Maximum PC

I am about to purchase an SSD , among other things. I would like some help with that. What I have heard is that Intel SSDs are the "cadillacs of the SSD world". Is this true? What I've found is this drive , on Amazon -

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-2-5-Inch-So ... FQJHP71373

I would either get it in the 80GB or 120GB. I have W7 , 1TB HD : 30GB of music , 450GB of games.
What would be more suited to the task?

When I do purchase my drive , what are the proper steps to take? What I've come to understand is that I need to enable AHCI (it is already) , make the SSD the primary drive , remove the HDD when installing W7 and then format the HDD in Windows itself. TRIM is alreay enabled by default. Am I missing anything?

Thank you.

From everything I have read, Intel seems to be the best of any SSD manufacturer out there and their prices seem to reflect this. And what you have posted is all correct when it comes to the installation of the drive, but it is not complete. If you are installing the SSD in a desktop computer, you will want to power the system down and remove the power cord from the back of your PSU, then drain any remaining electricity that is in the motherboard by pressing the power button on the front (or top) of your case before you attach the SSD to the PSU and the motherboard. If you are installing the SSD in a laptop, you will want to remove the laptop's battery before installing the drive. Also, make sure that your motherboard's BIOS is updated to the latest version. If there is a firmware update available, you need to research the procedure that the manufacturer recommends for finding the drive's current version of firmware and how to flash the firmware to its latest revision, if necessary. Trim should be enabled by default, and you can check this in the Command Prompt if you want to. If your current Windows 7 installation was performed with the SATA HDD in anything besides AHCI mode, you will need to go into your Windows registry and change the msahci value from 3 to 0, reboot, and check to make sure that your SATA ports on the mobo are operating in AHCI mode in the BIOS. After installing the drive, updating the firmware, and installing Windows 7 (with the SSD as the only storage drive attached to the motherboard), you will want to install the latest chipset and video drivers first, then run the Windows Experience Index from the System Properties window (doing this will disable the automatic defragmentation in Windows 7). Note: If you are overclocking anything on your system, it is considered a good rule of thumb to reset everything back to stock defaults for good overall stability during the installation. If you are planning to utilize "sleep mode" on your system, you might want to do a little research and see if your SSD manufacturer has any known issues with sleep mode at it is implemented in your motherboard's power management settings (BSODs or the SSD not being recognized at all when bringing it out of sleep mode are just two that I have heard of). There are also some other tweaks that you can use to optimize the drive after installation, but you will have to check with your SSD manufacturer as to whether they recommend them or not. If you feel the need to benchmark your SSD after installation, know that most manufactuers will advise that you do so sparingly. As for which SSD would be more suited to the task, I would recommend getting the 120 GB version of the SSD as your OS will most likely take anywhere from 14.5 to 20 GB of your SSD's capacity (BTW, it is generally recommended that you do not use more than eighty percent of your SSD's capacity).

Thank you a lot for the very informative guide! When you say to update the firmware (the step after installing the drive) you are talking about the BIOS , right? Or the SSD. I've heard that sometime you have to update the firmware on the SSD. I figure before I plug the SSD in I'll upgrade the BIOS (if necessary) and then do all the steps that you have told me.

Yes, I am referring to the firmware revision on the SSD. And you are correct in checking to make sure that your motherboard's BIOS is updated to the latest revision before you even install the drive in your computer case. Glad to be of assistance.

P.S.: In referring to the registry edit in my previous post, you will only need to do that if the SSD's manufacturer recommends using a firmware update utility that will need to run from your current HDD's OS. Just FYI

I'll second that. Maybe Intel was the Cadillac two years ago but they're having trouble competing with Sandforce, Crucial and others now.

Besides, why settle for a SATA Cadillac when you can get a PCIe Ferrari. SATA3 (6Gb/s) is almost obsolete for SSDs and it's barely implemented. Who wants to be bottlenecked at 500MB/s by SATA3? Even 4xPCIe will be too slow soon and high-performance SSDs will be forced to use 8xPCIe or a scalable interface like HSDL.

That said, if you're limited to using a standard 2.5" SATA SSD, the Vertex3 (especially the high IO/s version) is the way to go at present.

There's nothing wrong with Intel SSDs though. I use an X25M 160GB in one of my EeePC netbooks and it's only a little slower than an Indilinx-based Runcore in an almost identical EeePC. Still, there's no comparison to the RevodriveX2 and Vertex3 I boot my main desktop systems from.

Sure, the netbooks are bottlenecked in sequential transfers by their SATA1-limited chipsets, but it's the small-file (typically 4KB) IO/s that make the real difference. It was these small-file IOs that earned Intel its reputation two years ago, but they haven't made the advances that others have since. Sandforce has done a great job in maintaining outstanding sequential rates while delivering blistering IOs per second.

OCZ is top of the line for SSDs these days and kleinkinstein is right , PCI-E type SSD drives are the way to go! If you have an old motherboard you will be restricted by the SATA interface chip...you may be stuck at 3 gigs instead of 6 gigs.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-vertex ... 5-ssd.html

If you use the plugin PCI-E card you are not restricted at all. My next game machine is going to have a card in it.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodr ... s-ssd.html

Nasty