Samsung SSD 830 2.5inch SATA III 256GB (€218 delivered from Amazon)

Chet T16

Monotype wrote: »

Looks like standard 2.5'' hard drive size, so yes it should work. There's youtube videos of people replacing the hard drives in these.

I meant whether it was sata III or not. Pain to get into these as it happens, down through the keyboard

Alanstrainor

Chet T16 wrote: »

I meant whether it was sata III or not. Pain to get into these as it happens, down through the keyboard

I doubt it is. But even still, I'm running a sata 3 ssd in my machine that only supports sata 2 and it's very fast. Really impressed. I've had mine a year now and have had no issues at all. The only trouble I have is mine is only a 64GB drive so space can be tight. But there's no way I'd go back to a normal disk.

54kroc

Chet T16 wrote: »

I meant whether it was sata III or not. Pain to get into these as it happens, down through the keyboard

It should only be a couple of clips and some screws to get the keyboard off, you'd have it installed in five minutes, It's well worth doing.

Monotype

scamalert wrote: »

that's the point all manufacturers put on high numbers on the box but reality is only with compressed data and in sequence reading is that,one would achieve those speeds,as for number of ssd just wanted to be on the safe side with the count,better more then less ,hope those Samsungs do prove to be reliable,as so far ive only heard that only intel ones live up to standards and have least failure rates or problems with controllers,but they are the most expensive ones a swell.so need time till reviews start coming in.

Intel are very careful and still have their share of problems but they also charge an awful lot of money to provide a good product, a bit over the odds in my opinion. I've seen the results that you are talking about which shows the return rates of drives. There's a lot of different drives around this generation though so we could see some changes around. Anyhow, Intel just use Marvell (same drives as crucial) and Sandforce (same as OCZ) in their own packaging with a few customisations so you're not getting that much of a different product.

The Samsung 830 is a reliable drive from all accounts that I've read so far. There already are plenty of reviews covering them. The read speeds are much more credible than other sources for their drives - you won't always get maximum but there's no tricks with enormous dropoff when working with incompressible data. You'd saturate the SATA II speed limit easily enough with a single drive here.

vibe666

Monotype wrote: »

Agility 3 speeds are over estimated - they get slower the more the fill up and the results are only in ideal situation with compressible data.

Anyway, aside from that. Suppose it gets 550MB/s, you're talking about bytes - in bits, that's 550×8 = 4400Mb/s.
...which is well above 3Gbps (3000Mb/s).

eggsackary.

not to mention that the drive you are replacing will most likely only be anywhere from 30-70MB/s so whichever way you slice it, you're going to see a big improvement to one of the biggest bottlenecks in your system.

just for reference, this is a benchmark i took on my (sata2) desktop PC with two OCZ Agility 3's in RAID0 when i originally installed them and the same SSD's about 14 months later (i.e. this morning)



without raid, real world performance is only slightly better than half that, as you'd expect.

which i think is actually pretty good considering it's my main desktop and gets used daily.

and here's the performance of my work laptop with a regular HDD with similar hardware specs (core i5 750 8gb ram etc.). company security policy has since forced me to use PGP whole disk encryption on it and the performance has fallen through the floor (lost about 40% of the speed) hence the idea of upgrading it with an SSD.

Chet T16

54kroc wrote: »

Chet T16 wrote: »

I meant whether it was sata III or not. Pain to get into these as it happens, down through the keyboard

It should only be a couple of clips and some screws to get the keyboard off, you'd have it installed in five minutes, It's well worth doing.

I've had it apart to add more ram, it's not that bad but not as easy as some. Actually i think the drive may well be easier than the ram to access.

Ordered one within 5 mins of this thread going up when I couldn't find any negative info on them!

dnme

To steer the thread in a slightly different direction without going off topic,

Do any of you have any magic bullet solutions for migrating your laptop to this drive? Or is it a case of a brand new install of Windows 7, manual install of all drivers, software and then copy over data? My laptop (as Im sure is the case for many) can only have one drive attached at one time.

Nedved85

I'm presuming this will work with a PC and not just a laptop...

Chet T16

dnme wrote: »

To steer the thread in a slightly different direction without going off topic,

Do any of you have any magic bullet solutions for migrating your laptop to this drive? Or is it a case of a brand new install of Windows 7, manual install of all drivers, software and then copy over data? My laptop (as Im sure is the case for many) can only have one drive attached at one time.

Doesn't it come with the solution in the form of a usb cable and ghost software?

dnme

Chet T16 wrote: »

Doesn't it come with the solution in the form of a usb cable and ghost software?

Yeah I though that, but wondered where or what the intermediate media was, do you create an image to DVD or something?

vibe666

Chet T16 wrote: »

Doesn't it come with the solution in the form of a usb cable and ghost software?

yes it does.

you basically plug in the SSD via the USB cable that comes with it and use the supplied Ghost software to boot your laptop from and clone your existing hard disk to the new SSD and then when that's done swap out the drives and put it all back together again and you should be done.

it wouldn't hurt to get yourself a cheap usb (or dvd drive bay) enclosure for your old drive though just so you have it as extra storage, should the need arise.

pre-cloning i'd have a good clear out of unwanted clutter from your old drive though (have a look with treesize/windirstat to see what's using up space and run ccleaner etc.) and run a scan disk and defrag prior to the cloning.

personally though, nothing beats a clean install on an SSD, but it can be more of a headache than cloning it, so i guess it depends on how determined you are to get every ounce of performance out of it.

Monotype

dnme wrote: »

To steer the thread in a slightly different direction without going off topic,

Do any of you have any magic bullet solutions for migrating your laptop to this drive? Or is it a case of a brand new install of Windows 7, manual install of all drivers, software and then copy over data? My laptop (as Im sure is the case for many) can only have one drive attached at one time.

Chet T16 wrote: »

Doesn't it come with the solution in the form of a usb cable and ghost software?

I wouldn't use ghost software going from HDD -> SSD. Windows treats SSDs a lot differently and there's a lot of small changes. You could do most of these by hand but a clean install is far better.

Nedved85 wrote: »

I'm presuming this will work with a PC and not just a laptop...

Yes. Smaller than standard desktop size though so most people would buy an adapter for 3.5'' to 2.5''. I'm talking about a physical brackets to hold the drive in place and not any difference in cables.
However, there's no moving parts that would cause it to vibrate, so as long as it's even sitting in a hard drive shelf, it's okay, provided you don't move your PC a lot.

Nedved85

Monotype wrote: »

Yes. Smaller than standard desktop size though so most people would buy an adapter for 3.5'' to 2.5''. I'm talking about a physical brackets to hold the drive in place and not any difference in cables.
However, there's no moving parts that would cause it to vibrate, so as long as it's even sitting in a hard drive shelf, it's okay, provided you don't move your PC a lot.

Cheers, Like this one? http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-OCZACSSDBRKT2-inch-Adaptor-Bracket/dp/B002I8MUU0/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Monotype

Yeah, that's what you're looking for... although I think they're charging an awful lot for a piece of metal with two bent edges and some holes! :rolleyes:

tvercetti

How does this SSD compare with a 3.5" SSD with regards performance and price. Are they recommending this in the PC building forum.

Monotype

3.5'' SSDs are near non-existent. I presume it's a shift towards miniaturisation and standardisation across all types of hard drives. This is what people are buying on the building and upgrading forum- the Crucial M4 and Samsung 830 are the drives constantly recommended again and again.

d31b0y

Monotype wrote: »

Yeah, that's what you're looking for... although I think they're charging an awful lot for a piece of metal with two bent edges and some holes! :rolleyes:

Agreed. SSDs have no moving parts so don't get extremely hot. I have one of mine just resting on a bracket for a 3.5" HDD. It's not as if it's going to go anywhere in a PC enclosure.

vibe666

ditto, and i've moved house since installing my two ssd's on my desktop pc.

if you're still really bothered about it moving around, use some sticky tape or velcro to keep it still.

Chet T16

It's here it's here!

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

mine hasnt shipped yet, more fool me for waiting till friday to order

TPD

Mine's arrived also. Fun evening of reinstalling windows awaits

vibe666

don't forget to install from USB instead of DVD. you'll be done with the main windows install in about 15 minutes.

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool

between that and ninite for silent app installs, it's almost a completely painless process.

http://ninite.com/

Chet T16

I'm not reinstalling, not yet anyway, i'm more interested in seeing the difference it makes with the existing install.

Estimated 3 hours to copy the drive over, 1 hour left.

I've never seen a sexier HDD, with it anodized brushed metal

TPD

Chet T16 wrote: »

I've never seen a sexier HDD, with it anodized brushed metal

It really is weird seeing an internal storage drive coming fashionably packaged like the latest ipod or something.

Chet T16

Well, guess how many minutes from the end of the 3 hour transfer norton ghost failed? :mad: I ended up using easeus disk copy and it worked first time, ~3 hours for all my crap.

Heres the results on my 1.5GHz dual core atom netbook and its near 18 month old win 7 pro install. How do the numbers look?

TPD

Chet T16 wrote: »

Heres the results on my 1.5GHz dual core atom netbook and its near 18 month old win 7 pro install. How do the numbers look?

I'll rerun mine this evening, pretty sure I had a 400+ in one of those at least. On a fresh home premium install with an i5.

Monotype

Speeds look normal enough for SATA 2.

You would be far better off with a clean install. Anyway, make sure at the very least that you switch off automatic defragmentation as it will only cause more wear on your drive for no performance benefit.
Also it would be no harm to enable TRIM and AHCI, if you haven't already. Enable AHCI in Windows first and then in the BIOS.
http://www.windows7home.net/windows-7-enable-trim-ahci/

vibe666

Chet T16 wrote: »

Heres the results on my 1.5GHz dual core atom netbook and its near 18 month old win 7 pro install. How do the numbers look?

I'll assume that if it's an Atom netbook, it's likely SATA2, so you're doing pretty well considering that and that it's not exactly going to be the beefiest system on the planet.

did you do a speed test on the old drive before you did the upgrade to see what the difference was?

vibe666

Monotype wrote: »

Also it would be no harm to enable TRIM and AHCI, if you haven't already. Enable AHCI in Windows first and then in the BIOS.
http://www.windows7home.net/windows-7-enable-trim-ahci/

very important or you'll quite likely end up with an instant BSOD the next time you boot.

JHet

Is it still necessary to do this if you are doing a fresh install of windows?

Monotype

If you're doing a fresh install, windows will handle most of the stuff automatically.
I would recommend that you enable AHCI in the BIOS before you install windows though.

Chet T16

The drive came with samsung software to set it up and that turned defrag off along with indexing and 'Super Fetch'

I never enabled AHCI and i got no problems, i'll have to check it out.

I didn't test the old drive, i might throw it back in to see out of interest

redman

Got mine yesterday , win 7 pc with a 64gb ssd at mo, but Norton Ghost not doing the job for me... reckon it'll be a weekend of fresh installs

Chet T16

Old:


New:

vibe666

lol, that'll do it!

Monotype

Chet T16 wrote: »

The drive came with samsung software to set it up and that turned defrag off along with indexing and 'Super Fetch'

I never enabled AHCI and i got no problems, i'll have to check it out.

I didn't test the old drive, i might throw it back in to see out of interest

AHCI is more a performance thing, just a few standards that aren't supported by newer drives so it's usually disabled. But you should enable it with newer drives to avail of higher speeds and more features.

I don't know why you would want to disable superfetch. What superfetch does is try to predict which programs you are going to use and load them into memory. When you start a program then, much of it is already in memory so it opens much faster.
The argument for disabling it when you have an SSD is that SSDs are already fast so it's going to open quickly. Well when you open it, it's going to go into memory anyway and RAM has far higher speeds than the SSD - so in my opinion, you are better with Superfetch enabled rather than disabled when you have an SSD.

BTW, very nice results in comparison to the old drive.

TPD

Results from mine, guessing the laptop has Sata3. Will check the old 7200rpm drive when I get an optical bay caddy.

Alanstrainor

vibe666 wrote: »

very important or you'll quite likely end up with an instant BSOD the next time you boot.

Had this happen to me when I got my SSD, thought it was dead!

d31b0y

Got mine this morning. Time to start the fun job of ghosting my 64GB SSD to this and moving the 64GB to my HTPC. Yay.

dnme

Id, seriously recommend doing a new fresh Windows 7 install onto your new SSD rather than migrating your existing installation. If you have a windows 7 DVD or ISO then you're laughing.

d31b0y

dnme wrote: »

Id, seriously recommend doing a new fresh Windows 7 install onto your new SSD rather than migrating your existing installation. If you have a windows 7 DVD or ISO then you're laughing.

Meh, I know the benefits of doing one, but I have just done one recently and set up lots since. And it's SSD to SSD so I am confident that there won't be too much loss in performance. Certainly not enough to warrant a full reinstall. I do one at least once a year on my gaming computer anyway.

savemejebus

Windows 7 (SP1) iso downloads. Great when used in combination with the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool

Windows 7 Home Premium x86 SP1 ISO
X17-24208.iso (bootable)

Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1 ISO
X17-24209.iso (bootable)

Windows 7 Professional x86 SP1 ISO
X17-24280.iso (bootable)

Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1 ISO
X17-24281.iso (bootable)

Windows 7 Ultimate x86 SP1 ISO
X17-24394.iso (bootable)

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 ISO
X17-24395.iso (bootable)

vibe666

dnme wrote: »

Id, seriously recommend doing a new fresh Windows 7 install onto your new SSD rather than migrating your existing installation. If you have a windows 7 DVD or ISO then you're laughing.

i have one of the old sandforce ssd's that had the reliability issues and i was re-installing windows pretty much every month, if not more so i have it down to a fine art at this point.

win7 on a nice fast USB stick and get used to primarily using apps available on ninite to make ap re-installs quick & painless, plus keeping my user profile on a regular hdd so i could quickly wipe out the ssd and rebuild it with the minimum of fuss every time every time it decided to flake out on me.

Nollog

http://www.dabs.ie/products/samsung-256gb-830-series-sata-6gb-s-2-5--ssd-basic-kit-819P.html
52 cent cheaper (according to amazon's currency conversion)
Delivery is showing as free to me.

padyjoe

And €14 for delivery to Ireland if over €123?

paddydriver

Don't think it has been discussed - but would be expecting that battery life might be a little better running this too? Have a Dell E6420 and currently very happy with battery life, compared to previous Latitude's had, but to eek out a little more would be great.

Ordered one last night, along with the following caddy, so planning on running the SSD for O/S and VM's etc, and will put my current 750GB 7.2k in the caddy for all my data - generally large amount of binaries/ISO's etc for all the differing products I work with.

http://www.ebay.com.sg/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200772104862

Monotype

padyjoe wrote: »

And €14 for delivery to Ireland if over €123?

Ignore their shipping page; delivery is free above some certain amount around the €100 mark unless it's very heavy.

paddydriver wrote: »

Don't think it has been discussed - but would be expecting that battery life might be a little better running this too?

Battery life is usually a little better. They're not as efficient as you might expect though- If you happen to be a very light user, hard drives are actually extremely efficient at almost completely shutting down the entire drive. The last tests I saw in this area showed that SSDs are best for heavier users. Probably really anyone who doesn't leave their computer idle most of the time and you don't need to waste power on maintenance like defragmentation. The technology has probably improved a bit so they might be even better now.

About cloning SSD -> SSD, I wouldn't be overly concerned about that. Fresh installs are good but not as necessary as going from HDD to SSD.

frozenfrozen

My 128gb came this morning, I had no idea it would be this tiny! I have to wait for my hardwareversand order to use it but it looks like it's amazing

JHet

SSD comparision site:

http://www.ssd.co.uk/

Some bloke off another forum created it. It might come in handy lads!

darragh o meara

Sorry lads, Dont know much about the specs of these nor what the mean in real life terms. Just wondering of the ssd's mentioned here which one would be the best?

Im looking to fit 2 into my Macbook Pro I5 so maybe 2 128gb or 2 256gb drives would be on the cards. Im looking for something fast and good value.