My Win7 has been acting weird and it appears a OS reinstall may be in order (I couldn’t even get a Win7 repair reinstall to work). If I do this I may take the opportunity to replace my boot drive, as it is fairly small and the oldest drive in my machine. Shouldn’t be too big a hassle to copy any files I may need (although reinstalling every program I own is pain) to my other hard drives.
If I do replace the HD, I may take the opportunity to check out an SSD. Anyone have any experiences/reccomendations? I’m currently leaning toward: OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD3-2VTX120G 3.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Reading some of the reviews on Newegg has sufficiently terrified me of fail rates and even getting them to work as boot drives.
SSDs are more reliable than HDDs, so don’t worry about fail rates. The NAND does go bad, but it’ll take 10 years so don’t worry about that either. The drive was the best drive from the previous generation, but OCZ switched them all over to 25nm NAND at the end of the generation which greatly impaired their performance. What you want to get is the Corsair F120. It’s the same drive as the Vertex 2 (literally), but guaranteed to have the superior 34nm NAND. Corsair called the 25nm NAND version the F115.
Don’t read reviews on Newegg. That’s like making important life decisions based on Yahoo Answers.
I’m using the 64 GB version of the OCZ drive as a windows 7 boot drive with no problems at all. I also have the 256 GB version of the drive ethelbert mentioned. I’m very happy with both of them.
Thanks for all the replies. I realize that reviews (and product message boards*), in general, are bitch fests. The guys who get a great product out of the box never bother posting. But it was enough to warrant soliciting advice from the smartest people on the planet! I’m mostly curious if I’m going to have to tweak my BIOS - as some reviewers have mentioned.
I looked at that Corsair (since I trust them with their memory) but saw it was 2.5". Then I also saw it comes with a 3.5" conversion kit and can be used in a desktop.
I’d like to get at least a 120GB (I think anything larger than that will be cost prohibitive), so I can maybe install a game or a frequently used program or 2 in addition to my OS, to get the speed benefit in more than just boot up (which isn’t that often as I tend to leave my PC on)
*A few years back I bought a MB that I had numerous problems with and spent considerable time on the manufactuers message board soliticing help and comiserating. You’d think everyone who ever bought this MB had an RMA or 2, but people with problems are just a small subset of all buyers - most of who never had a problem so never posted. A few years later when I replaced the MB, I went to the new manufacturers message board exactly ONCE - to read about BIOS settings and never even posted. That MB has been rock solid the entire time I owned it.
You’ll want to enable AHCI in your BIOS, if it isn’t already enabled. It takes about 10 second.
When you get down to it, choosing between SSDs is like choosing between supercars. All SSDs are so far beyond what a normal HDD can do, that regardless of what you get, you’re going to be blown away. The minor differences between the NAND sizes and controllers don’t matter compared just getting one. The C300 is a great drive too. Just get the cheapest one.
I did this with my new machine in Oct 09 and got an Intel 120 gb drive. I couldn’t be more pleased. I went with Intel because I wanted the best reliability.
I’m mostly curious if I’m going to have to tweak my BIOS - as some reviewers have mentioned.