Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: PeterAit on August 27, 2011, 09:12:47 pm

Title: SSD experience
Post by: PeterAit on August 27, 2011, 09:12:47 pm
I thought this might be of interest to some. I replaced the drive in my Dell Latitude laptop with an Intel 320 series SSD. The process was totally painless aside from having to buy a USB to SATA adapter ($15). The Intel cloning software worked fine, then I swapped disks and was up and running. The only minor oddity was that I had to reauthorize my Office 10 installation. The speed increase was impressive - the few things I timed (booting, loading Word, loading LightRoom), starting the LR develop module) all took ~30-35% of the previous time. I am quite happy.
Title: Re: SSD experience
Post by: Steve Weldon on August 28, 2011, 01:04:27 am
I just wrote a review on a Intel 320 160gb. (http://www.bangkokimages.com/Articles/Equipment/entryid/1048/Intel-320-Series-160gb-SSD-Review.aspx)  Maybe some of the setup information in it will be of use to you?

Did you know that Intel released a new firmware upgrade last week to fix a fairly significant bug?  You might want to do this upgrade, it's non-destructive, just in case..
Title: Re: SSD experience
Post by: PeterAit on August 28, 2011, 09:45:44 am
Thanks!
Title: Re: SSD experience
Post by: Christopher on September 08, 2011, 08:39:36 am
I would currently only recomend the Crucial m4 SSDs. I think they offer some great performance and are quite cheap to get.

Intel and all other SSDs are fine, but as far as I know the Crucial  is the only one running wothout any bugs at all.
Title: Re: SSD experience
Post by: Steve Weldon on September 08, 2011, 12:57:48 pm
I would currently only recomend the Crucial m4 SSDs. I think they offer some great performance and are quite cheap to get.

Intel and all other SSDs are fine, but as far as I know the Crucial  is the only one running wothout any bugs at all.

I own several Crucial SSD's and I couldn't in good conscience recommend them.  The C300's are already on Firmware revision 007 and the M4's on 009?  Crucial rushes them out without due diligence.  I realize all SSD manufacturers make firmware updates after product release, but no one has released such a problematic product requiring as many as Crucial.
Title: Re: SSD experience
Post by: Jeremy Roussak on September 08, 2011, 01:28:51 pm
I thought this might be of interest to some. I replaced the drive in my Dell Latitude laptop with an Intel 320 series SSD. The process was totally painless aside from having to buy a USB to SATA adapter ($15). The Intel cloning software worked fine, then I swapped disks and was up and running. The only minor oddity was that I had to reauthorize my Office 10 installation. The speed increase was impressive - the few things I timed (booting, loading Word, loading LightRoom), starting the LR develop module) all took ~30-35% of the previous time. I am quite happy.
I had a similar experience: I put an Integral SSD into my 4-year-old MacBook Pro in August last year and have been very pleased indeed by the increased speed of everything. The only fly in the ointment is that I have lost the excuse I need to justify buying an even faster, shiny new MacBook Pro  ;)

Jeremy
Title: Re: SSD experience
Post by: Christopher on September 08, 2011, 07:44:23 pm
Funny, as far as I know Intel still hasn't fixed the 8MB bug a 100%. So I would never recomend such a drive. OCZ still has huge problems with their SSDs. At least Crucial fixes the problems with updates, compared to SandForce based SSDs, which still haven't fixed all bugs on the newest generation. (Just BSOD and so on)

There are enough examples out there. Don't get me wrong I have a Vertex 3 in my notebook, but for stability I only currently would recomend the Crucial  m4. When I look trhough computer and hardware forums it's the drive with the least problems and no major bugs compared to Intel. It's also amazingly fast especially with the current firmware.

 
Title: Re: SSD experience
Post by: budjames on September 08, 2011, 10:36:04 pm
I've been running OWC (Other World Computing) Mercury Pro (3GB) 240GB SSD drives in my MacBookPro (2010 i7) and my MacPro 8-core (2007) for about 8 months now.

I used SuperDuper to clone my boot drives to the new SSD drives, installed them, and haven't had any issue since.

The big difference was realized on my MBP where I replaced a Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200rpm drive. The performance increase was and still is awesome. Boot times are cut to a third.

Highly recommended.

Check out http://macperformanceguide.com/ for more info.

Cheers.
Bud

Bud
Title: Re: SSD experience
Post by: Steve Weldon on September 09, 2011, 12:59:55 am
Funny, as far as I know Intel still hasn't fixed the 8MB bug a 100%. So I would never recomend such a drive. OCZ still has huge problems with their SSDs. At least Crucial fixes the problems with updates, compared to SandForce based SSDs, which still haven't fixed all bugs on the newest generation. (Just BSOD and so on)

There are enough examples out there. Don't get me wrong I have a Vertex 3 in my notebook, but for stability I only currently would recomend the Crucial  m4. When I look trhough computer and hardware forums it's the drive with the least problems and no major bugs compared to Intel. It's also amazingly fast especially with the current firmware.

 

1.  The intel 320 series 8mb was a very obscure bug that only occurred under very specific circumstances.  Even if they left it alone, the 320 series wouldn't be creating issues for the vast majority of users.  Are you saying the last firmware fix for the 8mb bug didn't fix the problem?  I haven't heard that.. but it's still a minor bug, not the type the Crucials have had that affects a lot of users.

2.  If a company publishes 7 firmware revisions for the same problems as they done for the C300 and M4.. that's not really "fixing" the problem is it?  We're talking bugs that affect most users, performance issues, stuttering, etc.  7 revisions for the C300 and they finally gave up.  It still has issues, but now that they're on their new series they figure it's "good enough."  Now their new series is on the 9th revision and according to the forums it's still not fixed.  These are not the type of drives you recommend for users who want stable trouble free operation.   

3.  OCZ and Crucial both suffer from the performance race.  Enthusiasts buy them mostly to 'hot rod' and they take great joy in finding bugs and posting about it in their respective forums which is fair enough.  With OCZ, if you just use it and leave it alone.. it works fine.  No performance issues, no data loss issues, it works.  With Crucial it's always been about performance issues.  Intel supports a different group of people.. Put an intel SSD in a system, and if it works when you put it in, it will work fine forever after with the normal amount of hardware failures any company experiences.

4.  Crucial used to have a rock solid reputation.. they blew it when they let their SSD division rush product out when competing in the market.  7 revisions on one series and it's still not fix?  9 on their newest?  This is not a finished product.  It's a time bomb.  Sure, the Intel 320 series had the 8mb bug.. but it only occurred under very specific conditions, so it affected very few customers.  If you're saying their very first firmware revision didn't fix it 100%, but only made it less obscure.. okay, fine.  I'll take that over a company with a track record of blatant negligence like Crucial.. and I say that with 3 Crucial products of my own and over 25-30 I put in customers machines.. Then, there weren't that many choices.. now there are.
Title: Re: SSD experience
Post by: Christopher on September 09, 2011, 04:13:01 am
Well when I read trhough forums there are certainly more people complaining about the OCZ/Sandforce based SSDs. BSODs, stuttering, system hanging for several seconds. I have experienced it for myself with two different sandfoce drives and its horrible. It can be fixed as well, but that goes for the m4 as well. When it comes to firmware. It's not 9 steps it's 3 steps from 001,002--> 009.

You say Crucial is bad, but what about Sandfocre / OCZ ? All they do is claim is that all BSODs and stuttering is intel fault and Intel claims they fixed it. Fact is when turning off the fix (which is user based), with new computers I can reproduce it with both Sandforce drives in around 10 minutes. However, as long as the hardware works for you and me we are happy. I am just careful recomanding something like the Intel, which "could" loose all the data in a second. Sure all HDDs can do that, but a SSD shouldn't after it is perhaps only 2 months old.