er simply put it's about performance. the more the better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS

wow! remember to grab this also, https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Des...eng&ProdId=3792

yes it will give you bsod if you simply change like that. for best results, you should set it to ahci and then do a fresh OS install.

alternatively i have read that there is a windows registry tweak. i am not sure how it works. google should be able to help you out.

i never used first gen samsung ssd before. i couldn't afford one during those days hehe

what's the model? what do any disk health tools tell you about its smart status when you run them on the ssd? maybe it needs to be reset to factory state.

no it's not a good choice. however powerwoot is right. choose that if you really have tight budget and it's very urgent that you must run your stuff with ssd. if not, there are plenty of choices out there. mainstream drives should be fine for you.

uh? nothing installed? meaning fresh windows install, without drivers, and without windows updates?

usually what i do is just install windows, install drivers (the latest that you can find. if not stock drivers should work too. after driver install), then install windows updates.

which windows version by the way?

intel 320 is too old imo :/

it's just the os creating temp files and things like pagefile/swap. it's common. it's just that you don't notice it when the free space is large enough.

it depends on your budget.

for general use, all mainstream ssds should work well. if you have a little extra, you can go for larger mainstream drives. performance drives are better but the price is premium. they do run at higher speeds, but you will not feel it in common usage because mainstream drives are already fine for that.

for 240gb (usually around MYR 450 plus or minus), if you wanna have newer drives you can go for plextor m6s and toshiba q series pro. if not you can get a 5-year warranty with intel 530 (an old performance drive. it's still fine for general use). if you wanna go for larger drives, crucial mx100, or transcend ssd 370 might be your choice.

it's better you also check out garage sales section in this forum. sometimes you can find cheap performance drives there. (like plextor m5pro/m6pro, crucial m550, samsung 840pro/850pro)

i didn't include samsung 840 evo because there are still issues reported and pending, while 850 evo is expensive relatively. i also don't include oem ssd because maybe the offered warranty is too short.

i will pick m6s. it's not the best drive of the three in terms of endurance (intel 730) and speed (850 evo) but it almost has the best of both worlds imo. (good mlc nand; decent controller; ram cache software)

intel 730 is essentially an enterprise-grade consumer ssd. like any other enterprise offerings, it's about relative endurance, rather than speed. 850 evo, well it's expensive.

i'm sorry i don't have charts to show you. it's better you check out benchmark charts from review sites. just know that reviews and performance charts are just for reference. for general use, imo they don't really matter.

about endurance, yes tlc is the lowest. however with the right use cases, i think it still work fine. a decent system setup today involves a ssd is used as a boot/app/game drive. hdd is used for data downloads and storage. this is the simplest yet better combo, leveraging on their respective strengths, not weaknesses. if you wanna use ssd solely for storage, you should pick enterprise ssds, not consumer grade.

i always suspect bad drives that involved even mlc nand might not be flash-related but other components in the ssd.

less people use doesn't mean it is not good (like corsair neutron gtx). unlike v300, hyperx 3k is a premium offering from kingston. if you looked at its total bytes written (tbw) within the 3-year warranty of a 240gb, it's about 3 drives written per day (dwpd). that means you can install and uninstall bf4 on the ssd for 9 times a day continuously for 3 years. (i know the right minds don't do that hehe)

right. that's the case in general, but there are few exceptions. the sweet spot to have small enough space (cheaper) yet have the similar speed of larger capacity drives is 240-256gb range. however, larger capacity drivers are relatively cheaper in terms of price/GB.

instead of going for performance drives, getting larger mainstream ssds are worth the money for general use imo. transcend ssd 370 should be fine. at least you have more space for stuff and you don't need to frequently uninstall them to free up space for new ones. (i.e. less write/erase cycles for your ssd)

yes

usually 1-partition layout is fine. afaik there is no performance slowdown or gain. i have 2x 960gb crucial m500 with the same layout.

no it's not that it's hard to achieve. consumer/client ssd is usually optimized for mixed work loads, e.g. as boot/app/game drive that requires more reads than writes. 130MB/s is acceptable, but it's really not that good because it's a ssd (that write speed is like for hdd). imo it should be at least 250MB/s.

i just noticed your rig specs in the signature. you have a decent rig (with 2x sata 3), so it's better to invest something more worthy.

by the way plextor ssds are decent. they're not the fastest, but one of the reliable ones.

haha

yes for general use, we don't need that much of writes.

i meant that you should get a larger and speedier drive

ah you have a small m5pro i guess. the 512gb version still can get 480+ MB/s read and 430+ MB/s after steady state. well it's not a big deal because it's fast enough.

i know, right? there are some differences between mainstream and performance drives. it's just that in common usage, mainstream is usually fast enough.

just think deeper of what you actually need. if a mainstream drive is good enough for you, just go for space.

well it's mainstream vs. performance lol

boot time is usually the same. what matters is after boot

imo transcend ssd 370 is a decent drive for general use. it has what you can expect from a mainstream ssd. good or not, i think it's up to usage, and time. however we have a happy user here with no issues. it has some notable reviews from online review sites also.

tbh, there is no need for ssd to be super fast for common usage. if it's 350MB/s read/write then it's good enough imo.

by the way older intel drives although it's slower, is still one of the decent ones for general use. its longer warranty places a good value to it.

2 things: samsung 850 pro has a 10-year warranty, and m6e has the very potential overheating issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hhdWwvh5kI

source: http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/...lification-575/

scary leh? i am running xp941 on a pcie adapter with heat sink too after watching this one. the controller and nand flash chips are covered with thermal pads lol

yeah you can say 850 pro is overpriced, even if it comes with a 10-year warranty. however it's still one of if not the best as of now for consumer sata ssd

actually there is another better way imo. for ahci type of pcie ssd, i think it's cheaper to run 2x 256gb sata ssd raid0 for more speed and space. for nvme type, we need to check the price first. it will take 4x sata ssd raid0 to get the performance of 1x pcie 3.0 x4 nvme ssd.

due to the precious limited pcie lanes in z97 (well depending on how you use them), i think it's more practical also for mainstream systems like z97. honestly, i think x99 systems is a better platform to use m.2 ssds, because of the same reason.

see above

after i have built up my storage, i will make my systems as minimal as possible. for now, i have a single m.2 as OS-only drive, 2x sata ssds for apps and games, and 2x hdd for storage. i intend to reduce it to have only 1x hdd, solely for downloads only.

no. actually plextor's ram caching can run even faster. i do run primocache on top of m.2 ssd. it's even more responsive than without it.

it's ram basically. different cache implementations will have different outcomes, speed included. there are risks in it. fortunately, there is no much to worry about if the power supply in your area is stable enough.

plextor is one of my favorites. to me, their drives are like crucial, but plextor is more generous. (m5pro/m6pro has 5-year warranty, while crucial m550 has only 3. also, crucial drive tbw is fixed at 72tb, no matter how large is the capacity)

yeah plextor produces msata drives, too. the latest i think is plextor m6m.

hahaha everyone has their own preferences. there is a new replacement for mx100, mx200. below mx200 there is a bx100. i know some friends that still run their systems with crucial m4 raid0, still alive and kicking.

This post has been edited by horns: Feb 10 2015, 09:19 AM

wow this is a nice deal indeed that's what i am saying, spend less for more speed and space than m.2 lol!

now you makes me feel very itchy :/

edit: about ssd raid, here are something that you guys might wanna know. previously i tried two things with my asus.g55:

1. can different sata connections be set up as raid? (1x normal sata port, 1x msata port; both running sata3)
2. can we use different sata ssds from different brands for raid? (1x plextor m5m, 1x ocz vertex 4; both are 256gb)

the answer to all the above is: yes. the raid 0 worked flawlessly

This post has been edited by horns: Feb 10 2015, 03:38 PM