you pointed out and I pointed out those SSD are not going to run full speed in a netbook so it would be a "waist" though the cheaper SSD are still expensive and if you divide there price by speed they are not as good of a value as the faster SSD.

Its best to get a slower one as long as its problem free (doenst run hot, have high power draw, studdering) as I know older slower SSD had these issues, but not sure which ones.

 

same for you


well, firefox in its default setting is quite fast. but on this very system here (with a hdd), it takes 10 to 50 sec to boot, and varies wildly.

on my ssd based systems it never is more than 2 sec if the system is at full usage.

cpu doesn't matter for most work. i used a core2duo 1.2ghz and was faster than most with core2duos with 2.4ghz and such in most use cases. cpu's are idling most of the day anyways.

winamp we use at the club as a jukebox. it takes between 2 and 10 sec to start, and then some secs to load up the playlist and actually start playing. during that time, the hdd light is fully on.

on my system, it starts in 1-2sec or so.

while a system CAN be quite fast on a hdd, i tcan as well be terribly slow, and espencially inconsistent. this is a problem that is completely solved with an ssd (except if the system just hangs because of some bug or so, of course).

i'm using pc's and notebooks now since about 10 years, work with them at work, in private, and use them from all points of views. network admin, supporter, programmer, user, poweruser, freak.

an ssd is a huge gain for ALL those cases, except in storage space. moneywise, it's always worth the investment.

 

WOW...this is what this thread has come to...SSDs are by far much better than HDDs in every aspect. I don't see what all the discussion is about...seriously!

 

They're faster, more power efficient and more quiet... but better?
That depends on how you look at it. 500GB for $80... SSD can't touch that.

Or if you're only willing to spend $50 on a hard drive (like me) HDD is 'better'.

 

if you only count storage size as your "better", then yes. else, no, in every aspect. and storage is not everything at all.

 

Performance cost.

 

Performance cost per gigabyte

You forgot one aspect: price

But seriously, HDDs and SSDs both advantages. For some users HDD is the better choice, for others SSD.

And yes I've owned two laptops with SSD. Was it a big step down to my NC10 with WD1600BEKT? Not really.

 

then, sir, you had bad ssds.


price is fine for the performance.

for less than the price of a notebook you can get a more portable, in general usage faster netbook than the comparable notebook.

the only thing IS storage.

some people don't have the money to buy one. that doesn't make the price too much, or not worth it. it just makes it not affordable for that specific person. i can't have a house. doesn't make houses worthless. a house can be worth it's price, still not something i'd buy right now.

 

No sir, you forget one possibility. You are a heavy user, but I'm not. And 80% of the people isn't.

My use: I use hibernate all the time instead of booting. The applications I need are already open (mainly Firefox). So 99% of the time the HDD is not the bottleneck, except for hibernating. Scorpio Black hibernates alsmost as fast as Intel SSD and slightly faster than Samsung SATA II. So I could spend 300 euros to hibernate 3 seconds quicker... or I could use standbye instead of hibernating.

And of course I understand that for your use SSD is worth the money. But for a large group of people it's not.

 

I agree with Phil and I am glad somebody is on my side

To somebody that has made the swich like yourself you feel its worth it, its natural to find a way to justify a purchase and its worth. Myself looking at it from a logical standpoint cant see it.

And I am a SSD fan, I plan to get one for my W90 because I have a lot of heavy tasks that can make use of it and a 2nd hdd to make up for the lost space.

However I not only cant justify the cost for the increase of performance in the netbook because I think it would be a very small/limited increase due to the nature of the programs used on a netbook, but I also have nothing to compensate for my lost space.

There is that 512GB SSD coming out by super talent soon but I dont want to spend $1300 for my storage device in a $400 netbook.....

Plus SSD influx is at an odd time right now, they are starting to get good and prices are starting to come down, but I feel by years end it will be much cheaper and even faster, so those who buy now are going to end up having to try to sell them for the better ones at years end when the cost should be more sensible.

I know this stands true for any tech, it gets better and cheaper as time passes, but SSD is not like CPU or GPU's where it is going to just get replaced with a better one, its an evolving tech that is just at a premium right now, but when it becomes more of the norm it will have higher competition and higher consumer base to even out the supply/demand driving prices way down.

 

Well said.

Guys, speed isn't all there is to SSDs...for me reliability was a big factor in my decision in getting an SSD. And I would never put a price on peace of mind. Let's see how long I will go without having to re-do my drive. Everyone has their own reasons for making the switch to SSDs. Let's just all respect their reasons please. What works for one person may not work for another.

 

And everyone has their own reasons to stick with HDDs or make the switch back to HDDs

I agree let's respect that everyone's situation is different.