I actually KILLED the hard drive in my CF-19!

Well mt trusty Toughbook fell off the workbench, and chipped the concrete floor! Not a scratch on the computer lol. DIdn't shut down. No apparent issues. Until I tried to open a program 15minutes later. The drop actually took out the hard drive!

Pretty impressive! It might actually be the FIRST HD in a Toughbook I have killed from dropping! Sure, I have just had them go bad due to age. But this one straight locked up! Anyways, just amused. It did hit hard...

So, I guess I will be needing a new drive. I am going to put in a SSD drive this time....

 

SSD is the way to go, I just grabbed a 480gb to go in my desktop. I pulled the ssd out of it for my 19Mk5 and forgot how slow 5400rpm drives were,ouch.

 

Definitely SSD... Better battery life and quicker overall!

 

SSD is the ideal plan! But I have to pay for those, and I actually have a couple platter drives sitting about I could put in today... The crappy part is a have a fully tweaked and configured backup sitting around somewhere I can't seem to find. I bet its sitting on the desktop of the MK5. Cause thats the most logical place for me to have left it...

I have built a couple of these MK5 recently, and am about to build at least two more. Seller on eBay had them for $150 each last May. It was such a good deal, I went and got a second one! I wish I had bought even more... A coworker liked it so much, sold him one at cost. Now I have other technicians asking me to make a few up for them. One already has a computer on the way. Point being, I am not making any real money off of these (not sure how some of you manage that) and I do need to find that image, or make up a new one.

Gonna pull that HDD out of the caddy later and see if I got lucky and it disconnected. If not, maybe I take the cover off the drive and try to free it up...

But I digress, back to the SSD thoughts and questions. Are SanDisk X110 any good? I am looking at a reasonably priced one that is running at 6.0Gbps.

I have never setup or used a SSD before, anything special I need to do? Will be running W7.

 

Nope....just drop it in. I have one in my CF-19MK5 too and it runs great.

 

Max speed of SSD in mk5 is 3.0 gbps I think due to controller

 

Can anyone else confirm this??? I had specifically chosen some 6.0 ones over the 3.0 thinking they would be an advantage. If not, I think I can grab a 3.0 at some savings... I was actually just about to hit order too, so this is REALLY valuable information! lol!

 

I've got a mk4 and a mk6 19, they both have Samsung evo SSD's in, ones a 1tb the other a 750gb, they both can run at 6gb/s but not in the 19's, when I go into the Samsung magician panel it tells me that they are running at 3gb/s.

Even at 3gb/s both 19's are super fast, switch on to desktop, 22 seconds

 

Okay sounds awesome! Good to know thank you very much for the tip! Now to go find something.

 

Any thoughts guys? Samsung vs SanDisk? The SanDisk ones are about $5 more. But I have had super good luck with their SD cards, and in fact won't use any other brand.

Not extremely concerned with brand for this, but the ones I am seeing are ones I have never heard of before, and at the same prices. So seems smarter to go with a known brand I guess.

128gb drives are coming in at $40-45. These are 6.0gb/s drives. Not finding any deals for something cheaper in the 3.0gb/s stuff. Same price range but larger capacity would work there. Computer runs pretty software and space light. I don't "need" a lot more room, if any. So the jump to spend $65+ on a 256gb drive isn't really worth it to me.

I know, room to grow. But honestly I use my MacBook for most of my day to day stuff. The Toughbooks are specifically for use out in the workshop and on my car.

 

I've got the sandisk sd cards in both and can't fault them, the reason I went for the Samsung 1tb ssd it that the package / box was damaged in the store and it was super cheap, I was real happy with performance so picked up the used once (for music / dj system) 750gb again at a good price

 

Shawn told me something about doing something somewhere.....ummmmm....
[COMPUTER]
[SYSTEM PROPERTIES]
CLICK [WINDOWS EXPERIENCE INDEX] I think that's right. doesn't hurt anyway. i just tried it on my one and only W7.

Found the following: Run as administrator...

 

Yes that is correct.
When Windows runs the Experience Index, it recognizes a SSD and sets everything properly for it.

 

I felt the same way. I went with a 120GB in my 19.

I have had no problems with any of my Samsung SSD's. I have bought 2 SanDisk SSD's but they went in Toughbooks that I sold so really can't say how they worked out.

 

I have used
Samsung
Sandisk
Kingston
Toshiba
Intel
PNY
Adata

They all worked fine for me. I prefer Intel for no obvious reason.

 

There are a few I have heard whispers about and intend to stay away from. OCZ, and Dell come to mind first. There were a few odd unknown names I am not willing to risk my time on either.

Sheepman and Shawn, thank you for the Windows Experience tips! That will be invaluable!

Well I got some work ahead of me. I am also going to think about improvements to my MK1... That will be its own thread though.

 

I just dropped that 480gb Kingston in my desktop, it had a 500 5400rpm and it really is an amazing difference. PNY,Sandisk and intel are good drives but as far as SSD's go,they are slow. Samsung and Crucial are generally the fastest. The 480 I had is good but not their best drive, but it was $135 new.

 

I was staying away from OCZ too but since Toshiba bought them out they are a better drive now.

 

Okay guys I grabbed two drives. For my MK5 here, I ordered an Intel 160gb drive. For the MK1, I snagged a 90gb Kingston. Thanks for all the help!

I kept opening up more search pages and discovered some of the larger sizes were same price as smaller ones. Some smaller ones were not as common, and went for more. They came to a little more than I wanted to spend, but they should do the trick with some comfort for room.