mine~ Intel SSD 520 series, 120GB..so far so good..

SS use for boot drive or cache drive better and if use as cache drive can it run out of space?

why there is difference between 128gb and 256gb? the cache is half lower in 128 than in 256.. is that make any different during performance?

SSD cache drive is managed by the caching software, if im correct, it will run out of space eventually, and the caching software will delete the rarely used data on the cache drive.

Solid State Cache usually has smaller capacity, its cheaper and meant for speed up the system which still using HDD.
If your SSD has larger capacity, eg 64GB, will be suitable to use as boot drive.

128 totally perform difference than 256gb..

for example
for 128gb the type of cache is 256MB Samsung LPDDR2 SDRAM
while this cache type is for 256gb SSD - 512MB Samsung LPDDR2 SDRAM

the random read and sequential read and write and perform differently.

Thats why most people choose 256gb? or does they really so much difference in performance?

But i read articles saying if set as boot drive all your documents eg: pictures musics downloads will go in there i do alot of download so my ssd will run out very fast can i change the directory of those documents or there is some settings to make the ssd a boot drive only?

Just change the Download directory.

Your Internet Explorer temporary files, Google Chrome cache, Firefox cache, programs' settings, etc. will also ate up those space, you can however change the My Document's directory to another drive (partition/volume) by follow steps below: (Note: Windows 7/8 only)
1. Library > Documents, right-click > Properties.
2. Left-click "Include a folder", choose the folder you want, click "Include folder".
3. Click on the included folder to highlight (select), click "Set save location".
4. Click on other folders, click "Remove" to remove them all.
Use above steps for your Picture and Video as well so the default folder will be on other drive than your C drive.

For Internet Explorer (7 and above)
1. Tools > Internet option.
2. At Browsing History (I.E. 7 might be slightly different), click "Settings".
3. Click "Move Folder", select the folder that you want to reside, click "OK".
4. Re-login (log off and login again) to activate this setting. (System will copy all the temporary files over to the new location)

For other browser, I'm can't find such options to move the cache, unless you use the Portable version of the browser.

Hope these help you reduce the usage of the C drive.

Reinstalling the whole OS is recommended if you are not so good at tweaking or troubleshooting problems.

Don't forget that there are data transfer protocol overheads as well. For example, SATA 1.5Gbps and 3.0Gbps uses 8b/10b encoding, meaning that 80% of the bandwidth is data only.

3 Gbps / 8 bits per byte = 375 megabytes per second
375 megabytes per second * 80% efficiency = 300 megabytes per second

Which is why SATA 3.0 Gbps has a theoretical limit of 300 megabytes per second and why most benchmarks are slightly lower than that theoretical limit. There are also other additional SATA protocol overheads, but I have not seen a value attached to those overheads.

Your operating system will turn off the SSD using the proper procedures. It will not simply instruct the motherboard to kill the SSD. The same goes for the HDD as well, which are far more sensitive to abrupt power failures than SSDs.

If you can actually use most of the 480GB capacity, then go for it. Otherwise I would recommend sticking with the 240GB. In about two years from now, 480GB SSDs should price at about RM500 (edit: based on your given price).

And if you are using a desktop, the value of buying a 480GB is considerably reduced. Primarily because you can store your data more cheaply in HDDs.

But where can you find RM558 520 250GB? The cheapest retail price for that model that I am aware of is RM759. Does it have the full five year warranty? They can sell much cheaply if it doesn't have the full five year warranty. Well, if you really do have access to that model with full warranty at that price at a reputable seller, I'd lean towards buying the 480GB because it is a big discount.

If you want to buy an SSD cache drive, you WANT it to run out of space during normal use. If it never runs out of space, then you have wasted performance by using it for caching when you should instead use it for your boot drive.

Both non-caching and caching SSDs have their pros and cons. Non-caching SSDs will always respond, but have limited capacity. Caching SSDs requires that the data be cached first before it can serve the data, so it will always be slow for data it has never seen before, but it can perform as fast as regular SSDs once it has a cached copy and it can cache for all of your HDDs. Caching SSDs do add one extra layer of complexity, which reduces reliability but this is usually negligible.

The primary difference is because there are more NAND chips to write and read from. SSDs typically function like RAID-5 or some variation of RAID; the more chips (to be specific, data channels) there are, the better the performance. At least for NAND chips of the same capacity; two 16GB NAND chips will outperform one 32GB NAND chip.

If you are doing this to "preserve" the life span of your SSD, DON'T DO IT.

1. All of these caches contains thousands of tiny little files.
2. SSDs performs best on thousands of tiny little files.
3. HDDs performs worst on thousands of tiny little files.

In other words, by doing that "little life-saving optimisation", you have forced your computer to perform in the worst possible condition. And the best part is that for most people, this life-saving optimisation will not really save the life of your SSD. You are far more likely to replace your SSD in three to five years time than your SSD dying from write exhaustion.

On the other hand, if you are doing that because you are running out of precious SSD space, this will help buy you some time. You should still plan to buy a larger SSD in the near future. It is for this reason that I have advocated larger capacity SSDs over performance SSDs — you are not going to get much performance from a 128GB high performance SSD if you need to put 129GB of data on it.

This post has been edited by everling: Dec 3 2012, 12:38 PM

Where are you getting those cheap prices ?

if it was not writing data at that point in time, chances of data corruption is greatly reduced.

Hei all, i got a question. I bought samsung ssd 840 Pro but then i realize my laptop motherboard cant support sata3..

just want to know whether the performance of my SSD will reduce significantly or not because of Sata2 ( only can use 3gb and cant use 6gb )?

thanks

The raw performance will be reduced, but you probably won't feel it. If this is your first SSD, it will still amaze you. And upgrading to a SATA 6.0Gbps motherboard will not double the performance you feel. You get a lot of people recommending SSDs, but you will hardly find anybody who will just as strongly recommend upgrading your motherboards to suit your SATA 6.0Gbps SSD. My recommendation about the motherboard is to not use the SSD as a reason to replace it, as it is not really worth the trouble nor the cost, unless you were already itching to replace the motherboard.

Pc fair is coming. What price for SSD should we expect...there will be price drop?

thanks thanks..
ya this is my first SSD so probably i will just ignore my motherboard hehe

which one should i get ??

OCZ vertex 4 128GB RM441
or
intel 520 120GB RM380

Personally much rather pick Intel SSD

why ? i though vertex 4 have better performance ?

Intel's Sandforce is much reliable, less firmware issue which is the SSD worst enemy.

Just get intel instead.