SSD Drive upgrade

[TrevorW]

Hi Paul

Being solid state (ie: no moving parts) you'd hope they'd be as reliable

here is an article about them

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rate,2923.html

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Been going thru this recently for server upgrade. Recommended brands were Intel/Crucial, and was given a huge "steer clear" of OCX brand.

[MrB (Simon)]

Too true Troy. After reading lots of reviews and feedback on forums etc, I also went with Intel. OCX seems to have (had? it was a while ago) a pretty high failure rate.

[chrisp9au (Chris)]

I replaced my laptop hard drive with a 120GB SSD about 6 months ago, it made a big difference to boot times and program start up times. Mind you, a fresh installation of Windows also helped I'm sure.

At the same time I replaced the laptop DVD drive with the old 250GB HDD. That now holds all my documents. Bought the SATA adapter on ebay. I now have my DVD drive as a USB connected external drive that I hook up when needed, which isn't very often. Again, I bought the external DVD case on ebay.

Windows 7 Home 64bit operating system and all programs are kept on the SSD, and all documents, downloads etc. are kept on the HDD It all works very well, the only problem that occurs infrequently seems to be associated with viewing video clips online. Youtube clips seem to have some sort of caching issue with the SSD and cause the system to hang requiring a restart. I suspect it's some kind of caching issue, but it's not a huge problem for me.

The 2nd huge improvement for my laptop setup was to connect a 2nd monitor, a 19" flat panel, setup in portrait mode. The monitor had been sitting in the shed unloved since I exchanged my desktop for the laptop. I initially wanted to use it for documents in MS Word and for reading ebooks in portrait mode, but I find I use it for practically everything these days. I use a program called DisplayFusion Pro V4.1 to manage multiple monitors. Love it! Laptop screens are OK, but the wide screen effect isn't the best for browsing the internet etc. Just having two applications working side by side without having to tab between them is great.

Cheers

Chris

[Tandum (Robin)]

Chris, If I read this right, you found a carrier to plug a hard drive into the DVD slot on a laptop. Is that right?

[MrB (Simon)]

Robin, as mentioned in an earlier post, I will be getting one too.
Here is a link picked at random only as an example, I have not used this exact product from this seller, please shop around.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/SATA-2nd-...item4601ca7b36

[chrisp9au (Chris)]

Originally Posted by Tandum

Chris, If I read this right, you found a carrier to plug a hard drive into the DVD slot on a laptop. Is that right?

That's right Robin, just do a search for a hard drive caddy for your model of laptop, I seem to remember there were plenty around. A quick search on ebay reveals there are currently over 5,000 of them up for grabs!

Cheers

Chris

[rogerg (Roger)]

Trevor,

Regarding your question of how easy it is.

I bought a 512GB Crucial M4 with data transfer kit (cable). I did not reinstall windows, the cable and associated program simply cloned my old HDD contents to the new SSD. Highly recommended approach unless you have need to spend the time re-installing and reconfiguring operating system. For my 320GB HDD it took about 3 hours to clone, I then switched the drives over (15 minute procedure for my laptop), and it's worked fine since.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-In...ref=pd_cp_pc_2

I see Crucial have desktop PC kits that include a mounting bracket and cable, and they have the transfer cable available separately I think.

Regards,
Roger.

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by Tandum

Chris, If I read this right, you found a carrier to plug a hard drive into the DVD slot on a laptop. Is that right?

I did the same.

If you dont want to buy from eBay, I had a good experience with these guys in the US. Took about 2 weeks for delivery.

http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index....9f39ca115b7000

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

I've had an SSD as my boot drive with Win7 on for around 3-4 years now. It's an OCZ and is lightning fast and I never had any issues.

Interestingly, Win7 still boots as fast as the first time, about 30s. With disk drives I always found it got slower and slower...

Just do it, you'll never look back.

[icytailmark (Mark)]

only problem with SSD drives is when the drive gets over half full the performance drops a massive amount. Make sure you only put your OS and not much else on it.

[g__day (Matthew)]

I'm on my fourth SSD in a year - the last three failed! OCZ and Kingston.

So my thoughts:

1. They are very fast - especially if you have a SATA3 port ~ 500MB/sec or 210 for a SATA2 motherboard port.
2. Don't save critical data to them that you can't afford to lose; all my mail and critical business data and home photos etc goes on normal HDDs
3. Buy from a supplier with a great returns policy. My last SSD drive died and no issues to get money back, which was enough to get a Samsung 260GB SSD which has a 3 year warranty, was larger than the failed 120GB Kingston Enterprise class drive (which had only a one year warranty) and was $45 cheaper

They do bring a lot of spark to a 2-3 year old system; just store programs there - have backups and retain critical data on HDDs.

[TrevorW]

Purchased a Intel 120gb SSD HD 2 yr warranty

now all I need to do is sort out where a noise is coming from replaced the CPU fan as well but still noisy

[fauxpas (Tony)]

Just bought a cheap Asus 14" notebook... As an entry level notebook I threw a 120GB Patriot SSD and 2 x 4GB RAM in it... Boot time without Asus bloatware is 45sec... With all the software I want on it the boot time is 55sec... With antivirus it pushes the boot time to over a minute...

Still very good considering those entry level notebooks take so long to boot you go make a cup of coffee while you're waiting...

Playing video files is super quick, no delay from clicking the file to the player playing the video... Previously there would be a 5+sec delay with the timer going while the HDD churns away...

There's no noise because there's no moving parts and it runs cool. So expect better battery performance...

MSY is the best place for components... I got a Sata III drive just to future proof it... Sata II 128GB drives are $60 - Insane!

A $60 SSD and an increase of RAM to 4 or 8 GB will do your lappie wonders...

SSD Drives http://msy.com.au/default.jsp?category=15

Laptop RAM http://msy.com.au/default.jsp?category=5