What's the best SSD at around 64gig?

[Zak33]

Lo people

Pricing being of obvious importance, and 64gig being fine, where is the performance vs ££ sweet spot right now?

Cos I'm bemused tbh.... bemused.

It's for a regular PC in a big chassis. size doesn't matter

[Terbinator]

For the price difference its probably worth spending the extra and getting the capacity and speed of an Intel 80GB.
However, I believe Aria are doing quite the deal on a 64GB Crucial SSD at the minute.

[Zak33]

so an Intel over a Crucial for speed?

[Terbinator]

so an Intel over a Crucial for speed?

Yes, and space in this case

[TooNice]

If the Crucial referred to is the C300 (not sure if there are others), then it's hardly a clear win for the Intel: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/137?vs=125 (note that it's using the 256GB of the Crucial - not sure if the 64GB is significantly crippled).

[TooNice]

Um, okay, looking at Aria, the 64GB Crucial is a different model. And the C300 is significantly more expensive than the Intel per GB. So even if we call it a tie performance wise, yeah, I agree that the 80GB Intel is the way to go.

[Champman99]

Cant go wrong with an Intel 80GB X25-M in my book!

Indilinx and the new Sandforce controllers are also good (from what I've read), but I've always found that UK pricing means they are poor value. In the US they seem much more agressively priced against the Intel drives - at least when I was looking.

[TooNice]

Well, the SandForce drive is going to cost more, as they are placing themselves above Intel in performance. I think the best priced Indilinx is the G.Skill Falcon at MemoryC all the Vertex are overpriced IMO.

[Zak33]

are these Intel's availalable from Scan.. cos I can't find them.

I can find an M25 - M but not an X25-M
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/80GB-...s-Write-70MB-s

[jim]

I think it's just a misname:

Look here

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/rese...ture/index.htm

The Manufacturer code on the Scan page correlates with the X25-M in that table

[Phage]

I was looking at these as well. Is there any way of easily moving my windows and games to a new SSD without a full re-install ?

[Terbinator]

I was looking at these as well. Is there any way of easily moving my windows and games to a new SSD without a full re-install ?

I know the Kingston ones come with some sort of imaging software. My concern would be trying to copy from IDE to ACHI as Intel say they're SSD's should be run in ACHI mode.

[jim]

Just use something like Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage and clone the disk.

I'm sure there are free tools that do the job, but I haven't done it in years - and when I did, I used Ghost.

Then take the old disk out, put the SSD in its place and boot up. If boot fails, just repair the boot facility with the Win 7 disk and all should be fine.

And there's a thread here about enabling AHCI without reinstalling the OS, but I don't know how well it works. If you're already running AHCI, then that's not a problem.

[Zak33]

I was looking at these as well. Is there any way of easily moving my windows and games to a new SSD without a full re-install ?

If you're using Vista Ultimate or Business, it's got full disk cloning included

Just create a full backup.. to a different drive..

and the put the new drive in, the old OS drive out (it's safe then) and boot off the Vista CD and use it to clone from the image to the new HDD>

I've done it 3 times with this current Vista install... it's lush

[switchmode]

I have been using a couple of SSDs for a while now and have been reading up on how to use them in the best way. You can clone them and it will work but you have to be aware that some clone tools will not give a proper "Alignment" for SSD.

I think you need it aligned for 4Kb writes, check your drive if its a new model.

The reason is if you are writing to the SSD it can only write to blocks and that is the size of them so if its not aligned it will cross into two blocks and will mean extra writes to the SSD which will be slower and cause more ware to the cells. Its something about having to erase the block then writing all the data back plus the bit you want to add to it, I could have this wrong but its something similar if I'm wrong Its not far off.

As far as I know Vista and Win 7 allign everything ok if you do a fresh install.

There are guides out, some on the OCZ forums for this.

I use Win 7 backup with the whole drive image option. It works well as far as I can tell.

[Phage]

I use Win 7 backup with the whole drive image option. It works well as far as I can tell.

But as I want to split the data between the SSD and a storage disk how does that work ? When restoring from backup is there a way of telling the software where to put different things ?