Which SSD?

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Spuff

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I'm going round in circles with this one so some help would be appreciated!

I've got a 4 year old Dell Vostro 400 desktop which is generally OK for what I do (spreadsheets, Word, light photo editing, no games) but I thought I'd give it a boost by booting from an SSD.

I can see I've got 4 SATA ports but can't find out which version they are. Would I be right in assuming SATA I if the PC has a build date of mid 2007?

If that's the case then I assume a SATA II SSD would be sufficient and was looking at something like a OCZ Vertex Plus 60GB for £60. It's only 185MB/s read and 90MB/s write but then I assume I wouldn't be able to get the faster speeds of a quicker SSD anyway?
 
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HI
According to your PC's manual you mobo supports SATA 1 and 2 so you should be okay. Check the documentation for yourself though, don't take my word for it :)


Also I don't think Win XP has native support for TRIM, not sure how important this is, you may wish to check out the OCZ forum.
 
A 60GB SSD won't leave you much space after installing your OS and programmes. I've got a Vertex2 and 49GB are needed just for Win7 and a reasonable number of programmes (all documents & pics etc are on other drives).
 
Once you have your OS and programs on it, what more space do you need?

I've a Crucial C300 64gb one that I had in my main pc for a while (then the netbook for a while) and had no problems with space. On the main pc I kept it for OS and put most programs on a second standard hard drive. It's now in a usb3 caddy and treated as a very fast usb flash drive as the controller turned out to be too unreliable (3rd replacement drive) for full time use.
 
agreed, depends how you run the drive and how many apps you have.

ive got a 60gb with W7, CS3, LR3, COD MW3, Assasins Creed and loads of other odd tools and utils and still have about 10gb free i think
 
Thanks guys.

Mark - not sure how I managed to miss the manual :shrug: but very useful and it looks like I can use SATA II.

I'm pretty sure 60Gb will be sufficient (running Vista Ultimate and very few apps) but I think I might hold off for a little while as I've heard that prices for these things might be coming down a bit, so I may be able to stretch to a 100 or 120GB drive.
 
Crucial M4 works very well on SATA2 - I have the 128Gb one. (that extra 8Gb over the 120s is also worth it)!

My windows drive is over 70Gb! Be sure you won't need the extra space!

Prices will continue to fall just like many things. You mnight find yourself here a year down the line saying the same thing!
 
If your machine has SATA2 I would get a SATA3 SSD they are backwards compatible and then it's more future proof.
 
EOS_JD said:
Prices will continue to fall just like many things. You mnight find yourself here a year down the line saying the same thing!
Click to expand...

:) Yes, I agree - it was just in this case I'd read something about SSD prices dropping imminently-ish. Generally, I'd just go and get the thing but I also need to decide whether I'm going to go the whole hog and buy/build a new PC based on i5 or i7 or just fettle with the old one.
 
I suppose you want a bit of space free for Virtual Memory also, which I'm guessing would be a substantial performance gain were it on the SSD drive.
 
I have just bought a Crucial M4 128 gig it is scary fast. With a clean install of W7 and a couple of programs I have got just over 90 left.
 
Chabsy said:
I have just bought a Crucial M4 128 gig it is scary fast. With a clean install of W7 and a couple of programs I have got just over 90 left.
Click to expand...

Great choice of drive :) Are you using SATA2 or SATA3?

I'm just on SATA2 and getting great speed. Will upgrade probably this year sometime
 
So long as you don't mind the limitation in size..... 60Gb is very small (certainly too small for my use). Also remember that although it's a 60Gb drive you will only have about 55Gb of useable space.

W7 and a couple of programs as demonstrated above uses about 40Gb!

I'd recommend an absolute mininum of a 90Gb drive......
 
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Thanks Jim

I might look at the 120/128GB ones then.

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All
Will a SATA II type one be the correct one for me (If I went SATA III is is backwards compatible so that if I wanted to remove and put in a newer MBP I could?)
 
SATA III is backward compatible with SATA II
 
They are pretty much all SATA 3 drives now. i use a SATA 2 Mobo and the speed difference is quite considerable - but still MILES faster than a normal hard drive. When you get a new Mobo you should notice a big improvement again.

When you get it post some scores from the speed checking software. You can compare with mine :)
 
EOS_JD said:
Great choice of drive :) Are you using SATA2 or SATA3?

I'm just on SATA2 and getting great speed. Will upgrade probably this year sometime
Click to expand...

I am still on sata 2, I only got the SSD after my 150 gig raptor bit the dust, the raptor was fast but very noisy this in a different league. I am using this on a old motherboard so cant wait to see how quick it is with a sata 3 board
 
Using Crystal Disk Mark 3 I get these scores

Seq Read - 274.748Mb/s
Seq Write - 185.4 Mb/s

Randomn Read (512k) - 253.4Mb/s
Randomn Write (512k) - 184.7Mb/s

Randomn Read (4kQD=1) - 26.26Mb/s
Randomn Write (4k QD=1) - 62.63Mb/s

Randomn Read (4k QD=32) - 107.952Mb/s
Randomn Write (4k QD=32) - 108.8Mb/s

Would be interesting to compare any SATA 2 scores ;)
 
480Gb! Won't be long before the 1Tb is seen then !
Prices should keep falling - Currently the 128Gb drives are close to £1/Gb which is fine for a boot disk. That 480Gb drive will be around £1.50/Gb!

Standard hard drives are however only about 5p to 10p/Gb so still a long way to go before we see these drives as the norm :)
 
EOS_JD said:
Crucial M4 works very well on SATA2 - I have the 128Gb one. (that extra 8Gb over the 120s is also worth it)!

My windows drive is over 70Gb! Be sure you won't need the extra space!

Prices will continue to fall just like many things. You mnight find yourself here a year down the line saying the same thing!
Click to expand...

Jin

That's what I went for today along with the transfer kit direct from crucial and managed to get 7% cash back so that helps too!

Now need to find a hard drive caddy to replace my SuperDrive in my old MBP then it's all systems go!
 
Mine just sits on the deck of my case - No caddy required really. Didn't bother with a transfer kit either as I did a fresh install (advised).

But an excellent drive with very good performance even with SATA2. Once set up let me know your scores and we can compare :)
 
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