Sony VAIO Z VPCZ1 - Unboxing Photos and Movie

Was the screen pretty at least? lol

 

Yep, the screen was fine. I rotated the laptop and you could still see the screen as if you were looking at it head-on. When you put it up and down though it gets a little hard to see, but that's no biggie. I didn't look too hard but I didn't notice those weird lines either... I didn't even think about them until now. So they're probably not that noticeable even if they are there. But yes, the colors and brightness looked fine.

 

Yeah, I didn't feel the need to change anything in the resolution still it's still the 'old' screen (1600x900, like my current Z).

BTW, not sure if it's an illusion since I don't have both side by side (yet ) but I like the touch feel of my current Z keyboard better. The one in the Sony Style store felt a bit more mushy for some reasons...

Then again, it is backlit which is great...

maybe just an impression. ZoinksS2K, how did the two keyboard compare in your opinion?

 

I read somewhere that the old Z screen used two colors to produce white whereas the one on the new Z actually uses three, so its not the same screen as before. I can't remember the site but if I find it I'll put it up.. I think it was a russian site and used google translate to figure out what it said.

 

Ok, I'll elaborate: yes, the screen might be different but not from a resolution standpoint (main reason to play with dpi) and since my current Z is already 1600x900, I didn't feel the need to change it.

As far as the display is concerned, it looked gorgeous. But then again, I still very much like the display of my current Z so I'm not a reference I guess

Hope this makes sense.

 

Yes I would like to know this as well .

 

Trying Ghost now. Downloading Acronis

 

You guys want Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Workstation or True Image Home 2010.

You get one type.

 

strongly recommend ShadowProtect Desktop.

it's better than anything Acronis or Norton makes.

 

Ghost 14 works fine. No extra drivers or special recovery disc changes required.



Just as an FYI, I don't burn CD/DVD's unless I have to. I extracted the Ghost 14 ISO to a USB drive and booted from there. I do this for booting into a BartsPE environment or when doing a clean install of Windows. It's faster this way and I don't have 4 inches of one-use CD's laying around.

 

I think for the kind of backup regular user needs windows 7 built-in backup should be sufficient:

http://www.intowindows.com/using-windows-7-image-backup-tool/

Please try also to do backup with windows-7 image backup tool.

 

Acronis Home 2010 please! Thanks mucho

 

Windows Backup works as well, confirmed. It should work well, although I'm not sure if you can schedule full image backups. Never really looked into it. I'm still a Norton Ghost zealot.

As for Acronis, where can I get a boot ISO? I'd prefer not to install it.

 

Here is the trial version
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

I am not sure about the boot iso. anyone

 

Thanks.

Seams like backing up RAID 0 is not slow or complicated process. I intended to leave default RAID 0 z configuration regardless of degradation issues related to TRIM support or backup complications, but now I don see why would anyone want to slow down SSDs by braking RAID 0.

Even if SSD failure probability is higher in RAID 0 it should not be a problem since you should do regular backups anyway. You only need max half an hour of your Z idle time to do complete backup.

 

I'm with you on that one, igorstef.

 

Does anyone know if any of the other colors have plastic palm rests? This is really disappointing...

 

No, you can't. Although it says "Create a Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore Image", it's not really an image dump, but a backup. However, you can restore "bare metal", unlike most pure backup programs, by booting from a Windows install DVD and select "Restore" from there.

With a backup program, you're likely to have far fresher backups than with an image program. But more work with initial set-up and when restoring.

The good things about Windows Complete PC Backup it are:
- It understands things like EFS encrypted files, NTFS junctions and streams and preserves 8+3 filenames (my main reasons to ditch Acronis)
- It does actual backups, and can be scheduled to do incremental backup jobs for you in the background (e.g. while you sleep) without a user logged in.
- You can restore from the F8 boot menu or by booting a Windows DVD

The bad things are:
- The "File and Folder backup" is pretty useless -- you have no real control over exactly what you back up.
- The full backup is only bundled with the Pro, Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Windows. Home versions only get the file and folder backup.
- Can't be used to back up to a Samba share (which includes most NAS devices). It requires a network share that supports full Windows ownership permission settings, or it will fail with a useless error message.
- It has no housekeeping, but will add on to your backup forever until you run out of space. Manual housekeeping not only means deleting backups, but removing entries from the registry(!).

My favourite backup program is Symantec Backup Exec (formerly sold by Roxio, Stomp, Adaptec, Veritas and Seagate), but you can't easily buy a single license for it. You have to be a volume customer.

That said, I much prefer Windows Complete PC Backup over, say, Acronis, Paragon and Novastor.

 

Nice summary, arth1.

As previously stated, I'm a Norton Ghost fan myself.

• Almost TOO many scheduling options with lots of customizable options
• Full disk imaging support
• Sector-level incremental backups (VSS, I believe)
• Can set custom jobs for files and folders to go along with full image backups
• Supports Blu-Ray disc burning and restores. This is good in theory, but BR burning is mind-numbingly slow. I back to a USB drive.
• Supports Bitlocker, if anyone actually uses the thing
• Allows you to browse the full backups or mount the backup as a new volume. Useful to pull specific files or directories.
• Allows you to convert your full backups to VMWare or MS Virtual PC. Looks like Ghost 15 allows you to select whether you want to convert the image to multiple versions of VMWare Workstation and ESX Server.

The last one works really well and is big for me. Effectively you can boot a point in time copy of your OS into VMware. VMWare converter can do this too, but I like the dual-use Ghost provides.

 

So just to be sure. The steps to restore the Z RAID performance are:

1. Create Image using Ghost and save it to an external USB drive.
2. Break the RAID
3. Use HDDErase to erase both drives individually
4. Re-create the RAID
5. Use Ghost bootable disc and restore from the image

P.S. Just to confirm, can Ghost backup and restore from an external USB Hard disk?

 

I'm hoping this won't be necessary at all.

I'm doing some tests now, but I can't seem to get the drives to slow down. This may be a result in of itself, but I'm not satisfied yet.

I'd like anyone's feedback on the best way to artificially cause SSD performance degradation.

I'm going to fill the drive to max capacity a few times. One with large files, once with thousands of smaller files.

Any other ideas? Fill it with IOMeter? Defrag? Throw it on the ground and yell at it?

I plan to do this with drives in RAID0, then break them apart and do this to the drive individually.

 

Correct. Just make sure you get the system partitions. You may see one or two 100MB disks there. If this causes your trouble and you can't boot on the restored volume, run the Win7 repair tool once or twice (on the Win7 install DVD).

 

Hmm.. Do you think this is because the Intel raid drivers are included on the Ghost recovery disc? Or that it doesn't need any?

BTW, your latest results are very nice to hear. Both the ability to restore from Ghost, even if I currently use Acronis, the feature list you listed for Ghost is quite enough for me to switch if Acronis can't restore to this Raid setup.

Also your inability to see any degradation is encouraging. I guess you at least have written more than the drive's capacity (128GB), and that should in theory have saturated it enough so that it is forced to do some type of background job to be able to keep writing at the same, or at least similar, speed.

I'm getting trigger happy.

 

Hi, I will be receiving my VAIO Z very soon. So from what I understand, from this thread, first thing I should do when I get this thing and get into Windows is install Norton Ghost and make an Image?

What's the difference between this and just restoring using Sony included recovery discs?

 

As far as I understand it, the latter don't exist. That's the problem.

 

Don't get too excited. I may just be doing it wrong. I have filled the drives at least a few times. My Valve Steam directory is 111GB and I've copied most of it over twice now.

I'll post my final results in another thread. I do automated load testing for a living, so I'm a bit retentive when doing tests and it is taking longer than I thought.

I'd really appreciate feedback or suggestions on my question in post #122 of this thread.

Help me help the community work out the SSD performance question.

 

What??? So how are we supposed to restore to factory defaults?
I thought I saw a few unboxing videos with atleast 2 discs included: http://img522.imageshack.us/i/dsc00760cj.jpg/

 

Calm down folks.

You can burn DVD's with the recovery software. This takes you back to square 1.

The CD's that came with my system were for Windows XP downgrades. I have not and probably won't use these.

 

Perhaps someone knowledgeable can help Zoinks out? I would but Im sure id only make things worse for him!

It would be very great and helpful to see how degradation affects these drives and how much performance can be restored.

 

ok, so how exactly do you do that? and whats the best way? What are the steps you have to take to back up Raid 0 and if you back up your raid 0 at the beginning is that the only and best back up file you would need to restore your Raid 0 to peak performance like the day you bought it?

 

As far as I understand it should be good enough to cause degradation, although the games tend to have mainly big files.

 

I'm making a backup of the current OS state now.

I'm going to do another Sony Recovery install with the system as close to Sony-standard as I can.

From there, I will fill the drives 2 times in each of the following ways:

1. Fill with large files - This will be my iTunes TV Shows directory. Files vary from about 300MB to 4GB.
2. Fill with small files - Also from Itunes, but the "Album Artwork" directory. This is about 1.8GB. I'll copy it, then copy the copies to fill the drive. This should generate some extra HDD activity.

 

Worst case, do a secure erase on each of the individual drives. I'm going to see what this involves in a few minutes.

 

Ok steps are:

1. You can create image of OS + DATA just by using windows 7. Here is the link on how to do that:

http://www.intowindows.com/using-win...e-backup-tool/

2. Create boot disk with HDDErase on it.

Download link: http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDEraseWeb.zip

Instructions: http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDEraseReadMe.txt

2. Restart windows 7 and get in to Raid configuration using CTRL+I. On configuration screen you should choose Reset disk to Non-RAID
This will break the RAID 0

3. Run HDDErase on each SSD. Running HDDErase with option 1 should be good enough.

Instructions: http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDEraseReadMe.txt


4. Re-create the RAID by choosing option Create RAID volume on RAID configuration screen.

5. Now restore backup image

instructions: http://www.intowindows.com/using-win...e-backup-tool/

Easy

You can make as many backups as you want. There will be no performance difference between first and the last backup caused by SSD degradation if you break RAID and use HDDErase to secure delete each drive.

 

I found an SSD review here:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=10

I have a feeling there was a reference to an Anandtech review in the old Z thread, but I don't think it was this one. On the page where the link points, he describes exactly how he made the drives "Used", and as far as I understand you have done that.

Another interesting note was on page 19 in the same review, called "What's wrong with Samsung" Some firmwares obviously supports background garbage collection, in which case he says the degradation doesn't happen (but that's not including Raid in the equation). Anyway, you could check which firmware your drives use.

 

ZoinksS2K I think it would be wise to note the serial number of the Z you are "torturing" so when one of NotebookReview's members goes in to buy a refurb laptop we will be able to spot and avoid that particular one...

 

Thanks McMagnus

Nutman: Where's the fun in that? At this point, I'll probably keep it and call it a very early or very late xmas present for my niece.

You do raise an interesting dilemma for Sony and users. Refurbished or used machines make the need to "restore" original SSD performance all the more important. The need to quantify performance loss over time is also very important.

 

Normally this works, but I don't know if you can do it with the RAID setting.

With my OCZ SSD drives, I had to change the BIOS setting in my Z591 to IDE from AHCI for the secure erase to happen. This was the only way to flash the Firmware as well. On the Z591, you have to "feature enable" the BIOS to gain access to this setting. RAID is the third option in this section, by the way.

Anyhoo, I'm about to try this on the new Z.

I'm a bit torn though. If I secure erase the drives, I lose any "seasoning" I've done to the drives over the past day. I may opt just to let it stand for now and do it when I'm done collecting data from the system in a "used" state.

 

Okay just received this email from Sony - Sat 3/13/2010 1:36 AM

Thank you for your purchase at Sony Style. Your order has been shipped. Please see shipping details below. If you would like to track your order, please go to My Account and select Order Information. Please be aware that Sony Style recycles our tracking numbers so it may take up to 48 hours for your tracking information to provide an accurate status.



The following item(s) have been shipped:
Product: US-VPCZ1190X-LBOM
Component: No additional Video Editing Software
Component: No Engraving
Component: Microsoft® Office 2007 Professional
Component: No additional AntiVirus Software
Component: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
Component: No additional Photo Editing Software
Component: Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband Built-In
Component: Fresh Start
Component: Intel® Core™ i7-620M processor (2.66GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.33GHz
Component: CD/DVD Burner
Component: Standard Capacity Battery
Component: Premium Carbon Fiber
Component: Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-bit
Component: 256GB (256GBx1) Solid State Drive with RAID 0 Technology
Quantity: 1
Description: VPCZ1190X Configure-to-Order
Date shipped: 03/13/2010
Ship Mode: Expedited
Shipper: Fedex

I guess I will have this baby in hand very soon. Do I need to go out and purchase a special DVD to have on hand to burn a recovery disk? I want to be ready to take care of everything as soon as this arrives.

Thanks for any helpful info.

 

Yes I forgot that, You need to break the RAID change the BIOS setting to IDE from AHCI and than try to erase each SSD drive alone. And also some SSDs you can not even erase with HDDerase. If sony is normal company (not kiping all toys to them selfs) it would provide us with erase tool . So let's hope it will work (fingers crossed)

I suppose you can do secure erase just before you return it.

 

Zoinks, I was thinking about why you weren't able to see any performance drop even though you have filled up the drive a few times. Perhaps this theory have been refuted in some thread here, but in that case I've missed it.

You fill up the drive, even up until it says "stop, no more, I'm full!". But even then, the drive has some % of spare space. Fine, to write more, you need to delete some files, ok, do that. But the drive doesn't know that the blocks where those files were are free, so nothing happens now. However, when you write new files, those files are written to the same logical blocks as the old files occupied. But the drive doesn't care about logical blocks, it maps those logical blocks to physical blocks, and in this case it maps them into the physical blocks where the spare area was. I believe arth1 once said that this just postpones the inevitable for a while, until the spare area is full as well. But that might not be true, because the drive can now treat the physical block where that same logical block were located before, as a spare block, i.e. it can garbage collect it and prepare it for full speed writing.

This way, the spare area is not a fixed area on the drive, but moves around, and isn't really an *area*, it's just a bunch of randomly located blocks. But the important thing is that it *often* has time to garbage collect the blocks in that area before it has to write to it. The only situation where it still may stall is when you write data too fast to the drive so that it can't keep up with garbage collecting the spare area before it needs to write to a not-yet-GC'd block.

The way to try this, if this is correct, is to know how large the spare area is, and then write more than that as fast as possible. If the write speed drops after a while, then you have probably caught up the the GC's tail.

Or, I'm completely wrong and Arth1 will bust my **s.

 

Congrats, and nothing special. The recovery program needs two standard dual layer DVD +R or -R's.

Please post info on your 256GB setup

 

McMagnus,

Running IOmeter on the drive from a seperate boot OS is probably the best thing that can be done. If Samsung under subscribed the available storage, it'll likely remain their secret.

 

IOmeter sounds good. Probably better to run the tests first, and then discuss how to interpret the results, instead of trying to 2nd-guess what's going to happen.

 

When you say "feature enable", you mean show the hidden advanced settings?
How did you feature enable the BIOS in your new Z?

 

Hi Zoinks,
could you please show a screenshot of your windows Experience index scores.
and also when are you going to upload some gameplay videos on the vaio Z
Thanks

 

I looked on the Sonystyle UK website and on Z series information page it states that:

Prestigious Materials
Light but tough with a hybrid carbon fibre housing that absorbs the knocks and shocks of travelling.

A milled aluminium palmrest adds strength and durability at critical points such as the edge most commonly used when holding the notebook in one hand.

This suggests that it should not be plastic?

Here is the link:

http://www.sony.co.uk/product/vn-z-series/tab/editorialarticle1

 

Battery leak? Si o no?

 

Zoinks: I asked this on the other Z owner's thread, but, on a scale of 1 to 10, what's your overall rating/impression of the Z?

 

The palmrest "frame," the section housing the keyboard & palmrest "block," is made of aluminum but the "protruding" palmrest "block" housing the trackpad & trackpad buttons is not made of aluminum.