My SSD just dropped through the post so it popped into the laptop this afternoon with the upgraded 8gb ram. Still unsure to take the optical drive out and stick the old HD in their.
scan had the intel 520 for £51 the other day - seriously good and a well engineered bit of kit
Still unsure to take the optical drive out and stick the old HD in their.
I did this for a while, but preferred the boost I found in battery that I lost when I put it in as a secondary drive. As a compromise I now have a USB3 enclosure for it. Doesn't run quite as fast as it would inside macbook, but it means I can control when it's using power more easily as I rarely actually need the extra storage. Using a USB3 one also means it runs (theoretically) at full speed when plugged into usb3 on my MacMini.
scan had the intel 520 for £51 the other day
From what I've heard those are supposed to be one of the fastest SSDs on the market in real-world use.
A lot of the benchmarks the manufacturers publish don't take into account the controllers, from what I've heard, and thus they're not actually as fast as claimed.
there are a few reasons I bought it over the others
1. intel reliability - you know it is well made and will last
2. decent speeds
3. it was designed when ssd's had a lower capacity - the new drives have pretty poor performance in the low capacities since they are designed to be best for 480gb up
4. price! top brand for less than an unreliable ocz!
From what I've heard those are supposed to be one of the fastest SSDs on the market in real-world use.
That's good to know, as it's what I've just bought.
Just need to decide now whether to clone or go for a clean install. Main thing putting me off the latter is I know from experience that drivers on this thing are an arseache. Hm, decisions decisions.
clean install is always best - set it up in bios as an ahci drive if on a pc
I want one, but could only afford a smaller one and I need a lot of storage for work.
Main thing putting me off the latter is I know from experience that drivers on this thing are an arseache.
I always go with a clean install, but then I've written a set of scripts which configures everything as I want it and installs the vast majority of the software I use.
I want one, but could only afford a smaller one and I need a lot of storage for work.
Why not go down the dual-drives route then? 64GB is enough for the OS and software for most people, and thats where the biggest performance boost comes in. Then stick your current drive in as a slave for all your files.
Already have dual drives, 500gb and 1tb (on order). Chances of filling this up with VMs of various product installations and combinations are quite high tbh. But maybe, will see.
I've written a set of scripts which configures everything as I want it and installs the vast majority of the software I use.
ninite is handy for all the third party tat.
I'd be interested to see what scripts you've got.
Chances of filling this up with VMs of various product installations and combinations are quite high tbh.
Thin provisioning, sir?
Haven't read all of that, but recently upgraded a load of oldish netbooks in a school with SSDs and the difference was amazing (we almost didn't bother with upgrading the RAM). IIRC they were 60GB drives - don't really need any more than that for that application as any large amounts of data will be going on the server, and according to the chap who sourced them that's a price sweet spot.
Thin provisioning, sir?
A new weight loss technique? Thing is, if I buy one I might have to replace it later which would not be fun.
Think I would need 240Gb. Main Linux OS and Windows raw VM on the SSD and then the VMs on the HD. And a boot partition on the HD with personal windows install on it for games.
I've got a Kingston SSD booting Windows 7. It's fine apart from if there's a power cut, and something gets messed so the BIOS doesn't see it. I have to change the setting for the drive before it's 'seen', then back to the correct setting. It's happened a few times so I know what to do, but the first time I nearly re-installed windows.
Works fine normally.
Well that was easy. Popped new memory and SSD in moved files over from an old HDD in caddy using Superduper.
Blackmagic speed test now is Write 205MB/s and Read 265MB/s a big improvement on the 60MB/s on the old HDD.
Everything just seems a lot quicker now 😀
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.
Got the SSD running with a clean install. Moved to x64 so that I've the option to stick more RAM in at a later date, and binned off my Readyboost SD; but other than that it's, from memory, the same as it was. Boots in quicksticks, but I'm constantly getting pregnant pauses all over the place. Opening a new tab in Firefox, it'll sit there "not responding" for 30 seconds or so before waking up as if nothing's happened.
I've installed the Intel SSD toolbox and enabled all the performance features it suggests. Checked that Trim is enabled, and got all the Windows Updates installed. Running the latest BIOS, and there's nothing without a driver in Device Manager.
Blackmagic seems to be a Mac thing; I found something called "AS SSD Benchmark" and it's showing sequential access speeds as 130MB/s read and 93Mb/s write. Even on a SATA2 controller, that's pretty low isn't it? est on my mechanical drive gives 72 / 65.
At a loss as to what else I can try. What have I missed? Faulty drive?
it's showing sequential access speeds as 130MB/s read and 93Mb/s write
If it's any help my SSD gives 488 read and 160 write with that software. It's SATA3 but even so it looks like you have a read speed problem.
Edit: [url= http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/ssd-charts-2013/benchmarks,129.html ]Toms Hardware[/url] says I should get 521 read and 481 write. Looks lke I have a write problem! Not that it makes any difference to perceived performance.
Well, theoretical maximum is always going to be higher than real-world figures.
Tenatively, I think I may have fixed it. Had another round of driver updates, ran a chkdsk and forced the CPU to run at 100% rather than power saving. Out of all of those, I suspect it was Speedstep playing silly buggers.
I'd be interested to see what scripts you've got.
I have a private fork of https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles
Quite customised as this took things a little far for me, but it made for a good starting place as most of the hidden commands I required to customise OS X were already in there, just need to choose the correct value for each of them.
This home-brew cask is useful for grabbing most of the normal every-day software: https://github.com/phinze/homebrew-cask
At a loss as to what else I can try. What have I missed? Faulty drive?
I'd probably agree with that being the drive. You've certainly covered all the obvious things.
My MacBook has a 64GB Crucial M4 (Slower than the large capacities as it only has one chip) and a SATA2 controller. Benchmarks for that below, I'd have thought your SSD should walk all over it.
[img] http://cloud.danielgroves.net/2xVq+ [/img]
That SSD is quite old now too, I got it in my first year at uni and graduate this year, so 3-4 years ago.
Hm. It's better than it was, but I'm still getting pauses and occasional complete lockups. I've pinged off an email to Scan.
scan had the intel 520 for £51 the other day
I've been using two in a raid 0 array for a couple of years now and I'm very pleased, IIRC the benchmarked at nearly 1000MB/s read and write. Have got an OCZ Vortex in my laptop which are pretty much the fastest things out there, but the problem with OCZ is you are effectively a firmware beta tester.
Very interesting thread. I've been thinking about this for a while and this has convinced me to upgrade my desktop.
Re the Corsair SSD up there recommended by GeForce Junky what connectors will this require and are they likely to be in my existing PC?
I've got a reasonable spec PC but I'm still running Vista, more a sign of how old it is (possibly 5 years plus) rather than preference for operating system. Is this likely to have the right connector?
Likely, yes. Definitely, you'd have to check.
Cougar - ModeratorHm. It's better than it was, but I'm still getting pauses and occasional complete lockups. I've pinged off an email to Scan.
Likely the drive is donald ducked, but I've had similar from crap SATA cables and a failing power supply before. Any SMART errors logged?
I ran Seatools against it, came back clean.
I thought it'd calmed down, but I went home at lunch, used it for five minutes and it locked up. Mouse cursor moved but nothing else, couldn't even ctrl-alt-del. Had to hit the power button.
I'm leaning towards it quacking also. There are no cables, it's a laptop; it's connected using the same interposer that the mechanical HDD ran on quite happily for the last five years.
My 1TB boring old HD arrived today, it's only 5.4krpm too.
However I'm excited. Time to start my work machine rebuild project 🙂
