Upgrading to a SSD?

[AgentX]

Lots of good info in this thread.

I've been running a Corsair GT 240GB SSD for about 6 months and love it. When I get home I turn on the computer and Windows 7 is booted up before I even finish taking my shoes off. I primarily use my computer for gaming and I have noticed a dramatic improvement in loading times for games.

I keep most of my games and operating system on the SSD. Music, movies, and pictures are on my old standard drive.

[Futurecollector]

[list][*]ALL SSD have limited writes which the SSD's controller tries to manage by making sure to spread the load evenly but some do a much better job than others and some brands use better memory than others - brand and model matters a lot.

1. Intel 320 and 520 series drives.
2. Crucial's M4 series
3. Samsung's 840 series
4. Kingston
5. Plextor

This is something I haven't really read about (other than you, and the person above you), How long will they really last? I mean am I going to have it crap out on me in a year? I don't really do much computing minus some photo editing maybe a bit video stuff, but I think I will keep most of my actual data on a HDD.

Basically I just want a faster laptop for my college research and paper writing.
I just threw in 8gbs of Ram, adding 4 gbs, and man, I was able to notice a increase in speed and load time.

[mud99]

If you buy a crappy SSD it will probably last less than 2 years

If you buy an intel 5 years, maybe longer

[Futurecollector]

If you buy a crappy SSD it will probably last less than 2 years

If you buy an intel 5 years, maybe longer

2 years inst't bad,

I think I narrowed it down to a Crucial M4, and the Samsung... The intel is on the expensive side. I only intend on keeping this laptop for about 2 more years anyways, so I would be happy with that, they all do offer 3 yr warranties...

One more question, when the SSD's crashed on you, where you able to access any of the info at all, or how do you secure your data after it crashes?

[sholling]

This is something I haven't really read about (other than you, and the person above you), How long will they really last? I mean am I going to have it crap out on me in a year? I don't really do much computing minus some photo editing maybe a bit video stuff, but I think I will keep most of my actual data on a HDD.

Basically I just want a faster laptop for my college research and paper writing.
I just threw in 8gbs of Ram, adding 4 gbs, and man, I was able to notice a increase in speed and load time.

Life depends on the manufacturer, the quality of the memory that they use, and the quality of the 3rd party controller they use, and the quality of the firmware they wrote or tweaked for that controller and all of that effects even the best manufacturers. Pretty much everyone has had problems with either BSOD bugs, lifespan, and/or performance but the better companies fixed their products with regular updates and stood behind 2,3 or 5 years warranties and we're really just now reaching the point where the better ones are almost trust worthy. You'll find a ton of information and reviews on the site below.

http://www.anandtech.com/tag/storage

BTW make sure what you buy fits your laptop. They make 2.5" SATA drives in 9mm and 11mm thicknesses and mSATA drives for computers with special mSATA slots.

FWIW my 3 year old i7 notebook with 8GB and a 512GB Crucial M4 boots from power on to log-in screen in 20 seconds or so. Watch for sales because the 256GB go on sale fairly often.

[mud99]

2 years inst't bad,

I think I narrowed it down to a Crucial M4, and the Samsung... The intel is on the expensive side. I only intend on keeping this laptop for about 2 more years anyways, so I would be happy with that, they all do offer 3 yr warranties...

One more question, when the SSD's crashed on you, where you able to access any of the info at all, or how do you secure your data after it crashes?

You lose all your data, we were not able to recover any data in most cases.

[mud99]

Life depends on the manufacturer, the quality of the memory that they use, and the quality of the 3rd party controller they use, and the quality of the firmware they wrote or tweaked for that controller and all of that effects even the best manufacturers. Pretty much everyone has had problems with either BSOD bugs, lifespan, and/or performance but the better companies fixed their products with regular updates and stood behind 2,3 or 5 years warranties and we're really just now reaching the point where the better ones are almost trust worthy. You'll find a ton of information and reviews on the site below.

http://www.anandtech.com/tag/storage

BTW make sure what you buy fits your laptop. They make 2.5" SATA drives in 9mm and 11mm thicknesses and mSATA drives for computers with special mSATA slots.

FWIW my 3 year old i7 notebook with 8GB and a 512GB Crucial M4 boots from power on to log-in screen in 20 seconds or so. Watch for sales because the 256GB go on sale fairly often.

So you bought a 512GB ssd three years ago?

[Futurecollector]

You lose all your data, we were not able to recover any data in most cases.

Hmmmm, I guess it just dosent sound to secure to me, so my SSD crashes and I send it back to the company without even formating the drive?

[Futurecollector]

So you bought a 512GB ssd three years ago?

I would guess he bought it sometime after he got the laptop as an upgrade...

[sholling]

You lose all your data, we were not able to recover any data in most cases.

Like Mud said in most cases it's gone. When you send them in for replacement I'm sure they physically erase the salvageable drives but the NSA can probably still recover the data . BTW formatting a conventional drive does not erase the data, you need to overwrite everything multiple times with a disk-wipe utility to delete the data. One more thing you need to know you never want to defrag an SSD it's unnecessary and creates a lot of wear and tear and you don't have any need to index the files.

So you bought a 512GB ssd three years ago?

No the SSD is about a year old. The computer was starting to feel slow and the heat from the 7200rpm Seagate that that came with it kept cooking and killing drives and finally the case (replaced under warranty) so I finally replaced the HD with an SSD. My notebook runs much-much-much cooler with the SSD and applications launch almost instantly. I'll get another 2+ years out of it now.

I also have 120GB SSD as the boot drive in my old Core 2 Quad desktop and a 64GB SSD as the boot drive in my home theater PC and although much slower than the one in my notebook the SSDs make them much more pleasant.

[Futurecollector]

Like Mud said in most cases it's gone. When you send them in for replacement I'm sure they physically erase the salvageable drives but the NSA can probably still recover the data . BTW formatting a conventional drive does not erase the data, you need to overwrite everything multiple times with a disk-wipe utility to delete the data. One more thing you need to know you never want to defrag an SSD it's unnecessary and creates a lot of wear and tear and you don't have any need to index the files.


No the SSD is about a year old. The computer was starting to feel slow and the heat from the 7200rpm Seagate that that came with it kept cooking and killing drives and finally the case (replaced under warranty) so I finally replaced the HD with an SSD. My notebook runs much-much-much cooler with the SSD and applications launch almost instantly. I'll get another 2+ years out of it now.

I also have 120GB SSD as the boot drive in my old Core 2 Quad desktop and a 64GB SSD as the boot drive in my home theater PC and although much slower than the one in my notebook the SSDs make them much more pleasant.

In regards to erasing, I would assume that a simple format on a SSD would work the same way as a Format on a thumb drive and the info would be gone forever right?

[the86d]

The only SSDs that I have seen on 3 desktop machines were suitable to a 15,000 hour bug where they stopped working, that even a power-off and back on, and a firmware update didn't resolve... I believe the tech is still too new for me to jump on the wagon for my personal/home or even work use.

However, we have Intel SSD in like 100 notebooks, and those have had ZERO issues.

I just don't trust them yet...

[sholling]

In regards to erasing, I would assume that a simple format on a SSD would work the same way as a Format on a thumb drive and the info would be gone forever right?

I'm not sure what's special about formatting a thumbdrive but formatting a hard drive is easily undone because no data is physically erased. There are freeware erase utilities available for SSDs and for thumbdrives that clear all of the bits. It probably isn't NSA proof (what is?) but it's good enough for most of us.

[the86d]

With wear leveling would writing all zeros to the drive actually prevent data-carving?

[sholling]

With wear leveling would writing all zeros to the drive actually prevent data-carving?

I don't know but it assumes that the wear leveling function is going overwrite the file you're trying to kill off and not just write zeros elsewhere. The answer is I just don't know. I suspect that an actual erase (clear every bit) is good enough for most of us, erase plus disk-wipe maybe a bit better but maybe not - I don't know, but for keeping the DOD's launch codes out of the wrong hands erase plus a great big hammer might be the best answer.