Intel 520 SSD

[Slamz]

I just added one of these to my system. So far the experience has been great.
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5 year warranty from Intel

Intel provides a no-hassle migration program that will let you transfer the contents of one partition to another, including your Windows installation. So it turned my "F" SSD drive into my "C" Windows drive by cloning the contents of the original C drive, then I just went into the BIOS to tell it to boot from the new drive first.

After doing this, you can wipe your old drive clean or throw it out the window or whatever.

If you want to save some space on your SSD, though, Windows 7 (not sure about previous versions) makes it easy to change the location of "My Documents" (My Music, etc) --

Go into Windows Explorer
Find "My Documents"
Right click on it
Properties
Location tab

Select the new location. Windows will copy everything to the new location and delete the originals.


After doing this, Windows boots in like 15 seconds. That whole time period after startup where it crunched to load program data is gone and everything fires up just about instantly (when I cloned my C drive it cloned all of "Program Files" too so most everything is on my SSD now.)

I just got the 128 GB SSD because I was just going to load games on it but when I saw how easy it was to move Windows to it, I did that and now I'm kind of regretting not springing for a bigger SSD! Still, moving my "Users" folders back to my conventional drive saved me like 20 gigabytes. There's no reason to store documents, downloads, movies, pictures and music on the SSD.

[Breand]

To me it is the single piece of hardware that has the most instant gratification from the other devices. Super fast bootup, super fast game loading. Most people don't understand what a huge bottleneck a traditional hard drive is until they see an SSD in action. Obviously better video cards and more RAM are probably more important, but there is a need to have the best and brightest. With an SSD you can have the smallest/cheapest one and youll still see a huge difference in how you operate a PC.

BTW, you REALLY overpaid for that one.

If you are paying more than $1 a GB, it's too much.

Here's an OCZ 240GB for $210:

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[Slamz]

Yeah but if you search around for reviews, you'll hear people having problems with OCZ -- in particular, it will hiccup occasionally and when it does that on your Windows partition, your machine bluescreens.

That's why I went with Intel, even though it's more expensive. Trusted name-brand, 5 year warranty. OCZ appears to have no warranty, though TigerDirect has a 2 or 3 year warranty you can buy separately. But I'd rather just not bluescreen my machine.


So I might seriously consider OCZ as a secondary drive for FRAPS or game installs but for Windows, I'd rather pay more and get a brand I feel better about.


Also, I don't know that OCZ comes with a migration utility. There is free stuff out there but the Intel utility was really simple to use. (The free one I'd found made you burn a bootable CD, which Intel didn't require. The free one also couldn't resize partitions, which the Intel one did automatically.)

[Xyphos]

I actually have an OCZ agility 2 in my desktop, and an OCZ agility 3 in my laptop. So far I've had absolutely no issues with either.

The Intel ones have always been shiny/attractive, but I've always cringed at the 50$ minimum increase in price simply because it has the name Intel stamped right on it.

tell me how it goes for you, and I'll do the same for my OCZ's. Race to see who has a system issue first!

[Snowreap]

also, check out the product images on that Amazon page -- they show benchmark scores for the Intel versus the OCZ Agility3 drive. the Intel drive is *way* faster.

when I bought SSD drives for my computer and my wife's computer some time back, I also got Intel drives, and read/write speed was the reason I chose the more expensive Intel drives over the competition.

-ken

[Diggles]

price seems very high to what I had been looking to buy, so I'll have to compare performance later. 5yr warranty may make it worthwhile though. Most others are like 1-3

[Moristans]

I just need to nut-up and get an SSD. I cringe at the prices, period, but based on what you guys are saying, it's money well spent.

[strife]

I just need to nut-up and get an SSD. I cringe at the prices, period, but based on what you guys are saying, it's money well spent.

They are dirt cheap compared to a year ago.. you can get a 120GB(which is plenty for a primary drive) for $90-100.

You don't have to buy a super fast SSD to see huge gains over a spinning. A slow SSD will destroy basically any spinning drive.

BUT!!!! They aren't a HUGE upgrade for gaming. Yes you load the game faster and maps faster... but once everything is loaded, you're not going to see an FPS gain or anything like that. So don't go into it with the understanding that you're going to get one and see a huge noticeable different in gaming... you won't... well at least in most MMO's/FPS. Maybe you will in some game that constantly writes to the HD, but that's not the case for most games.

Ram/CPU/GPU are all a much better upgrades for gaming than a SSD. Once you get those in the respectable range, then you buy the SSD. (as an example) I wouldn't upgrade a computer running a 3 - 4 year old 512 MB video card to an SSD... I'd buy a video card .


If you do decide to do it and your drive doesn't come with software to do it(like mine didn't), you can go here and get instructions.. pretty straight forward. I will admit that I used different software to do my copy (this software) as I was having issues with the software they stated saying my drive was too small. But it was stupid easy to do.

[Moristans]

Thanks Strife.

I did a major upgrade just about 2 years ago, mobo+CPU+RAM+Vid card. I went for some near top of the line stuff that I was able to get pretty cheap at the time, an i7 with an beefy fan for overclocking, 8 gigs of RAM, and a Radeon 5870 vid card. My HD was from a previous upgrade the year before and still holds up well with plenty of speed for a spinner and plenty of room for Windows to operate.

Of all the upgrades, I'm most dissapointed with my Vid Card. It works well enough now, but I had thoughts about picking up a second card, when/if the prices ever fell, to get a nice bump in performance without spending too much or too much of a hassle. There's no way I'm going to waste the money on a dual card set-up now considering how fast the newest cards are and how much of a pain in the ass the latest drivers are for the AMD card.

So, there we are. I should be thinking about an SSD drive because that's where my bottleneck is but I'm thinking about another vid card instead.

[Breand]

like Strife said, an SSD isnt going to up game performance or your fps. It's just a nice feature, particularly for MMOs that have huge zones to load etc. And no spinning parts = longer lasting life.

[Zirak]

Too lazy to look it up plus I'm not currently in the market but I recall back when I first looked into SSD drives many years ago I shied away from them because of the limitation on the number of R/W operations they could handle. It was such that Breand's statement about longer life due to no moving parts was not the case and a good spinning drive would last much longer than an SSD because it had no real limitation on the number of R/W operations that could be performed (heck I am still using drives that are over 10 years old). How do the current generation of SSD drives stand in this department?

[Slamz]

Yeah I dunno about that either though the answer bandied about seems to be "long enough that you won't have to worry about it". That Intel's drives have a 5 year warranty is some indication that they're pretty sure about them all lasting for 5 years under typical uses (which must include OS installs and therefore memory swapping).

The number I hear bandied about is "100,000" write operations, per cell. And all SSD drives are programmed to spread that out, so rather than writing to the same cells 1000 times while leaving some other cells untouched, it'll spread things around. And the limit is on writing, not reading, so endless reads of your Windows install and game files won't impact the lifetime.


Also figure every smartphone, tablet, MP3 player and camera these days uses the same flash technology, so it has to be pretty reliable.

[Donions]

See, I have no idea what any of this means. I just want a gaming beast that loads fast and can play music and movies.

If you build it, I will pay.

[strife]

Too lazy to look it up plus I'm not currently in the market but I recall back when I first looked into SSD drives many years ago I shied away from them because of the limitation on the number of R/W operations they could handle. It was such that Breand's statement about longer life due to no moving parts was not the case and a good spinning drive would last much longer than an SSD because it had no real limitation on the number of R/W operations that could be performed (heck I am still using drives that are over 10 years old). How do the current generation of SSD drives stand in this department?

SSD's are definitely no less reliable than spinning disks... and it depends on the drive. They have read/write limits, but that's kind of based on the drive. I've seen some people do tests that say if they did a constant read/write to their SSD, it would hit the limit in 20-30 years. I've seen some manufacturers sites say they will last over 100 years.

Due to the read/write limits, a lot of people(like myself), use them for OS/Games only, and move all of the shit that writes all the time(like my docs etc) and doesn't require the performance to their spinning disk.

My opinion would be... Don't let fear of it failing be a reason not to buy one. They are like anything else... you may buy it and it may fail in 2 weeks... that's what warranties are for!

[strife]

See, I have no idea what any of this means. I just want a gaming beast that loads fast and can play music and movies.

If you build it, I will pay.

I posted a link to the intel one you linked the other day, which is a fair price IMO and will make you happy. And it appears to be cheaper today($879)

[Donions]

Yea but does it have all this fancy ssd high speed loading gaming badassery?

[strife]

Yea but does it have all this fancy ssd high speed loading gaming badassery?

no.

[Diggles]

SSD drives are FAR more reliable and long lasting than any mechanical magnetic storage hard disc. Hard drives used to be the most mechnical, moving parts component of a computer. MOVING PARTS WEAR OUT over time. ALl hard drives ship with a spec called 'mean time before failure' which is just like miles for use with a tire. They are guaranteed to fail at some point, typically 5 yr mark.

I've read several data centers switching over to all SSD due, to to better performance, less heat, less failure. They cost more, but end up saving the money in the long run in replacement, cooling & electric bill (they use less power)

[strife]

I've read several data centers switching over to all SSD due, to to better performance, less heat, less failure. They cost more, but end up saving the money in the long run in replacement, cooling & electric bill (they use less power)

Yea, ours is... I think we just bought like 200 TB of SSD storage

[Diggles]

holy crap I just had to help my Dad run malware scan on his new PC he built with SSD. Fricken full scan for malwarebytes/MSE took less than 10 minutes....I normally have to wait 45min - 2 hours on shitty old client computers.

Must get one!

[Slamz]

Yeah, the price is wrong but the performance difference when going to disk is massive

[Zouji]

Meh I will switch when the price drops A LOT. Probably 3+ years from now.

[Breand]

It's already reducing quite significantly. I paid $270 for my 160GB 1.5 years ago. Now you can get them for less than $1 a GB.

[Skelas]

I just installed the crucial SSD 250 gig drive, every time I boot my system in 15 seconds I giggle like a little school girl.

[Bulgy]

Are you saying you boot in 15 seconds from the time you press the power button or 15 seconds from the time you see "Windows Loading"?