First SSD - suggestions and setup

Hey all,

I'm about to pull the plug on my first ever SSD purchase. I figure the market has matured enough, and the price/performance index is starting to make sense for the average user.

I'm using an older 7200.11 in my main system so as you can tell, my experience lately has been very sluggish.

I want an SSD between 120-256GB, something relatively fast, but more importantly, reliable.
I've been looking at the Samsung 830 and OCZ Vertex 4, but don't have any real world experience with either of them.

Ideally I would like to use the SSD as the boot/OS drive and keep my Barracuda as storage/secondary.

Could you make some recommendations on the SSD I should purchase? How would I go about setting something like that up afterwards?

Help is much appreciated.

[supaflyx3]

Sammy 830, vertex 4, Intel 520 and crucial M4 are all good choices

[lowfat]

$169 after MIR for an OCZ Agility 4 @ TigerDirect now. That is what I'd probably buy. You really can't tell much of a performance difference between SSDs these days anyway. They seem to be reliable drives AFAIK.

[great_big_abyss]

Originally Posted by zeus3dfx

How would I go about setting something like that up afterwards?

Help is much appreciated.

Are you willing to do a fresh install of Windows? I'd say that would be your best bet. Just remove your old harddrive, plug in the new SSD, ensure that TRIM is enabled in your BIOS (enable AHCI under the correct SATA port), plop in your windows disk, and install away.

Then when windows is installed, re-install your old Barracuda, backup necessary files, reformat, and you're done.

If you don't want to reinstall Windows, there are disc imaging programs out there that you can use to copy your Windows Install over to the new drive. I've never used one, so I'll leave it to others to suggest suitable software if you wish to use that method.

[AkG]

Originally Posted by lowfat

$169 after MIR for an OCZ Agility 4 @ TigerDirect now. That is what I'd probably buy. You really can't tell much of a performance difference between SSDs these days anyway. They seem to be reliable drives AFAIK.

Personally, spend the extra couple bucks and get a SanDisk Extreme 240GB drive. You wont have to deal with MIRs and you will get a better performing drive with much....MUCH better Toggle Mode NAND.

[terrybear]

Originally Posted by AkG

Personally, spend the extra couple bucks and get a SanDisk Extreme 240GB drive. You wont have to deal with MIRs and you will get a better performing drive with much....MUCH better Toggle Mode NAND.

I'll agree with you there, IF the op can get a 240 gig ssd with toggle mode nand with a repatable manufactorer for under or around $200, they'll be set.

[zypho]

I just put a 120gb Intel 520 SSD in my new build. While I love the drive, I must say I regret going 120gb, after installing OS, few programs and 2 or 3 games its almost full. One other thing I read about when installing Windows on a SSD was to disable hibernation, apparently it can leave a file on your OS drive as big as 15gb sometimes.

[BlueByte]

Also if you have enough ram you can kill off your page file. But you have to have enough ram to cover off doing this. 16GB I would almost say is the min to do this.

[BryceBooth]

Samsung 830, Intel 520, Crucial M4, Corsair GS, Sandisk, OCZ Vertex 4, these are all great SSD's, purchase whichever brand or capacity is in your budget (240 GB is a nice capacity).
The best way to install an SSD would be to update the firmware on the drive first, as some firmware updates are destructive. A clean install with AHCI enabled in the BIOS is the easiest method, unplug your hard drive during the install as there have been some documented issues.
A 240 GB SSD after formatting will be approximately 223 GB, if you really wanted to keep your existing installation you could do so by using Windows Disk Management to shrink your hard drive, then Windows Backup to create a System Image and Recovery Disk. I suggest moving your documents and media beforehand, and defragging your hard drive before creating the image (don't defrag the SSD though).

How do I go about updating the firmware on an SSD before installing Windows on it?

Also, I realized just now that a 2.5" to 3.5" kit would be VERY helpful, as my cm690 has no space for 2.5" drives. Do any of the drives we talked about come with a kit?