You bought that on a ~RM350 budget?

It's Triple-Level Cell.

And at one time, 25nm MLCs had a lifespan of only 3,000 program/erase cycles. With 5,000 p/e cycles, TLC is well ahead of when 25nm NAND was first introduced.

As for lifespan, the numbers can be deceiving. Assuming that you consume 5 p/e for the entire SSD per day you are looking at 2.74 years of life. For a 256GB SSD, this means writing 256GB of data every day for 2.74 years. Since most people would struggle to write 50GB a day, most will do just fine.

We don't hear of compatibility issues, so I wouldn't expect any from that angle.



The common 2.5" SSDs are indeed using SATA. As for compatibility between the various SATA versions, there are no compatibility issues. You can buy the latest SSD and plug it into the oldest computer with SATA and it should run. In the worst case, you should be able to return the SSD to the shop - be sure to ask for their return policies.

I can't confirm for the v3000, I don't even know if they use SATA, but I have personally done it with a v3500 with no problems.

If you are still on Windows XP and you are going to do a fresh install for your SSD, it would be best to have the necessary SATA drivers or your XP install disk has Service Pack 3. However, there are workarounds if you don't have them and you still intend to install Windows XP.

I have used an SSD with Windows XP for a long while, and have abused it quite thoroughly by spending weeks on program compilation on a Virtual Machine, before I changed to Windows 7, so I can say that TRIM support is not necessary to get the full benefit of SSDs.

In fact, the average user will be hard pressed to immediately notice the presence or absence of TRIM. It took a few months before people realised that there was a performance problem and that TRIM was one of two solutions created to solve it. The other solution was passive garbage collection, as opposed to TRIM's active garbage collection, and it should be present on most - if not all - modern SSD firmware.

For anyone who is still using Windows XP, please do not let it be a barrier to your decision process in buying an SSD. While SSD-aware OSes like Windows 7 will do better, SSDs will still work almost as fast on older OSes like Windows XP.

This post has been edited by everling: Oct 22 2012, 12:14 AM

Despite TLC NAND having less p/e cycles and performs a little slower, it does have one benefit that MLC NAND can't match: It will eventually be a lot cheaper than MLC NAND, significantly cheaper.

Also, having less p/e cycles doesn't mean that it has less lifespan. If your TLC NAND p/e consumption is less than your MLC NAND p/e consumption, it is possible for a TLC NAND SSD to outlast an MLC NAND SSD. It is heavily dependent on usage.

From retail shops, Intel 330. Or if you need/want 256GB, Crucial M4.

One 520 240GB. But I'd rather stick with the much cheaper Crucial M4 256GB. In either case, upgrading from a single drive is simpler than from a RAID or you could later buy a second 520 240GB and make a 480GB RAID-0. And again, expect SSD prices to depreciate quickly, as they have since the beginning.

In performance yes, but the odds are that you are unlikely to actually benefit from it, unless you have specific use cases that do benefit from the huge I/O throughput available. If you do not have such a use case, then going with single SSDs would be better over a RAID-0 array. Less cables, less power consumption, better air flow, lower risk of failure, simpler set up.

Please use the ATTO benchmark before following soultaker's advice. The benchmark results there should be similar to the paper specs.

This post has been edited by everling: Oct 29 2012, 03:55 PM

You can see some improvement, shaving a few seconds off here and there. But honestly, for gaming, it is not worth the expenditure or the trouble to go RAID-0. As a gamer, you only need one decently sized SSD, and then put the rest of your money on GPU or CPU.

As for what constitutes a decently sized SSD, if you use Steam and have a lot of games, you probably want something in the 240-256GB capacity range so that you may store your games and OS on the SSD. You can check the size of your games and Steam folder to know your requirements better.

You may also want to read this article: Why RAID is (usually) a Terrible Idea

TRIM should be enabled automatically in both Win7 and Win8, at least on a fresh install.

Strange, ATTO shouldn't cause your Windows to hang.

Okay, as an alternative, try using CrystalDiskMark, link on the first post. But before you run the benchmark, click on File > Test Data and choose either "All 0x00 (0 Fill)" or "All 0x01 (1 Fill)". SandForce-based SSDs, like the Intel 330 or 520, does not like random data, which is why the performance seems to be low.

You can read my earlier post on why there is a difference.

The 0 Fill benchmark looks much better.

Cloning a HDD-based OS to a SSD has been known to cause problems. If this is what had happened, you should try a fresh install of Windows 7. One benefit of a fresh install is that Windows will automatically perform what SSD optimisations it could, which is good enough for most people to not bother with further manual SSD optimisation.

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Added on October 30, 2012, 9:42 amI see.

This post has been edited by everling: Oct 30 2012, 09:42 AM

It probably won't be worth it. If you do go up to RM419, you should then strongly consider the 330 180GB that goes for RM429. On a 60GB SSD, you will be quite limited in the number of programs or games that you can install on the SSD. Since SSDs are still quite expensive, having a lot of storage capacity is still quite valuable.

For example, Windows 7 and Program Files will take about 20GiB. Diablo III takes another 12GiB. And a 60GB SSD has only 55GiB of actual capacity, leaving you with only 23GiB of free space for other stuff. With a 120GB or a 180GB SSD, you will have more space to install more games and other programs.

On the other hand, I wouldn't recommend the average user to buy more than 256GB, unless they know they need more. Best to reserve SSDs for OS and programs and store your data on HDDs.

At Viewnet.

But you may want to try inquiring about the current prices at the Garage Sales. Sometimes the pricing is quite outdated and some do offer price matching.

This post has been edited by everling: Oct 30 2012, 06:34 PM

It's good enough.

It's good enough.

This is mostly a personal preference issue. But for laptops and/or if you don't have a second HDD to place your data in, making an OS and data partitions may be worth it if you are likely to reformat your OS partition in the future.

Buying international is not recommended if warranties are in doubt or if going through the warranty process is much more troublesome. But it is your choice if you are willing to take the risks.

You are correct. If you don't have a problem that the 10g fixes, don't install the 10g firmware. If you don't know how to tell if you have or don't have a problem, then you probably don't have a problem.

Do you really need more than 240GB of space for your programs? Those are a lot more affordable. What about using both the SSD and the Raptor? There might be a lot of programs that do not need to live on the SSD.

But if you feel that the convenience of a 480/512GB SSD is worth the cost, I'd go with the Crucial M4 due to lower upfront cost.

Welcome to the club.

Bad PSUs or electrical supply are more likely to kill HDDs. Is yours a good one?

It is above average for our market, I think.

If reliability is a concern, you really don't want to need to RMA them.

This one? Gigabyte's New Odin GT 800W Power Supply

I'm no expert, but I'd be concerned with the voltage outputs after it has aged three or more years.

I don't think that partitioning is a problem, otherwise someone would have probably noticed something and examined it over the last two decades of computing. I certainly haven't made such a connection myself and I still don't see one.

Yes, you should set it to AHCI before installing Windows. It is a bit tricky to change it to AHCI after Windows is installed, but possible.

Personally, paying an extra RM600-750 for the convenience of keeping all the games in one drive is too pricey for me. I would much prefer to juggle them and spend the difference on the CPU or GPU. Assuming 20GB per game, that is 10 big games, the OS and some spare space.

But you would still know your needs and wants better than I do, I have no idea what is in your Raptor and I don't know if there are nearby price cuts after the recent release of the 20nm/21nm NAND SSDs.

This post has been edited by everling: Nov 6 2012, 10:04 AM

Try running an ATTO benchmark test.

The results are normal. The difference in benchmark results of the AS SSD and ATTO is in how the benchmark is conducted.

The Intel 330 specification specifies 500MB/s read and 450MB/s write.

You might be able to increase performance a little more with firmware/driver updates and optimisations, but using as-is is fine.

None comes to mind. If you have already went through the optimisation guide in the first post, there isn't much left to do.

The Intel 520 isn't intended for home users, but enterprise usage instead. The Intel 330 is more than sufficient for non-enterprise use, I'd take the 330 over the 520 because you could get more capacity for nearly the same price and I'll also take the 330 over the Crucial M4 because it is cheaper.

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Added on November 7, 2012, 9:53 pmDid you confirmed that you have switched to AHCI? Because that indicates you're still on IDE mode.

This post has been edited by everling: Nov 7 2012, 09:53 PM

Despite having a limited amount of spare sectors for the HDD, having a few bad sectors on the HDD can also be normal. It is a cause for concern if the bad sectors increase quickly.

Both are actually reporting the same thing, CrystalDiskInfo reported the same value '1' in the Raw Values. And I also think that both are correct. HD Tune is correct in that this is something to be concerned about, but CrystalDiskInfo is also correct that your SSD is still good at the moment. The ability to reallocate sectors is a self-healing feature intended to cover the occasional minor bad sectors that do not require manufacturer intervention.

For now, just watch the values. If nothing changes over the next few months, then the automatic "healing" has merely done its job and it is not a problem; I have a few HDDs like this and they are still good years after. On other hand, if you have a zero tolerance policy and you don't mind not having the SSD/HDD for the next few days or weeks and losing the data on it (you are likely to be returned with another SSD/HDD, check the serial numbers), you may be able to send it in for warranty without too much trouble. Of course, the technicians may roll their eyes at seeing yet another SSD/HDD like this, or perhaps they are already too jaded at seeing thousands of perfectly fine SSDs/HDDs with one or two reallocated sectors to even bother.

Edit: There is also your warranty period to consider. If it is going to expire soon, it might be a good time to send it in. If you are lucky and they no longer have stock of your model, you might get back a 120GB SSD.

This post has been edited by everling: Nov 8 2012, 09:33 AM

It's not particularly noteworthy and the cost/GB is poor.

Corsair F3 120GB - RM 3.03/GB
Intel 330 120GB - RM 2.49/GB
Intel 330 180GB - RM 2.33/GB

And considering the price of the F3, you might as well consider the 330 180GB at RM419 at Viewnet.