Purchasing an SSD

Lovely Bloke

I'm getting an SSD from the jolly fat man in a month.

It's for my originally Win7, now Dual Boot with Mint laptop.

I'm not really au fait with how to install the SSD, but I'm aware that I need to pretty much copy the data from the HDD to the SSD via USB - will this work, when I turn on the laptop I get the Mint themed list of bootable OSs - will it be a simple case of just copying the data over?

Cheers.

I want to keep Windows, as the Sky player uses Silverlight, and it's not compatible with either Mint or Ubuntu, unfortunately.

Khannie

How big is the current HDD and how big will the SSD be?

Lovely Bloke

Khannie wrote: »

How big is the current HDD and how big will the SSD be?

Current 200gb, SSd will either be a 180gb or 256gb, depending on budget.

I will be deleting everything I can from the HDD though, so the total on the HDD will come in below 180gb

In all probability I'll be getting the 256gb, so work on that assumption.

thanks

Stuxnet

imo you'd be best do a clean install of 7 while your at it ! update it, then copy over your docs and files etc...

then install a fresh mint setup,.... shouldn't take long

Lovely Bloke

Stuxnet wrote: »

imo you'd be best do a clean install of 7 while your at it ! update it, then copy over your docs and files etc...

then install a fresh mint setup,.... shouldn't take long

Yes, was going to do this, but there's no install disk

croo

When I got my SSD I considered using clonezilla to copy the existing HDD (that had win7 & ubuntu). But then, by chance, I discovered that gparted could copy a partition. I used a usb/sata adapter so I had the HDD & SDD connected simultaneously and literally did a CTRL-C and CTRL-V. Ubuntu didn't notice at all and windows had be go through the validation process again but it was painless. I mostly did the copy out of curiousity but it was so straight forward I kept it.

IF the new disk is smaller than the existing disk, just use gparted to shrink the partitions first so they'll fit.

d31b0y

Get this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005OK6VLS.

It comes with a SATA to USB connector and Norton Ghost. I did not use Norton Ghost but it supposedly has a bootable disc version which allows you to do a copy of the entire HDD. It's a great price and a very, very nice SSD too.

Lovely Bloke

d31b0y wrote: »

Get this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005OK6VLS.

It comes with a SATA to USB connector and Norton Ghost. I did not use Norton Ghost but it supposedly has a bootable disc version which allows you to do a copy of the entire HDD. It's a great price and a very, very nice SSD too.

Yeah, that's the one I'll probably get.

Nulty

This is a bit off topic, maybe very off topic:

Does you system bus match the data transfer speeds of the SDD cause theres no point in getting a SATA III SDD if you system can't benefit from the performance.

After a bit of digging I found my mobo is only SATA II capable. So don't get your hopes up about 6GB/s. It looks like most of the ones on the market are SATA III anyway.

Trojan

Nulty wrote: »

Does you system bus match the data transfer speeds of the SDD cause theres no point in getting a SATA III SDD if you system can't benefit from the performance.

After a bit of digging I found my mobo is only SATA II capable. So don't get your hopes up about 6GB/s. It looks like most of the ones on the market are SATA III anyway.

It's a good point, the SATA III drives are everywhere now. But they are backwards compatible with SATA II devices, so no worries if you do get a SATA III drive - you'll be future proof for your next computer.

Another aside: I've had SSD nightmares with the OCZ Vertex 3, and I couldn't recommend any drive with a SandForce controller. I recommend going with an Intel for reliability or the Crucial M4 for speed.

Johnboy1951

Trojan wrote: »

It's a good point, the SATA III drives are everywhere now. But they are backwards compatible with SATA II devices, so no worries if you do get a SATA III drive - you'll be future proof for your next computer.

IMO, selecting a SATA II SSD would be foolish even if a SATA III interface is not presently available.

Another aside: I've had SSD nightmares with the OCZ Vertex 3, and I couldn't recommend any drive with a SandForce controller. I recommend going with an Intel for reliability or the Crucial M4 for speed.

I bought one of those recently and have had no trouble so far.

Is there something I should look out for?

croo

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I bought one of those recently and have had no trouble so far.

**Gulp** me too :eek:
114 days so far and no problem - that I noticed anyway.
What should we look out for?

Ps. I also have a M4 in the same laptop and it seems to sustain a higher read speed.

Johnboy1951

croo wrote: »

**Gulp** me too :eek:
114 days so far and no problem - that I noticed anyway.
What should we look out for?

Ps. I also have a M4 in the same laptop and it seems to sustain a higher read speed.

I don't have it connected to an Asus motherboard or run Windows on it so maybe that is part of the reason it seems to be reliable.

Trojan

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I bought one of those recently and have had no trouble so far.

Is there something I should look out for?

croo wrote: »

**Gulp** me too :eek:
114 days so far and no problem - that I noticed anyway.
What should we look out for?

If you haven't noticed already then you're fine. For me it presented as a BSOD every 5-30 minutes on Windows 7, or a complete disk I/O freeze on Windows 8 (I got to preferring the BSOD).

AFAIK it happens with a combination of the Vertex 3 Sandforce controller, and certain motherboards.

Machine spec:
Asus U36SD-A1
CPU: Intel 2nd Generation Core i5-2410M, 2.3-2.9GHz,32nm, 3MB, 35W
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1333 Dual-Channel (4G X 2)
HDD: 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 Solid State Drive SSD SATA III 6Gb/s
GFX: nVidia GeForce GT 520M 1GB GDDR3
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit


Crash Time (reverse order), Bug Check String, Bug Check Code, Caused By Driver, Comment

22/11/11 11:58 KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR 0x0000007a rdyboost.sys Photo of BSOD: http://db.tt/bX6Ykl2u
18/11/11 04:30 CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION 0x000000f4 ? Physical memory dump FAILED with status 0XC0000010
18/11/11 02:30 CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION 0x000000f4 ? Physical memory dump FAILED with status 0XC0000010
17/11/11 04:55 SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1000007e AMPPAL.sys
16/11/11 11:56 CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION 0x000000f4 ntoskrnl.exe
16/11/11 11:00 UPDATED OCZ FIRMWARE Upgraded OCZ firmware to v2.15 Freeze symptoms far less frequent, BSOD remains.
13/11/11 04:10 SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1000007e AMPPAL.sys
11/11/11 20:23 SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1000007e AMPPAL.sys
11/11/11 20:22 SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1000007e AMPPAL.sys
28/10/11 11:58 KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR 0x0000007a Ntfs.sys

As an aside, I upgraded mobo and ssd firmware (many times) swapped it into 4 other machines (including a desktop SATAII that still crashed) and tried lots of stuff. In the end I had to RMA the OCZ, and got the M4 replacement.

mark renton

http://lb.hardwareversand.de/Solid-State-Disk/56863/Samsung+SSD+830+256GB+SATA+III+Basic.article

is this not cheaper?