it's time for a SSD

[MarkOne]

i finally want a SSD, so what is the best one with the less hassle, i don't need the fastest one. I want to install Win 7 on it and just forget about it and enjoy the speed

[AkG]

What is your definition of "Best"? Best value, best performance, etc etc

Even with Win 7 there is a few tweaks you need to do to get the best from any modern SSD.

Some of the best bang for your buck SSDs right now include the Falcon 2, Agility and the Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB (and ONLY the 40GB version the others....suck). IMHO two 40GB V's in Raid 0 is a very good choice (about $250 gets you power of a Intel X25-M gen 2).

Moving up in price you have the Vertex, Falcon 1, Torqx. They all come in various sizes. 30gb and 60gb are slower than the 120/250 models...but not by much.

Moving up in price again you have the Intel X25-M gen 2 and the Agility EX (SLC SSD, this is the one I use right now).

Moving up again you have the Vertex EX and a couple other SLC based SSDs.

Moving up again you have the OCZ Colossus.

Moving up again you have the various PCI-E based SSDs like the one from OCZ.

All of these are great drives. Pick the one that suits your budget best, and when in doubt....get 1 SSD and Raid 0 them later rather than getting two now. I say this as any gen 2 SSD is a GREAT single drive solution and will blow your socks off :)

[MarkOne]

Originally Posted by AkG

What is your definition of "Best"? Best value, best performance, etc etc

Even with Win 7 there is a few tweaks you need to do to get the best from any modern SSD.

thanks, AkG, I don't care to make some tweaking before or after install the drive, it's in the weeks an months after I don't like, I don't want to check every day if my drive loose speed. so let's say I have around $ 400 for spend in this new venture, what will be the best, raid 0 is not a problem for me, but I have some worries, since you can not upgrade the firmware on them , aside of temporary dismount the array

[MarkOne]

May be i should add...this will be a work station for my cad and web design software, so i plan to Install the OS on it, and the software and data on other drives, if I like it latter I will put also the software on an other SSD to improve the loading time, so no big moving of files will be done on those drives.

[gingerbee]

any indilinx in raid0 go ocz 30 gb will work great but i can tell you from experience that with no tweaks you will not get the full use and be writing too much to it hell I do almost all the same tweaks for hd that i do for ssd they just work they take only 5 mins to do. fyi Windows 7 - Ultimate SSD Speed Tweaks they

[AkG]

+1 to Gingerbee's tweak recommendations.
Follow that guide and you will be good to go :)

For $400 and raid 0 I'd either get THREE SSDNow 40GB V's (or 4 if you can get a good deal on em) or two 60GB Indilinx SSDs. The writes would be extremely good with three 40GB V's in raid 0 (the only weakness of that drive) and the reads would be out of this world. FOUR of em would give you insane small file 4k write speeds (prolly in the 150-160mb range) and prolly max out a sata 2 bus. Where it is an Intel controller based drive, it wouldnt slow down a lot as it has ITGC built in so no TRIM support wouldnt be a big loss. Same goes for OCZ Indilinx drives drop 1.4.1 on it and enjoy ITGC ;)

[Jackquelegs]

Guide Vista 32/64 SSD Windows Registry tweaks - OCZ Forum

I like this one for my vertex amongst other SSDs.

Oh AKG I just grabbed a X-25M 34nm the other day, it's fantastic! Especially for 229.99

[MarkOne]

Thanks you give me good raid 0 solutions but what about single drives ?

[gingerbee]

all of the above is what i would get weather it's single or not. intel or indilinx ( just to add i do turn off readyboost and ready boot they are 2 different things. readyboost is in services and ready boot is in under
reliability and performance "Data Collector sets" under "start up event traces" right click and in properties in the trace session tabs un-check enable
@jack i don't think ramdrives are a good idea are they? for ssd i mean
EDIT oh forgot i turn off all my page filing now

[sswilson]

Rather than creating a whole new thread......

How about "best value"?

If a person is just looking for an improvement over SATA2 physical drives, and is looking for around 60 - 80 GB, but not overly concerned about having the absolute top speeds for SSD, what would be a good choice that woudn't require too much maintenance?