Hm.. there will never be a good time. The best practice is always to spot one that suits your needs, grab it when you have enough budget and be done with it.

These days any decent ssd's mentioned here are already sufficient for personal computing. If you think its not sufficient, that means you know what you want and you might wanna look elsewhere.

Even with sata2 (250MB/s), a ssd will give you much better boot and app loading time, compared to hdd.

no, quite a number of laptop brands have msata slots: acer, asus, dell, msi, hp, lenovo, samsung, toshiba, and sony.

edit: .. and i forgot clevo.

This post has been edited by horns: Dec 27 2013, 06:57 PM

7.1.. maybe it's because of sata2. on sata3, it reads 8.1 (for w8/8.1; you can google images regarding w7 wei scores).

edit: just noticed you have a w7.

This post has been edited by horns: Dec 30 2013, 11:31 AM

it's hardware ports, you can't change it by settings. it's not a big deal actually. ssd speed is not that bad at sata2 (around 250MB/s). it's just faster at sata3 (2x).

wait.. 4gb hdd? it's puny don't you think? or did you mean 4tb hdd?

yeah.. it's noticeably faster but the usual sata2 speed is good enough for common usage. why did you put in a msata ssd? 2.5" is better imo for a desktop (more choices also).

ah ok now i got it yeah that's the better way to get speed and storage.

the guide is a generic one. you can use it for all ssd's.

seriously? it's expensive you know. a cheaper way might be doing raid0 in this case.

for the ssd lifespan, like others said, no need to worry about it.

my laptops have at least 3 drives: one is the OS drive (ssd), one is app drive (ssd), and there is a data drive (ssd or hdd). then i create a ram disk for high write operations (temp folder, cache, etc.)

specifically for firefox, i use nightly and stable versions. i install firefox in ssd, my profiles are in hdd, and my firefox cache is in ram disk. this way i can still load firefox fast, but the best of all is that this setup can survive every OS clean install, without losing all my settings, addons, bookmarks, etc. all i need to do is to run 'firefox -P' and point it to the right profile folder.

there are so many new releases of ssd's this year. it's time to save some money

1. the best is the one that fits your budget. significant improvements can only be observed if you switch from hdd to ssd. between ssd's, in terms of mainstream or enthusiast categories, the differences are not that significant to many people. if you still think consumer grades are not good enough for you, there are still better options, e.g. enterprise grade ssd's, sas/pcie form factors. if you're ok with those price tags, go ahead.

for gaming, other factors should be considered to enhance gaming experience also (especially gpu. cpu, ram, and cooling are also important). ssd is not a cure for all. it just eliminate bottlenecks of hdd.

.. and all of us have preferences. i like samsung 840 pro and plextor m5pro. but that doesn't mean other models or other brands are not good. like our friend here said, each has their advantages and weaknesses. it's up to you to choose which is 'the best' to you.

2. new releases should be a few months away (after june i guess). if you wanna get the new ones, you can start compare the differences of the current and new ssd's. unless there are significant differences, i guess it's fine to get the cheaper ones and be happy, instead of paying premium for new ones. (or else you will have to wait for the price to drop, until which you see yourself repeating the typical waiting cycle again)

exactly. life is short. please get out of that loop and start enjoying

during my previous purchases, Plextor m5pro was imo one of the best-priced. i'm still a happy user of 2x 512gb m5pro and 3x 256gb m5m (yeah i like cheap ssd's ). maybe i'm lucky but none of them are giving me weird issues. (Plextor didn't even appear in this article for some reasons, http://www.hardware.fr/articles/911-7/ssd.html)

when i got my Plextor drives, i have read from many reviews and comments, except for a few who really know their stuff, that i bought the wrong ssd's because of this and that, that i was cheap, that the drives were craps, and that i should invest in best performance ones. so, i went ahead and got 2x 256gb samsung 840 pro. they were right, 840 pro indeed has its values (it's a good investment if you have more spares). but guess what? i now know for a fact that there are no significant differences based on my daily usage. also, all my purchases were new in unopened, sealed boxes and packages; and i got them from different sellers, local and outside the country. statistically i couldn't be that lucky that all my drives have no defect, the opposite of what they claimed (e.g. these 'crap' drives boot my laptops under 15secs without fast startup lol!). if i am that lucky, i think i must try buy lotteries from now on.

reading reviews are good. listening to what people have to say is also fine. please just bear in mind that some people just like to read reviews and tell stories based on imaginations. please make your own judgements by filtering what you have done for research. (or just f them all and grab what you can )

This post has been edited by horns: Jan 17 2014, 07:25 AM

have fun

if it's a ivy-bridge/haswell machine it's fine.

that's the case of pre-w8. for w8, you need to run wei score checking feature then the system will be optimized to ssd, including disk optimization. w8.1 you don't need to do anything. just use disk optimization as usual.

ah no wonder just prepare to adapt a bit and you're good to go for w8.1.

yeah don't worry even if it's sata 2 it's still not bad (much better than hdd).

like marfccy pointed out, if you use the computer for work purposes (typing ms.word documents, creating ms.excel don't count. i am using it to create, maintain, and run vm's), to me i rather get a mlc-chip ssd than tlc, even if samsung 840 evo has good speed, and has good estimated shelf life.

i have crucial drives, too. the 2x 960gb m500 is a recent purchase (i picked them up because of mlc-vs-tlc theory). for that laptop, i use 1x 512gb samsung sm841 as boot drive. the 2 crucial drives house my apps, vm's, and games.

for crucial drives, they are relatively slower than sm841. still they are much faster than hdd.

on the side note: there was a firmware upgrade for plextor m5pro (version 1.06). one thing about that upgrade is that now m5pro supports devslp. it might be useful for anyone who need to save some battery life (previously for plextor drives this devslp feature only appears in msata version). there was also an update for m5m (version 1.05) but i didn't read the release notes.

no, ssd doesn't need defragmentation. however, it needs TRIM. in w8/8.1 the 'optimize drives' will change to issuing the TRIM command instead of defrag if they detect that the media type is ssd.

first sorry i forgot how w7 treats ssd dy. maybe someone who have w7 can help you with this one. however, if the TRIM is enabled, it should be fine. in general TRIM will be issued following any file/folder deletion by the OS.

yeah i did that on my 840 pro. this ram caching setup will theoretically further reduce write/erase cycles, so it's good for ssd's.

this is a good insight from a user's perspective with regards to common usage.

i would like to add that not all ssd's provide such software to help optimize the system. (for instance, samsung and intel do; but plextor, crucial, ocz, etc. don't). in general, the optimization guide from thessdreview.com is what you need (they cover almost all the basics, except for things like overprovisioning, which is kind of dependent on personal preference)

about the general rule to get the smallest drive, that's one way, but i suggest to get a ssd based on how much space that you wanna use for OS, apps, and current games, and on top of that, add some buffers for near future requirements. too small the drive, you will need to perform more frequent uninstallation of apps/games, because you will find drive space is insufficient for new apps/games all the times. i think it's not good to ssd.

my point is, plan your purchase based on practical needs, and find that minimum that also helps to take care of the proper usage of ssd.

install and run samsung magician software, iirc it's the last option. currently you can only enable it for one drive.