SSD's and Windows 7 questions

G

Gmankuza

Veteran XV
I'm thinking of getting a solid state drive but I don't keep up with the technology so I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with what's the best to buy at the moment.

And I'm thinking of finally upgrading from xp, but I'm not sure which version of windows 7 to get, or if that's even the best option right now / worth upgrading. There's like 800 versions, OEM, retail, 64 bit, prof... the list goes on. I have a GTX 260 and cor 2 duo cpu.

thanks
 
ssd: get the ocz vertex 2 drives if you have the cash. If you're buying one, spend extra to get the 120GB or so drive. You'll find that a 30-60GB drive gets used up quickly and you'll be juggling between your main and storage drives far more often than you want to. A 120GB Verex 2 will cost you about $320.

For win7, get the 64 bit version of home professional. If you want to run VMs, get ultimate but most people don't need more than x64 home pro.

edit: if you get a smaller ssd or get a differentn brand, just make sure that the drive has TRIM support. It's a necessity for drive integrity and performance in Windows 7.
 
thanks man, and will I see a performance boost going from xp to win7-64? like enough to be worth the hassle?
 
moving to 64 bit win7 and switching to an ssd is going to be a night and day difference, even if you keep all the other hardware the same.

It would be better with a quad core cpu and 8GB RAM (I'm assuming you have 4GB), but those two changes will be pretty significant in terms of end user experience.

Totally optional though.
 
do you think we will eventually we will all have SSDs loaded with your OS and some extra space, as well as a HDD backup as standard?

I have not tried SSD yet but I want to try it out before I buy it
 
ssds wont be mainstream until you can get a 500GB disk for $100.

Right now a 500GB disk is $600. Give it a couple years and we'll be there.
 
krustyy said:
ssd: get the ocz vertex 2 drives if you have the cash. If you're buying one, spend extra to get the 120GB or so drive. You'll find that a 30-60GB drive gets used up quickly and you'll be juggling between your main and storage drives far more often than you want to. A 120GB Verex 2 will cost you about $320.

For win7, get the 64 bit version of home professional. If you want to run VMs, get ultimate but most people don't need more than x64 home pro.

edit: if you get a smaller ssd or get a differentn brand, just make sure that the drive has TRIM support. It's a necessity for drive integrity and performance in Windows 7.
Click to expand...

i think you meant to say home premium. there's no such things as home professional. but i agree, win 7 home prem is all you need.
 
you think my ASUS P5K SE is good enough to handle a new i5 or i7 CPU? what's the best bang for buck on quad cores right now?
 
pretty much

edit :still have wait through bios but after that its on in under one swish of the win 7 logo
 
Anandtech review on the OCZ Revodrive, a PCIe card which is essentially two SSDs in RAID0 (SATA is too slow)

OCZ's RevoDrive Preview: An Affordable PCIe SSD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Though yes, the drive performance is brilliant, this comment pretty much sums it up:
Years ago I did an article tackling the real world performance improvement by putting two hard drives in RAID-0. I argued that for most users, the performance improvement wasn’t worth the trouble. PCMark Vantage maintains that this is the case. The RevoDrive is only 7% faster than a single Vertex 2. All this tells us is that for typical desktop usage models you won’t get a huge performance boost.
Click to expand...

But it's totally up to you just how much a fairly small boost in overall system speed is worth.
 
I went with the Intel XM-25 whatever for the toolbox. Installed it today. 80 gigs, nice. Also have a huge 2TB western digital for storage. Use Gparted to set them up and format as NTSF.

What everyone up above said about the Win 7 Repository.
 
Intel x25-m is king and if you're moving to ssd you def want win7 as it handles it better w/ TRIM, disabling defrag automatically etc
 
Right, that's why I went with it. They just came out with a new version, check Newegg.

I split my 80 gig into 2 partitions. After installing Win7 Ultimate, I have 17.5 gb free of 37.2. You don't get all the space, formatting uses some of it. I still have to install Office 10 whatever which will use a few gigs.

T2, CSS, and HL2 (Steam) is on the D drive, which now says 28.7 free of 37.2 gigs.

So there ya go. C drive is your boot, office, main apps. D drive is games you're playing now. E drive is 2 tb storage for torrents, music, pictures.

Why split the SSD into 2 partitions? Because I backup the C drive (OS) using Novaback, then the D Drive (Games), then the E Drive to DVD spindles and web space (cloud). Everything stays organized when you split it up like this.
 
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I have trouble with just 100 Gig for my installed apps/game drive. But I could just get a bigger one. Now I'm thinking of getting a quad core though, but I'm not sure how high I can go with my asus p5k se
 
You can get a 2nd one, they don't heat up or use much power. They have 3.5 to 2.5 bay dual enclosures. I bought one. Drive doesn't fit exactly, most people have to drill holes, but you get the idea. The SSDs go in the floppy bay of your case, then the 2TB storage drive goes in the regular spot with a fan blowing on it.
 
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