SSD problems on laptops used for chasing

[Mike Brady]

If you decide to go with SSD Build quality is key You get what you pay for. If you buy a cheaply built SSD you will have problems like if you buy a cheaply built car. I have a Samsung 64GB SSD been rocking for over a year everywhere I go it is yet to fail. however I have also had lots of success with regular hard drives over the years.

So

if your looking for speed and don't mind the possibility you lose all your data go with SSD

If you don't care about as much speed and you like the cheaper price point I would go with a regular hard drive with some sort of shock technology.

 

[Mark Blue]

Just a quick note to let everyone know I'm sending this message to you post installation of the SSD I mentioned above and a nice, fresh, clean install of Windows 7 Pro. How sweet it is when your OS is clean and boots in seconds versus minutes (the SSD helps with that too). I need to reinstall all of my programs and a few drivers, but thought I'd let you know the upgrade was successful!

 

[Matt Tottle]

Bumping an old thread for an update. I also just pulled the trigger on an SSD drive for my laptop. The original HDD was starting to make death noises (only a year and a half old, but the laptop has been dropped several times, aside from being rattled around on chases) so I wanted to get it swapped out before it totally kicked off. I got a 120 gig OCZ Vertex2 from Newegg for $200, and there's a $30 rebate on it. I honestly could've got away with a smaller one and save a little $ since I don't do downloading or anything on the laptop, but I wanted to make sure I had room in case I needed to dump memory cards or video while on the road.

I can definitely say I'm impressed with how fast Windows boots, and how fast programs open now. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was concerned about the write speeds, but it seems to not be an issue with the drive I got. From my research the cheaper ones from several brands are still slower on the write though. These drives are made for use in kiosks and other applications where there is a lot of reading and not much writing.

There is also a significant reduction in the power usage. I now get about an extra half hour while running on battery versus the old drive. The palmrest above the hard drive bay is also not hot anymore (heat= wasted power). So all things considered, even though it cost much more than a new hard drive with less capacity, I think it was a worthwhile upgrade.

On a side note, I still do not completely trust it not to fail being as the technology is so young, so I do still have my laptop set to backup nightly to my network server. However, it does have a 3 year warranty, so if/when it does fail there will have been improvements made and the new drive will be better than the old one.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

The old spinning hard drives days are finally over!

If you have a new laptop and you don't yet have an SSD; then change it out.
If you have an older laptop, and they make a replacement SSD for it; I would replace it.
if your laptop is sooo old that it runs on kerosene fuel; then time to replace it....

Why?
Because spinning hard drives were not really engineerd for massively bumpy roads and chuck holes. Once the hard drive reader head get dashed into the spinning plate - with enough inertia from bumps, etc - it is toast.

After I lost my HDD in Wichita KS last year - after some serious bumpy roads/nice chase - I found that I can not yet replace it with a SSD. It is still an accident waiting to happen. Took me just a week to get a stock replacement drive. But a week out of a narrow chase season is everything. Find out if they make a replacement SDD for your laptop if yours still runs on kerosene!
Be prepared . . .

http://www.crucial.com/store/ssd.as...le_us&ef_id=IHtN6ADMX1AAAA8D:20110602212948:s

(Not affiliated with the mfr - sorry for stating what might be obvious to some)

 

[Matt Tottle]

There technically shouldn't be any compatibility issues with any laptop, except for older laptops use IDE drives, while newer ones use SATA. To the laptop, it looks like any other hard drive. However, if you need IDE, Transcend is the only brand that makes an IDE SSD. They're a respected brand in the memory market, and they're expensive (roughly twice the price per GB as SATA devices), but there's no reason why they wouldn't work in any IDE laptop

 

[Mark Blue]

I just happened across an SSD tweaking tool that helps to optimize the drive for the best performance possible. I was perusing the Mushkin and OCZ forums and the moderator for the SSD section linked to the download, so I figure it must be okay. I downloaded it and quickly purchased the Pro version. Already my laptop is booting and shutting down much quicker. Here's a link if you are interested and there is also a free version for those who may not have a money tree growing in their backyard SSD Tweaker.

 

[Matt Tottle]

grrrrr retyping this AGAIN because of the stupid backspace/page back thing..


I tried that and it's pretty cool. It's a registry hacker just like the old TweakUI/Powertoys. However, the few extra things you get in the "pro" version can be done manually very easily. Windows 7 actually does a lot of it for you automatically upon install if it detects an SSD. To check if TRIM is enabled, you type "fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify" at an elevated command prompt (Start > Accessories > Right click on Command Prompt > Run as Administrator. If it says DisableDeleteNotify=0, then TRIM is enabled, =1 means not enabled. If it did not detect and enable it, then usually AHCI is not enabled in your BIOS. This means either the SATA controller is set to Compatability/Legacy mode or it is not AHCI capable (and in this case TRIM can not be enabled). Not sure what other 'optimization' it does in to pro version, but if I had to guess it's most likely doing things like disabling defrag, disabling the reliability monitor, adjusting the size of the page file, and other things that are write intensive. All can be done manually.

 

[Mark Blue]

If I were you I'd save the money Matt. I decided to mention both the free version and the pro version so anyone who is interested could make their own decision. I'd rather fork it over and make things easy on myself than monkey around at a command prompt, so each to their own seems to fit in this particular circumstance.

Here's a link directly to the manufacturer site so you can get it there versus a download site in case anyone else decides to go down that road.

http://elpamsoft.com/Downloads.aspx?Name=SSD%20Tweaker