SanDisk Extreme SSD

[Old Rabbit]

For anyone who hasn't tried the SanDisk Extreme SSD drive.

I installed a 240 gig version of this drive in my desktop over the
weekend.  It has vastly improved the launch speed of windows
from 3 min. to about 1 min.

Also all the programs load around 66% faster as
well.. And that's compared to a 7200 rpm sata drive
I was using for my system.

It was on a one day sale at Amazon. So was a little over $150. If
it holds up it's well worth the money. 

They have three sizes. 120, 240, and 480 gig..

Old Rabbit

[Ziel]

That's actually a really good deal for an SSD of that speed and size.

A couple years ago, I upgraded my old computer to an SSD. First time using one. All I could afford at the time was a 64GB one with only mid-range speeds. It was good enough for my purposes, though. I didn't need  ton of space because I was only going to use it for the OS and other programs. I knew I could expect an impressive jump in performance from it, but I was still simply amazed at how much difference it made.

Aside from the start-up time, the most noticeable thing to me was my load time for League of Legends. I went from being 7th to 10th slowest at loading (out of 10 people) to usually being 3rd or 4th. And I can guarantee you that I was beating the load times of people with raw specs much stronger than what I had (2GHz, 2GB ram from 2006). I also wasn't really expecting it at all (and it doesn't completely make that much sense to me), but I also saw an in-game improvement of about 5fps after the upgrade.  Frankly, that computer had gotten pretty slow (comparatively) over the years, and the SSD is the only reason I was able to stand using it until I was able to build this machine last year.

When I built the new comp, I made sure to get an SSD for it as well (don't know that I could ever go back). I got a 128GB one this time, but I still only use it for OS and programs. I have a regular HDD for bulk storage.

Thinking about my experiences with these SSDs, I would definitely recommend considering one for people who have the money.  As far as the price premium, it's actually one of the more noticeable performance improvements for the cost, I'd say. I will also say, though, that if the base specs of the computer are actually pretty strong, the improvement in performance isn't nearly as noticeable.

Though I do really like that they are completely quiet, and I like the concept of using one for a laptop because of the extremely low power draw. That, and laptops usually aren't as strong as desktops anyhow, so the performance increase would be more noticeable in a laptop.

[redpaw]

How do you install the hardware? Will it just plug into an SD card reader? If so I may consider getting one for my laptop.

[Ziel]

How do you install the hardware? Will it just plug into an SD card reader? If so I may consider getting one for my laptop.

It's not an SD card. There's another S in there. SSD. It goes in the same place and fills the same role as a regular hard drive does. It's just faster (though more expensive).

[redpaw]

Ahh so not that easy to install on a laptop then

[Ziel]

Ahh so not that easy to install on a laptop then

Installing really isn't that hard. Hard drives are fairly easily accessible in laptops. The biggest thing is that you need to either get a large enough one for file storage as well as OS/programs, or use an external device for much of your data storage. Then you'd have to do a fresh OS install as well.

Actually, if you were to buy an SSD that has the same or more capacity than your laptop hard drive, you can clone the old hard drive onto the new one. This, of course, would require both the hard drive and SSD to be connected at the same time. You could do this a number of ways, though either a USB/eSATA hard drive dock or desktop with enough available connections would be easiest. But there is free software available for doing such things.

[redyoshi49q]

Ahh so not that easy to install on a laptop then

...As someone who recently replaced a laptop hard drive that mechanically failed on him, I now have some painfully earned experience on that subject!

If I had to guess, I'd say that replacing a laptop hard drive is of medium difficulty.  For my laptop (an HP dv7), there were two panels that unscrewed from the bottom of the unit (they were small screws; I needed an eyeglass repair kit to get them undone).  The second was an access for a second hard drive slot, but the first contained the hard drive, RAM, and other user replaceable components I can't remember at this moment.  The hard drive had a tabbed plastic over the top that had to be pulled to remove the entire drive from the machine as well as a small cable connected the hard drive to the computer.  After I removed the old hard drive, replacing the hard drive was simply the reverse process.

The ease of access and connections was as easy as or easier than desktop machines (for instance, no navigating around power cables was necessary), but replacing the drive requires more dexterity on a laptop (the components, especially the screws and wire, are smaller) as well as an increased concern about space requirements (my replacement drive was very marginally thicker than my old one, and I had to coax the panel to close with the new drive in).

If you have experience with tinkering with desktop hardware, this would probably be something you could figure out reasonably well (there are significant analogies in technique and good practices).  If not, you could *try* this (there is always a risk of things not working out, and it's higher if you're inexperienced), but you may be more comfortable finding a geeky friend to help you out with your first time of upgrading hardware.

(*pseudo-edit: Ziel ninja'd me*)

[redpaw]

I'll see if I can get my geeky friend to have a look at it, as soon as he gets back from Cyprus that is *reminisces of the time when he was 'the geeky friend'* I think I'll try to get some experience tinkering about with my desktop, I want to upgrade it anyway.

*edit* thanks for the advice anyway

[Ziel]

Ahh so not that easy to install on a laptop then

...As someone who recently replaced a laptop hard drive that mechanically failed on him, I now have some painfully earned experience on that subject!

If I had to guess, I'd say that replacing a laptop hard drive is of medium difficulty.  For my laptop (an HP dv7), there were two panels that unscrewed from the bottom of the unit (they were small screws; I needed an eyeglass repair kit to get them undone).  The second was an access for a second hard drive slot, but the first contained the hard drive, RAM, and other user replaceable components I can't remember at this moment.  The hard drive had a tabbed plastic over the top that had to be pulled to remove the entire drive from the machine as well as a small cable connected the hard drive to the computer.  After I removed the old hard drive, replacing the hard drive was simply the reverse process.

The ease of access and connections was as easy as or easier than desktop machines (for instance, no navigating around power cables was necessary), but replacing the drive requires more dexterity on a laptop (the components, especially the screws and wire, are smaller) as well as an increased concern about space requirements (my replacement drive was very marginally thicker than my old one, and I had to coax the panel to close with the new drive in).

If you have experience with tinkering with desktop hardware, this would probably be something you could figure out reasonably well (there are significant analogies in technique and good practices).  If not, you could *try* this (there is always a risk of things not working out, and it's higher if you're inexperienced), but you may be more comfortable finding a geeky friend to help you out with your first time of upgrading hardware.

(*pseudo-edit: Ziel ninja'd me*)

*dons a headband and does a few imitation karate moves*

But really, the whole process (at least for the hardware change itself) should be 15 minutes at the most. Of course, you'd either have had to clone the old drive onto the new one before hand (time varies by drive size), or you'll have to install the OS afterwards.

Also, RY: I've never heard of a laptop having an actual cable that you'd have to remove for the hard drive. That just seems odd. Most that I've dealt with just have the drive slide in and out of a port. The trickiest thing I've seen are ones that have an adapter on the drive because (for some dumb reason) the connection the mobo has is different than the standard SATA data/power connections on the drive.

Edit: If you do decide to do something, and you want to try the hard drive clone route, send me a PM and I can give you a link to the software I used to do this with mine, and give a brief explanation of how to do it.

[redpaw]

Well I 'think' I have a windows 7 disc somewhere, and everything else is backed up on an external hard drive. So I think reinstalling the os would be the easier option. If I have the boot disc that is xD

[redyoshi49q]

Also, RY: I've never heard of a laptop having an actual cable that you'd have to remove for the hard drive. That just seems odd. Most that I've dealt with just have the drive slide in and out of a port. The trickiest thing I've seen are ones that have an adapter on the drive because (for some dumb reason) the connection the mobo has is different than the standard SATA data/power connections on the drive.

This isn't the exact type of HP I have, but this image shows the type of cable my laptop has.  I'm also somewhat familiar with hard drives that slide into a port; my mom's laptop was like that.  I didn't realize that those were more common.

[Ziel]

This isn't the exact type of HP I have, but this image shows the type of cable my laptop has.  I'm also somewhat familiar with hard drives that slide into a port; my mom's laptop was like that.  I didn't realize that those were more common.

Must depend on the brand. Most that I've seen have been Dells, and they happen to all have the hard drive that slides in from the side (makes for very easy replacement). I think the Acer I helped a friend with had this kind as well. Maybe HP decided setting it up different was better (perhaps allowed for better airflow, given that Dells also have a reputation for over-heating easily).

[Mylo]

All I'm going to do is concur with Ziel and RedYoshi.  I upgraded to an SSD in my laptop in June...this is probably the most noticeable upgrade that you can do to a modern laptop computer, and it definitely is noticeable.  I can boot to the desktop in around 15 seconds.    The little Windows graphic doesn't even have time to pop up! 

About installing it though, I just reinstalled my entire OS on the new drive.  I figured it would be a good time to get a clean slate, so to speak.  With my laptop, I had to take the entire bottom cover off to access the hard drive, unscrew a mount, and then just took the old one out and replaced it with the SSD.  It was attached with a cable...no sliding mechanism here.  But overall, it took about half an hour to complete the task, and that's because I was moving very slowly to avoid breaking the little tabs that held the back cover to the main chassis.

For now, I can't say anything about long term reliability, but as of now, if you have the money, I'd say this is a very worthy upgrade. 

[Ziel]

For now, I can't say anything about long term reliability, but as of now, if you have the money, I'd say this is a very worthy upgrade. 

In terms of reliability, I've only had one problem with my SSDs, and it wasn't even the SSDs fault. A couple months ago, my storage hard drive apparently was jealous, and so it conspired with the motherboard to make it not even see the SSD on startup anymore. I switched the SATA port I had it connected to, and it started working like a charm again.

The first SSD I bought, I used without issue for 1.5 years before replacing it. And it's still running perfectly fine at this point. I only replaced it because I wanted a little more space, and the new computer had SATA III ports, and the old SSD couldn't take full advantage of that.

[Avan]

Was that one of the early-gen i7 boards? (ie, for an i7 920; I can't recall the socket name?)

[Ziel]

Was that one of the early-gen i7 boards? (ie, for an i7 920; I can't recall the socket name?)

Nope. Z68 chipset, i5 2500k processor.

[Old Rabbit]

For anyone who is wondering the SSD I installed is still working
fine.

[Aloneness]

I'm going to get a Kingston HyperX SSD drive soon, because SanDisk is kinda ... ehhh... iffy... in my opinion... or at lest there flash drives are >w>

[Mylo]

For anyone who is wondering the SSD I installed is still working
fine.

Might as well update as well...still going just as fast as before. It's weird restarting the computer because before SSD, I used to have a solid two minutes to do stuff while my computer restarted.  

[Mylo]

For anyone who is wondering the SSD I installed is still working
fine.

Might as well update as well...still going just as fast as before. It's weird restarting the computer because before SSD, I used to have a solid two minutes to do stuff while my computer restarted.  

Karma has a way with things.

Today, I was using my computer when all of the sudden, bsod.  But then, the bios wouldn't detect the drive after restarting.  I removed the battery, restarted...nothing.  I removed the drive and connected it to an external enclosure, testing to see if it was recognized by another computer.  Nothing.  I tried completing a power cycle by connecting it to an old desktop. Still nothing.  

Luckily, it's got a 3 year warranty and I have a backup, but besides, this drive lasted about 7 months.

[Aloneness]

I'm waiting for the PCIe SSD cards come down in price because there 10x as fast as the SATA ones... there also 10x the price right now tho v.v

[Ziel]

I'm waiting for the PCIe SSD cards come down in price because there 10x as fast as the SATA ones... there also 10x the price right now tho v.v

Looked more like 2-2.5x the price of a similarly-sized regular SSD. Though 10x is about right compared to HDDs.

Honestly, I don't think it'd be worth the extra money for that speed. At least not yet, if you compare it to some of the higher-performing standard SSDs available. You'd have to be expecting to be manipulating and moving large files to and from that drive pretty frequently for it to be noticeable. I don't think you'd really notice any real speed increase in startup and load times. 3 seconds vs. 4 seconds isn't near as worthwhile of an upgrade as 4 seconds vs. 15 seconds (pcie ssd vs. ssd, and ssd vs. hdd, respectively).

[Aloneness]

Like I said, they're still way way way way way... and did I say way to expensive, but I acutely do transfer a lot of high volume stuff.

If it wasn't almost 5,000USD I'd love to have this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227772

[Ziel]

Just discovered today that my SSD in this machine hasn't even been running at full potential. I discovered I still had it running in Compatibility (IDE) mode. Took a benchmark, and was getting ~360MB/s read (sequential). Which I was totally happy with.

But I've now changed it to the appropriate AHCI mode, and the benchmark is coming in at 510MB/s, which is pretty darn close to the advertised speeds. And the performance boost is actually noticeable on boot/load times.

Long story short: if you decide to run an SSD, make sure you have the Bios set to AHCI mode. Note that the easiest time to do this is prior to the OS install. If you have Windows installed on it already, and aren't using AHCI mode, you'll need to modify a value in the registry before making the change in your BIOS, or else the computer won't recognize the drive once it's set to AHCI.

[Aloneness]

Which registry value would that be?