The SSD Megathread - Don't buy OCZ or Crucial drives, read the OP!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware / Software Crap > The SSD Megathread - Don't buy OCZ or Crucial drives, read the OP!

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Stoic Commie posted:

This might be a dumb question, but I can only find ambiguous answers. My command prompt tells me that TRIM is enabled for my SSD...but how do I actually use it? Is TRIM an automatic feature, or do I need to do something to run it?

You don't have to do anything. It just happens.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2011 21:31

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# ¿ May 21, 2013 14:57

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Orange_Lazarus posted:

Will an SSD speed up the following processes?

Defragging, Anti Virus Scanning or Erasing?

Not necessary on an SSD, Yes, Yes.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2011 18:50

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Dogen posted:

or they would stop the worst units getting through.

How do you know they don't?

# ¿ Dec 31, 2011 00:26

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

evil_bunnY posted:

It's going to be loving awesome when you lose power.

Anyone not using a UPS deserves what they get.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2012 19:12

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Is an SSD a worthwhile speed-up investment for a 2Ghz C2D laptop that is currently using some slow 4200RPM drive? If so, which SSD? It doesn't need a lot of storage, so 64GB would be fine, but I don't know if the fact that 64GB drives are slower than larger drives makes enough of a difference here. Also, I could buy another laptop for 500 bucks, but I don't know how the speed of a modern $500 laptop would compare to a SSD-equipped 2Ghz C2d with 3GB of RAM.

I've used several SSD's but they're all in much higher-power computers (and, of course, they're awesome).

e: 4800 > 4200

Thermopyle fucked around with this message at Apr 12, 2012 around 16:57

# ¿ Apr 12, 2012 16:53

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

fletcher posted:

Does ANYBODY have anything good to say about OCZ? I feel with the amount of people getting burned by them a warning should be in the title of this thread.

My Vertex 2 has been running great since they were released. So there's that.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2012 16:38

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Allstone posted:

It has the highest return rate as sampled by BeHardware/Hardware.fr, however, as listed here.

Yes, I know. I wouldn't recommend anyone get an OCZ SSD.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2012 18:47

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

japtor posted:

That reminds me of this from way back: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2899/4

OCZ just decided to put SandForce's claims to the test

...by shipping to customers instead of testing on their own.

How do we know they didn't test on their own? I mean, I know OCZ is shady as gently caress, but I'm just wondering if I missed something, or if you're just making a joke, or if I didn't miss anything, and you're making assumptions...

# ¿ Apr 27, 2012 14:40

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

ObesePriest posted:

I meant to say that even though the listed read speeds for the 128 and 256 are the same the 256 gig should still read faster because of more chips and channels. Or at least typically. but not... At least according to benchmarks.

what?

# ¿ May 3, 2012 15:34

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

DrDork posted:

When you combine cheapest and fastest you're always gonna get people who are willing to risk reliability. Hell, you still get them when it's just cheapest or fastest. At least their experiences can serve as warnings to everyone else!

Depending on just how cheap, how much faster, and how unreliable I feel the purchase would be...I'd make that tradeoff. I use Crashplan to back up to my server, so it's not a big deal if I get a failed drive.

I'm not kidding myself about the tradeoff when I make it, though.

# ¿ May 24, 2012 00:30

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Factory Factory posted:

The bottom line is that there are companies out there who haven't been institutional douchebags and, more importantly, have made better products (even using the same parts). If you've had no trouble with OCZ stuff, congrats, because you got lucky. You got lucky on the huge risk you took in part failures, being dicked over buying falsely advertised products, and having to deal with their awful customer service.

Hasn't OCZ typically been cheaper (I could be completely off base here...I just have some vague recollection of their SSDs being cheaper than equivalent-performing competition)?

For X amount of risk of failure, there is a Y amount of price discount that makes the product worth purchasing.

# ¿ May 24, 2012 20:57

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Factory Factory posted:

I can't say you're wrong,

I can't disagree with you, either!

# ¿ May 24, 2012 21:39

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Benjamin Black posted:

I've been told by someone who builds server clusters for a living not to touch raid arrays unless it's completely hardware-based.

That person is ignorant. I'm sure there's scenarios where hardware RAID is the appropriate solution. However, software RAID is highly developed and widely deployed to great effect.

# ¿ May 27, 2012 21:48

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Benjamin Black posted:

Hey, even if you're totally savvy, sometimes there's a hot new virus fresh off the market that can really screw you up. It's happened to me once before, but only once since I was like, 16. It would just suck to not be able to recover any data at all.

Well... I'm not sure I would call him ignorant. Data recovery is a bigger issue when you're creating server clusters for people who aren't you.

Just because you're an expert doesn't mean you can't be ignorant.

Software RAID is more easily recoverable than hardware RAID in many (more?) scenarios.

edit: Hey, this is the SSD thread, not the Packrat thread! Anyway, you can read more about the advantages of software RAID here.

# ¿ May 27, 2012 21:54

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Endymion FRS MK1 posted:

Its only a week or two old, so perhaps I haven't accidentally bloated it with a ton of stuff.

A good thing about SSD's is that you can load up with programs starting at boot with no effect on how usable the desktop is. My tray has 22 icons on it after boot nowadays, and my system boots pretty much as fast and smooth as it did on a fresh install.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2012 23:35

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

HalloKitty posted:

Obviously nobody from Microsoft reads SHSC..

Even with OCZ being less reliable, if they're fast enough and MS is getting them cheap enough, and they're used in a redundant manner (which of course they are), then they could easily be a good choice.

On the other hand, even though I've never had a problem with my OCZ SSD's, I don't like to see them getting support.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2012 21:06

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

AlphaDog posted:

OK, no worries. I was only going to go for it if it was both faster and cheaper than a platter drive that's way bigger than I need. I'll do fine with a 500gb WD 3.5" or something. Not a problem.

XBMC is significantly snappier on an SSD. Especially if you haven't set up the thumbnail cache on a network drive.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2012 15:10

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Xenomorph posted:

Zero wait for any application to load. This is a much bigger improvement than what I get out of complete systems upgrades.

That's not a function of that particular drive, it's a function of it being a SSD.

But anyway, yeah, thats what we keep telling people.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2012 19:55

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

CrazedEwok posted:

So, I've been out of the building game for a few years, but now I've ordered my first SSD (128GB). I'm planning on installing Windows 7 to it along with a few programs that run at startup. I'll be using a larger HDD for other applications and files. My question is aside from the partition containing Windows and those programs, would it behoove me to set aside some space on the SSD for Smart Response even though I actually have the OS installed to it?

No. Just install every application you can to the SSD until you have like 30GB or something left.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2012 23:59

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

This is probably a stupid question but...

My wifes desktop is a P4 2.8GHz system with 2GB of RAM running Vista and some lovely hard drive.

She's fine with it, but every time I have to do something on it I want to scream in frustration. Would it be totally ridiculous to slap one of these 70 dollar SSD's in it so I don't have to wait 15 minutes for Firefox to load or whatever?

# ¿ Jun 30, 2012 00:46

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Bob Morales posted:

Most people notice a huge difference. If you haven't used an SSD yet, you'll see what everyone's talking about. Plus it's only $75.

Thanks for that info. I run a SSD in my much newer i5 system...just didn't know if a SSD would be bottlenecked too much on something older. Now I know!

johndoe7776059 posted:

A $70 SSD will make the system faster, but it will still be a really slow system. You can always move the drive over to a $300 dell outlet system later though. Has your wife spent much time using newer systems? I see a lot of people who swear they are fine with their old computer right until they get a new one, because they have no experience with anything better.

Yeah, she also has a much faster C2D notebook. I don't know why she's fine with this old piece of poo poo desktop. She's a weirdo.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2012 15:10

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Bob Morales posted:

Is anyone here still using an SSD they bought in say, 2010? If so, which SSD, in what computer, and what OS?

OCZ Vertex2. Self-built i5 system. Windows 7.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2012 19:30

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

evil_bunnY posted:

I love how *none* of the tech news sites talk about the OCZ vs industry-wide return rates. There's a loving reason they are the way they are.

Tech "journalism" as a whole is lovely. It ranges from reprinting press releases to rewriting press releases in their own words to doing comprehensive reviews of a product and then never again mentioning the product even though massive issues show up later. It's pretty disgusting.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2012 16:37

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

I thing I'm going to buy a Crucial M4 128GB, replace the OCZ Vertex2 128GB in my desktop with the M4, and put the OCZ in my oldish C2D laptop. The only reason I'm doing this is the HD is dying in the laptop.

I assume I can just put the M4 in my desktop and then...copy or clone or something the OCZ to the M4 and it will just work? What exactly do I need to do to make this happen correctly?
I don't follow this thread very closely...is the M4 still a good drive to buy for around $100? Anything better at MicroCenter (I'll be going to the St. Louis, MO store...you can just select it in the dropdown at the top middle of the page to get in-store stock)?

# ¿ Aug 15, 2012 19:09

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

You guys are much cooler than Alereon keeps telling the other mods.

^(Thanks!)

# ¿ Aug 15, 2012 19:19

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

For anyone who cares, I did a CDM comparison of my old OCZ Vertex 2 and the new Crucial M4 I got.

The M4 is a lot faster, particularly on writes, but I can't say I can notice it in day to day "snappiness".

# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 16:36

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# ¿ May 21, 2013 14:57

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Bob Morales posted:

Is your Vertex 2 a 25nm drive?

IIRC, I got mine before the 25nm drives came out? According to Amazon I ordered the OCZ October 19, 2010.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 16:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware / Software Crap > The SSD Megathread - Don't buy OCZ or Crucial drives, read the OP!