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Alereon posted:Sandforce's background GC and write amplification are vastly better than other manufacturers, they're pretty much the only drives that can be used in a system without TRIM support without incurring a growing performance penalty over the long term. Anandtech specifically recommends against using Marvell-based drives (Crucial M4, Intel SSD 510) on Macs for that reason. Dual-booting isn't an issue though, especially if you're not doing substantial writes, and you can always TRIM the drive manually if you think performance is being affected. That said, you probably won't have any reason to dual-boot into XP on a modern system.
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Jun 30, 2012 03:09
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Thermopyle posted:This is probably a stupid question but... 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.
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Jun 30, 2012 05:29
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General_Failure posted:edit: In case you are curious:
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Jun 30, 2012 08:18
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You Am I posted:God you are a loving huge sook. There are tons of online/storefront Australian stores that sell IT stuff at good prices. Even dodgey fucks at MSY can do great pricing. gently caress buying overseas, especially if you need to return something for RMA. The best price in AU is $259. On Amazon it is $203 and I've seen it hit $180 previously. Also, the price drop to $259 here was delayed quite a bit after the prices started falling towards $200 in the US. So sure, you might be fine paying 25-50% more here but not everyone is.
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Jun 30, 2012 09:35
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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.
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Jun 30, 2012 16:10
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Nam Taf posted:The best price in AU is $259. On Amazon it is $203 and I've seen it hit $180 previously. hm? I like my SanDisk. I know there seems to be a mis-communication here but just saying. It's the rest of the computer that's crap. Found something decent enough anyway. Just have to wait a little before I can get it. No idea if the SanDisk is actually any good but it hasn't burst into flames or done anything otherwise odd. I do have a question though. I said earlier that it has a small square of tape securing the SATA data cable in place. As far as I know all cables are created equal in regards to where they clip in to a drive. So is this an issue with the SanDisk SSD, 2.5" drives in general, or some sort of funky cable problem? It's not hurting anything like this but it is kind of dodgy.
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Jun 30, 2012 23:01
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Alereon posted:For $74.99 you can get a Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe with adapter, and it's using the much superior Synchronous NAND versus the Asynchronous used in the OWC drive, which helps with the performance penalty from using such a small drive. And those have the built-in garbage-collection? I'm reading now on synchronous vs asynchronous, and it seems worth it. It looks like the OWC "Extreme" line (what my 480GB drive is) has Synchronous NAND.
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Jun 30, 2012 23:37
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Alereon posted:Sandforce's background GC and write amplification are vastly better than other manufacturers, they're pretty much the only drives that can be used in a system without TRIM support without incurring a growing performance penalty over the long term. Anandtech specifically recommends against using Marvell-based drives (Crucial M4, Intel SSD 510) on Macs for that reason. Dual-booting isn't an issue though, especially if you're not doing substantial writes, and you can always TRIM the drive manually if you think performance is being affected. That said, you probably won't have any reason to dual-boot into XP on a modern system. Did I hugely gently caress up getting an M4 for my early 2011 MBP, then? I was under the impression you could enable TRIM manually and be fine.
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Jul 1, 2012 00:09
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Ahh... poo poo. Just noticed there was an update for my SSD in May. Why i didn't see that before I don't know. It's a pretty necessary one too. And they only have a Windows updater. loving brilliant. Better get to work solving this. I hope it's just a bootdisk creator.
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Jul 1, 2012 00:26
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Krakkles posted:Did I hugely gently caress up getting an M4 for my early 2011 MBP, then? I was under the impression you could enable TRIM manually and be fine. You can do it through Terminal or with Trim Enabler 2.0 I've used the latter and it worked fine on my MBP with Crucial M4.
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Jul 1, 2012 01:22
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Seems like the SanDisk updater thing is just a boot disk maker. There are a few ways of doing this. By far the easiest is using my netbook. Might do that shortly, if I could be bothered. Alternately I coul duse the XP x64 install I have going in VirtualBox to make it assuming one of the hidden "rand()"s which I've always assumed to be in the XP installer don't hit the right number. This is my second install attempt. I know it'll work because I used it before. My previous attempt a few minutes ago had an installer crash. This time no. I hate XP so much. Glad it's more or less dead and buried. Only reason I keep it around at all is to run finicky programs. No matter what I'm applying that update today though. Apparently TRIM isn't working with my current firmware. That won't do at all.
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Jul 1, 2012 01:55
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Self reply. Apparently after all my effort it already has the newest firmware. Wasn't expecting that because the patch was released in May and I got the SSD as a sale item a couple of weeks ago which usually entails that they have been there a little while. Ordered a CPU/RAM/Motherboard combo today. Should sort out the SATA speed issue. I look forward to seeing what happens.
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Jul 1, 2012 09:51
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OWC has a 960GB 2.5" SSD http://www.anandtech.com/show/6038/owc-releases-960gb-mercury-electra-max-3g-ssd It's basically two 480GB Sandforce drives using RAID 0 crammed into one. Anand has requested one for review, could be an insanely-fast single drive solution.
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Jul 1, 2012 15:38
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The RAID controller has its throughput bottlenecked below 300MB/sec (which is why they used SATA300 controllers), so I'd expect it to actually be slower than normal single-controller, SATA600 Sandforce drives (especially since there's no TRIM support). They did this because they're only using the RAID0 to expand the capacity (allowing them to fit more than 512GB of NAND while still using 8GB dies). It'll be interesting to see what the reliability is like, I'm pretty concerned to see OWC moving in a very OCZ-like direction.
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Jul 1, 2012 15:44
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Alereon posted:The RAID controller has its throughput bottlenecked below 300MB/sec (which is why they used SATA300 controllers), so I'd expect it to actually be slower than normal single-controller, SATA600 Sandforce drives (especially since there's no TRIM support). They did this because they're only using the RAID0 to expand the capacity (allowing them to fit more than 512GB of NAND while still using 8GB dies). It'll be interesting to see what the reliability is like, I'm pretty concerned to see OWC moving in a very OCZ-like direction.  I didn't notice it was an Electra 3G
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Jul 1, 2012 15:50
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Don't use Trim Enabler for Macs. All it does is switch a critical kext from Snow Leopard into Lion, and probably breaks poo poo deep inside the system because of all the internal OS dependencies. It's the Windows equivalent of mixing and matching DLLs between XP and Vista and hoping everything keeps working. Use the manual method described here: http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/
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Jul 1, 2012 16:45
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Binary Badger posted:Don't use Trim Enabler for Macs. All it does is switch a critical kext from Snow Leopard into Lion, and probably breaks poo poo deep inside the system because of all the internal OS dependencies. It's the Windows equivalent of mixing and matching DLLs between XP and Vista and hoping everything keeps working.
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Jul 1, 2012 16:49
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Anandtech has posted their review of the new Plextor M3 Pro series of SSDs. The M3 Pro is identical on the hardware level to the M3, with a Marvell controller and 24nm Toshiba Toggle NAND, the only difference is an optimized firmware. It is a faster drive, though I'm skeptical whether the difference is large enough to justify the price premium, especially since there's no difference in the hardware. It does have very low power usage and a 7mm profile for laptops, however.
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Jul 1, 2012 20:00
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I've just gotten myself a Mushkin Cronos 240GB SSD and the speed of start up is much faster than I thought SSDs provided. It really is one of those 'see it to believe it' scenarios. I wondered if anyone had seen a strange bug I seem to be getting. I have had a number of blue screens since installing it. I've tried both Windows 8 64bit and Windows 7 profession 64bit on it and I THINK I've located the problem but just wanted some advice. It seems to bluescreen if Origin is running and downloading something. This only occurs if I leave the PC alone, thought. It doesn't seem to crash it if I'm downloading and browsing the web, or messing with files. Is this linked to Origin or is there a possibility that when I leave the PC alone, some idle setting is kicking on and locking everything up?
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Jul 1, 2012 21:29
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As HS would say, D'Oh! Was just looking at the mobo specs and it supports SATA 3Gb/s, not 6. not sure how I messed that one up. Possibly looked at the wrong board suffix specs before. I guess it's no massive deal. The SanDisk will have an IO bottleneck still but nowhere near as bad as what it is now. Question. From what I've seen, when going from plain SATA to AHCI it clobbers preexisting data for some reason. Is that correct, or just internet mumblings? It's not a big deal even if I have to reinstall because it's still fresh and I haven't really set much up that backing up my /home won't fix.
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Jul 2, 2012 00:19
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demolina posted:I've just gotten myself a Mushkin Cronos 240GB SSD and the speed of start up is much faster than I thought SSDs provided. It really is one of those 'see it to believe it' scenarios. Your idle setting theory is a possibility. Mostly look for anything that tries to "spin down" the SSD or something that will put the computer to sleep. Although I'm running linux I can say that sleep mode hasn't worked for me since I installed the SSD. I don't mean it doesn't work at all. It goes through the motions, tries to go to sleep and instantly wakes back up. I put this down to possibly the lack of AHCI support on my board. Beyond that no idea. Never had sleep issues before.
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Jul 2, 2012 00:51
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Laptop user here, the mSATA section in the OP is rather sparse, especially in light of all the new Ivy Bridge laptops that were just released*. Right now it looks like the only models avalible are from Intel, Mushkin, ADATA, and the oft-beloved OCZ.... mostly Intel and OCZ. Any reccomendations, especially pointing out which are current gen vs last gen would be greatly appreciated. I'm a ThinkPad user, if that makes any difference; although Dell, Sony and some other top tier mfgs seem to have adopted mSATA as a widespread standard. *And also the new Macbooks, but they apparently use some wonky proprietary mSATA connector which nobody supports...yet
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Jul 2, 2012 06:34
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Crucial makes an mSATA c400 drive
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Jul 2, 2012 07:50
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Who sells it?
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Jul 2, 2012 08:00
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It looks like it's only being sold to OEM Ultrabook makers right now. 
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Jul 2, 2012 08:32
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Oops, looks like the C400 is the oem version, and the M4 is the retail version. Which I can't find either.
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Jul 2, 2012 10:20
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I suspect mSATA drives will be rather scarce as production ramps up to meet demand. It seems that a lot of new laptops support mSATA. I would have bought one by now for my laptop if there was a clear winner. Newegg appears to be sold out of most of their mSATA stock. Prior to this year, only a couple of ThinkPad and other high end models ever allowed you to install two drives in them.
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Jul 2, 2012 10:25
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I came in today and my computer was sitting at a BSOD. When I restarted it, it would no longer detect my SSD. (Crucial M4). I unplugged the whole system for a few seconds and plugged it back in and it started working fine again. Is this something I should be concerned about? We had a storm roll through yesterday and the power flickered at home a few times, so I assume it did at the office as well, though this system is on a UPS.
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Jul 2, 2012 14:47
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Maniaman posted:I came in today and my computer was sitting at a BSOD. When I restarted it, it would no longer detect my SSD. (Crucial M4).
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Jul 2, 2012 15:04
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You may want to update the firmware on the M4 if you haven't already done so. The latest firmware is version 000F. http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx?source=
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Jul 2, 2012 15:04
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Binary Badger posted:Don't use Trim Enabler for Macs. All it does is switch a critical kext from Snow Leopard into Lion, and probably breaks poo poo deep inside the system because of all the internal OS dependencies. It's the Windows equivalent of mixing and matching DLLs between XP and Vista and hoping everything keeps working. The point of using the current version of Trim Enabler on a Mac is that it does NOT install the kext from 10.6. It patches the existing 10.7 kext just like the manual method you posted. It simply gives you a 1-button way of doing it. The article you linked on doing it manually is a year old. The current/easy way is to just use Trim Enabler.
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Jul 2, 2012 15:19
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Maniaman posted:We had a storm roll through yesterday and the power flickered at home a few times, so I assume it did at the office as well, though this system is on a UPS.
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Jul 2, 2012 15:37
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Ugh, it just locked up and disappeared again. Going to try updating the firmware, and if it doesn't work hopefully it's still under warranty and I can RMA it.
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Jul 2, 2012 15:48
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I'm trying to figure out which mSATA drive to purchase for my new laptop, and what I should put on it once I get it. I read the OP, and my impression is that the mSATA hardware is relatively new and changing, so I figure I better make a post about it to find out the most up-to-date answer. What mSATA drive currently offers good value for money, while still offering notable performance gains over a 5400rpm HD? I don't need the fastest mSATA in the world, so price is more important for me. I will be using it to play games; I figure that games like Skyrim (which presumably involves a lot of loading screens as you travel around) will benefit greatly from having an SSD. Also, when I use the mSATA SSD I just push it into my laptop port, right? And then the laptop will automatically recognise it and I just go ahead and install the game to it? I read about updating the firmware if necessary, and I'm happy doing that, but I don't need to format it when I get it, do I? Also, the O/S wouldn't be installed on the mSATA, so would that affect my performance (I assume the boot-up times wouldn't be improved at all)?
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Jul 3, 2012 01:08
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Agesilaus posted:I'm trying to figure out which mSATA drive to purchase for my new laptop, and what I should put on it once I get it. I read the OP, and my impression is that the mSATA hardware is relatively new and changing, so I figure I better make a post about it to find out the most up-to-date answer. You want the mSATA disk to be the C: drive with your Windows install on it. I'd buy whatever I could get my hands on, since they aren't that common.
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Jul 3, 2012 01:32
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Bob Morales posted:You want the mSATA disk to be the C: drive with your Windows install on it. I'd buy whatever I could get my hands on, since they aren't that common. Huh, if that's the case I may well wait half a year or so before I go down the mSATA road, then. I'm not too eager to pay a premium, and if they're really in such high demand I'm guessing that the price per gigabyte will plunge at some point.
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Jul 3, 2012 01:40
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I posted previously that my OCZ Agility had died at some point (after about 18 months of use) and been RMA'd. I've had the replacement drive for about 11 months and now it is corrupting the filesystem, too. I'm still in warranty from my original purchase, but if you had told me that I'd need to RMA the same drive twice in that three year period, I'd have purchased an Intel. Now that there's more manufacturers with reliable drives, I'm debating buying a M4 and relegating the OCZ poo poo they replace to a less important PC than the main one I do everything on, because having it up and die every year or so sure is frustrating. Oh, and because they've got the OCZ technology forum, of course they'll probably recommend to run their destructive flash and reinstall the drive and use it until it fails again to make sure it's actually going bad, so there's going to be a week of frustrating PC hardware swapping and windows reinstalling before I actually get an RMA, most likely. Rexxed fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Jul 3, 2012 |
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Jul 3, 2012 12:50
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Rexxed posted:I posted previously that my OCZ Agility had died at some point (after about 18 months of use) and been RMA'd. I've had the replacement drive for about 11 months and now it is corrupting the filesystem, too. I'm still in warranty from my original purchase, but if you had told me that I'd need to RMA the same drive twice in that three year period, I'd have purchased an Intel. Look, don't bother, just say you did whatever stupid poo poo they want and then get the RMA directly.
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Jul 3, 2012 15:33
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redeyes posted:Look, don't bother, just say you did whatever stupid poo poo they want and then get the RMA directly.
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Jul 3, 2012 17:38
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I'm starting to think my issue isn't just origin, but actually downloading files for extended periods of time. SSDs shouldn't have an issue downloading origin or steam games should they? I have a Mushkin Cronos 240GB drive and the crashes seem to happen after downloading for a while or pausing the download and then starting it back up via steam. Could I just have a faulty drive? I've only had it for six days but already experienced 12 or so blue screens. Its definitely got the most up to date firmware.
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Jul 4, 2012 17:34
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