120GB SSD £22.99 on 7dayshop

bromley52 wrote: »

As seen on hukd

Ordered 2, thanks.

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

They will be giving these away free in cereal boxes soon.
Saying that ,these are the prices we should have had for the last 12 months but for the price fixing rampant in the SSD manufacturing industry.

Big SSD ****ing us over yet again.

Price fixing? You mean the nand shortage right?

micks_address wrote: »

Is this fast enough to use as a boot drive in PC?
Thanks,
Mick

Yes. It'll be great. Not the fastest SSD out there but compared to a mechanical drive it would be a huge leap. I should probably just buy one really...

davemie wrote: »

Would this be a better drive for two pound more?

Kingston Technology SA400S37/120G SSD A400 120 GB Solid State Drive (2.5 Inch SATA 3)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N6JQS8C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fRAvBbQMT0S00

They are both almost identical in terms of spec. No noticeable difference between the two I'd say. Although I'd probably prefer the Kingston brand.

davemie wrote: »

Would this be a better drive for two pound more?

Kingston Technology SA400S37/120G SSD A400 120 GB Solid State Drive (2.5 Inch SATA 3)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N6JQS8C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fRAvBbQMT0S00

Based on the specifications from Kingston’s manufacturers website versus what I see on independent reviews saying the Adata can do the claimed 450MB/s write, I think the Adata is better in writing speeds.
I don’t think there is a much difference between write speed of higher capacity ~960GB version of the Kingston and this Adata, but for some reason the low capacity Kingston models, especially the 120GB, are a good bit slower according to their official spec sheet.
Adata 120GB with 450MB/s write versus Kingston 120GB with 320MB/s write.

So I guess the short answer as far as I can see is no, it isn’t better.

EDIT some links
Kingston official info. Click specifications to see the claimed read and write speeds of the A400.
https://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/consumer/sa400s37

Adata official info for SU 650.
http://www.adata.com/rs/specification/503

Bangla review with English subs shows benchmarks of this Adata drive. Jump to about 4m55s.


This one is of the 240GB version of Adata but nearly the same write speed.


This is the Kingston 120GB

Still waiting on mine ordered Sunday also

davemie wrote: »

It's now out of stock on the website.

Amazon do have the following for ~£25:

Kingston Technology SA400S37/120G SSD A400 120 GB Solid State Drive (2.5 Inch SATA 3)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N6JQS8C

No idea how it compares

Apart from those who got them on Wednesday, has anyone received them since?

Amazing to think you can restart the PC and open Firefox in less than a third of the time!

got mine this morning ordered late Sunday night

Daniel S wrote: »

Amazing to think you can restart the PC and open Firefox in less than a third of the time!

And that's a slow SSD too, 450 MB/s, try 2200MB/s

ozmo wrote: »

For max speed and less wear - I would recommend to reinstall on an SSD rather than clone - as windows will detect it on installation and make some adjustments...

eg. I believe some defrag and caching services are not enabled when installing fresh on an ssd - cloning will bring over the settings suitable for the old drive.

Also data installs at a slightly different start place on an SSD - if they data is misaligned windows will have to occasionally do an extra sector read to get that full data block.

"...a mechanical hard drive starts its first partition after 63 empty blocks, while a solid drive starts its first partition after 64 blocks. That is to say, cloning one to the other would certainly decrease SSD's performance because the partitions are not correctly aligned by rules." link

Trim is another thing which I think may be affected, as it would serve no purpose on a hard drive, and might not be active in a system cloned across from one.

Deleted User wrote: »

I followed the link ozmo and used the software provided thanks, but it said my ssd was already aligned?.

Windows 7, 8.x and 10 all automatically create the OS partition aligned to a 4K boundary duration installation, regardless of installation to HDD or SSD. The exception is when upgrading from Windows XP or Vista, where the existing partition is kept. This means that a 1:1 clone of a Windows 7 or later OS to an SSD should already be 4K aligned, unless the OS partition was previously created with Windows XP or Vista. Hard disks manufactured from around 2011 use 4K native sectors also.

For example, on my workplace PC I did the clone with, the OS partition offset is 1048576, which 4096 divides evenly into, i.e. 4K aligned:



For comparison, the data storage hard disk in this PC which was originally partitioned many years ago on Windows XP has an offset of 32256, which 4096 does not divide evenly into. Dividing 512 into it gives 63, the sector which Windows XP aligns the primary partition to:



When Windows 7 onwards boots from an SSD after a clone, it will automatically reconfigure itself for the SSD the next time it reboots. For example, it displays the drive as a solid state drive in the defragger and will not let me analyse/defrag it unlike the hard disk listing:



Similarly for TRIM. The DisableDeleteNotify query should return 0 when TRIM is enabled (source):



Indeed, a clean Windows installation will give better performance, although this does not necessary mean it needs to be done the same time as upgrading the HDD, unless there is a problem with cloning the existing OS across. However, while the PC is open for the SSD upgrade, I do recommend cleaning the inside of the PC, especially dust build-up on the heatsinks, etc.

Silly question possibly... my newish HP laptop has a 1TB HDD and I will be upgrading to this SSD. Is it possible to clone the 1TB to the 120GB?
Secondly there is a recovery partition on the HP laptop. Is cloning this an option? Thirdly, how would I go about getting install media to reinstall Windows 7/8 from scratch?

Anyone still waiting on delivery?

LeChienMefiant wrote: »

Silly question possibly... my newish HP laptop has a 1TB HDD and I will be upgrading to this SSD. Is it possible to clone the 1TB to the 120GB?
Secondly there is a recovery partition on the HP laptop. Is cloning this an option? Thirdly, how would I go about getting install media to reinstall Windows 7/8 from scratch?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows8ISO

Download directly from Microsoft themselves.

I would not clone your drive. I would install from scratch in this case, seeing that it is a relatively new machine. You can keep your old hard disk as a backup at least for a short while, and then perhaps repurpose it as an external USB drive.

LeChienMefiant wrote: »

Silly question possibly... my newish HP laptop has a 1TB HDD and I will be upgrading to this SSD. Is it possible to clone the 1TB to the 120GB?
Secondly there is a recovery partition on the HP laptop. Is cloning this an option? Thirdly, how would I go about getting install media to reinstall Windows 7/8 from scratch?

You may be able to exclude it with the cloning software or alternatively delete the partition after the clone and expand the OS partition to fill the space in EaseUS. Windows 10 will work fine without the recovery partition and later recreate a smaller Windows 10 recovery partition during the next feature update. However, I've only done this with 240GB and larger SSDs.

As a few others already mentioned, I also recommend doing a clean Windows installation in this case due to the limited 120GB capacity. Besides the recovery partition, there tends to be a lot of preloaded content (and bloatware) on OEM installations that's difficult to fully remove. Based on the last few times I installed Windows 8 or 10 64-bit with drivers and updates, a clean ready to use Windows installation is typically around 10GB, compared to up to 40GB I've seen with some brand new laptops.

Before starting, download the network or Wi-Fi drivers from the HP website. Open up device manager (right-click start -> Device Manager) and check what network adapters you currently have, e.g. Realtek, Intel, etc. to identify which to download if it gives a choice. In device manager, click the very top item and press * on the numeric keyboard to expand the lot. Take screenshots page by page and put the images on a USB key. Once you get online with the clean Windows installation, Windows will automatically download and install most drivers from Windows update. If there are any remaining unknown devices, you can use the screenshots to help identify what drivers are left to install. In some cases, I've seen Windows 8 and 10 install every driver after completing Windows updates without depending on the manufacturer's website. If there's just one unknown device that needs a driver, it's usually the SD card slot.

If you would like to try Windows 10, I have also successfully installed Windows 10 on a friend's laptop late last year that only ever had Windows 8, well after the free upgrade period ended. I don't recall it asking for the Windows key during installation and activated fine. However, as that was about a year ago it's possible Microsoft may no longer allow this, in which case you can still install Windows 8.

As for my 7dayshop delivery - I ordered the SSD and a set of Ink cartridges last Sunday 22nd. The SSD arrived last Wednesday 25th and the ink cartridges on Friday 27th.

styron wrote: »

Not today either - only realised despite using before that 7dayshop are Guernsey not UK/EU based (well hid on the site). My order's around £50 ... possible customs ??

"Guernsey is not a member of the EU and not part of the UK. Under its Protocol 3 relationship with the EU Guernsey is part of the customs territory which allows for the free movement of goods."