Are you using your drives solely for Windows or do you use it both for Windows and programs/games? If just using it for Windows did you go with the cheapest (smallest capacity) drive?
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Kinda. I put my most frequently used programs on the SSD. Most games are on another drive.
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No, capacity was not the deciding factor in regards to price. Good random write performance from a known SSD controller chip was paramount, because Windows writes its swap file all the time. You need good write performance. After finding the SSD manufacturing lines I wanted, I then went bargain hunting to chose the SSD with the capacity and price I needed.
I have 32 GB INTEL X-18M in my laptop, and a 160GB Intel X-25M in my desktop.
Practical advice for you:
Buy the largest Intel X-25 or OCZ Vertex SSD you can afford. Ignore all other makes for now.
The 160-gig models are around $400 right now. For those of us who don’t snort caviar off unicorns for brunch, “practical” advice might be to go for something a little smaller until prices drop out of the bleeding-edge range.
You’ve misquoted me.
My practical advice was to buy the largest Intel X-25 or OCZ Vertex SSD you can afford.
Here’s a 60GB OCZ Vertex for $174.
Here’s a link to Qt3s previous “Which SSD” thread. Last post was in Dec 30, 2009, so the information there is still relevant.
80GB Intel SSD, with Windows on it. Games go on a secondary terabyte drive.
My 120gb OCZ Agility is my C: Drive. Everything is installed on there.
I agree you should stick with those two brands because the other manfacturers provide worse support and identical products. But what’s wrong with Agility SSDs from OCZ? They’re marginally slower and marginally cheaper.
Another good choice!
I’ve got the 80GB Intel X25-M. Windows and very few games. The rest on the secondary 1.5TB drive.
160 GB Intel. Everything on there - 6 games, a couple of demos, Office and W7, plus photos & music (albeit not terribly many). It claims it has about 20 GB free. Not sure how pagefiles and system recovery files impact that. I kept my old WD Green in there as a backup drive.
I put my OS and frequently used programs/games on the SSD. Longer-term storage and applications I don’t frequently use are on hard drives.
I have the 160GB X25-M G2, and it’s around 45% used.
Now I just need someone to tell me how SSDs do with distant land mods for Bethesda games, which chug a lot as you run along loading new zones. Oddly wasn’t able to find much with Google, though I don’t really know if the hard drive is the bottleneck.
I’m going to stick with Caviar Blacks for a while longer.
Put up your system performance monitor and see if your CPU or disk is pegged while playing, I would say.
I started out with a 64GB CCZ Vertex, but since I have 8 GB ram (and use hibernate a lot) and also wanted CS3 on there (I work on the machine too) I realized it was on the small side.
Got a 128 GB Corsair Performance that I’m using right now for my main (Windows 7, Office, CS3, Elements other stuff I use daily) and then I use the 64GB for games.
AWISE FWOM YOUR etc.
I’m thinking about getting an SSD boot drive as part of the incremental upgrade process on my PC (which is a three years old C2D E675 with a later 4870 refit and memory expansion to 4gig, and still going strong). Is the thinking on SSDs still much as it was in the initial posts here - i.e. go for Intel or Crucial? A peruse of the usual technical sites suggests yes, but I like to get a view from the Qt3 trenches.
I also wanted to see what everyone’s thoughts on the whole SSD reliability thing are. I know it gets bandied about, but I’m not as informed as I might be and I want to check - particularly as I’m thinking about building a new system next year and this is one of the components that’s likely to continue in service.
Intel or OCZ was the general consensus, I believe. Since my original post, the Agility I purchased died and I got a new one as a warranty return. I then purchased a new PC and put an Agility 2 into it. Couldn’t be happier with the ROI for these purchases.
I have a Crucial C300 and am generally happy with it, except for the weird stuttering issue discussed recently, but that was eventually resolved by the Intel SATA drivers.
Speaking of reliability… is there any software that shows you the some data on the number of performed and remaining block writes? Software that actually works with the Crucial C300 drives? The Intel SSD software doesn’t, it only shows unrelated SMART data. No other program capably of showing SMART data seems to know the relevant entries either, at best I get “unknown” entries.