Crucial C300 64Gb SSD

[glennda]

Has anybody used them? Are they good?

 

Looking at getting a load of them in my new desktops? I seem to have got a really good price on the job lot so i'm a bit sceptical.

 

I can't say i've ever purchased a solid state drive so i'm not 100% sure.

 

What do people think?

[steve]

I've got 2 of these - one in my main PC and one in my media PC. Both work great, windows boots in a couple of seconds.

 

The one in my main PC has been used for 10 months with never a hiccup.

 

If I ever get the cash at work I'll buy the next batch of staff laptops with them in, it should minimize the "slow" boot issues.

[glennda]

I'm contemplating buying 300! but tbh getting 3 year warrantys on the machines so they should be ok!

[Arthur]

After formatting, you'll only have 59GBs of disk space to play with. Do you think this would be sufficient to last three (or more) years?

 

HDDs are almost always the slowest part of a PC so I think it's a great idea.

[glennda]

We've looked into it and we think we should be ok - there is not much apart from OS (win 7) and the apps which are required on the machines (cs3 being the biggest). Our current image with the largest bits of software installed is currently 25gb so that leaves us with 35gb to play with. I had hoped for CS5 but thats been thrown out the window.

 

I'm going to need to make a new image for these machines but that should be fairly straight forward and hopefully the speed should increase dramatically.

 

hoepfully the windows machines will then boot in a similar time to my old rubbish laptop that runs ubuntu (around 9 seconds past post to login screen!

[mac_shinobi]

After formatting, you'll only have 59GBs of disk space to play with. Do you think this would be sufficient to last three (or more) years?

 

HDDs are almost always the slowest part of a PC so I think it's a great idea.

 

128gb ssd's ??

 

That would give about 110gb ??

[glennda]

128gb ssd's ??

 

That would give about 110gb ??

 

i'm looking at 64gb ssds

[mac_shinobi]

i'm looking at 64gb ssds

 

Is that just because of the price ?

[glennda]

Is that just because of the price ?

 

nope i just don't think i need bigger atm. I've been running 7 on around 10 machines in offices etc which are currently using around 40gb and have been running for 8/9 months with it so why would i need more?

[bossman]

@glennda:

 

What spec workstations will you be putting them into?

 

It seems a lot to buy in one go as they will all fail around the same time then you will have to replace them all again would it not be better to do them in batches of 50?

 

Must be nice to have that amount of money to spend on just HDDs (Just envious hehe!)

 

But then again did all my spending over the past 2 years.

 

My advice would be to purchase 10 and see how they go then if all is well go for it.

[glennda]

although i am looking at the ocz 90gb one aswell in a price comparision.

[mac_shinobi]

windows 7 is aprox 10gb

office 2010 is about 10gb

 

paging file on the hard drive must be between 5 - 10 gb and the hard drive still needs 15% free to defrag

 

That's without temp files or any other apps or data that the user creates and if there are network slow downs for whatever reason we normally advise users to temporarily copy data to there computer , work on said file(s) and copy them back afterwards.

 

I know this is SSD's we are talking about but looking at reviews the more the ssd's are filled up the slower they either are or get in comparison to not having one that is full or near full.

 

Also normal hard drives even after defragging etc are slower the more data they contain or store, I have this on my work computer and when I delete data it seems more responsive in comparison to not having much room on it and I know it is defragged all the time as I have ultra defrag which runs everytime I reboot and I reboot at least once a day.

 

The other thing with sandforce based controllers is if they get bad sectors if they have storage space that is not used they can get the relevant sectors ignored ( the bad ones ) and use free space in place of the bad sectors

[glennda]

@glennda:

 

What spec workstations will you be putting them into?

 

It seems a lot to buy in one go as they will all fail around the same time then you will have to replace them all again would it not be better to do them in batches of 50?

 

Must be nice to have that amount of money to spend on just HDDs (Just envious hehe!)

 

But then again did all my spending over the past 2 years.

 

My advice would be to purchase 10 and see how they go then if all is well go for it.

 

They are going in brand new pc's which i am purchasing!

 

They are going to be either core i3 or Core i5 (probably i3 tbh) with 4gb ram custom built for us!

[ihaveaproblem]

I wish i had your bank account. I want 300 of these!

They should improve loading times dramatically. I guess you’re using windows 7? I think I’m right in saying you need windows 7 to get full benefits.

 

64 GB seems a little on the low side for me, but it seems like you've done your research and don’t need any bigger.

OCZ ssd's are supposed to be fairly good as well. Have you looked at these?

 

EDIT

 

Opps you clearly said your using windows 7, sorry^^

[glennda]

windows 7 is aprox 10gb

office 2010 is about 10gb

 

My image is around 26gb last time i checked, It is win 7, office 2010, Adobe Cs3 (not the full version), macoromedia suite (dreamweaver, fireworks, flash, another one). and a whole host of others

[glennda]

I wish i had your bank account. I want 300 of these!

They should improve loading times dramatically. I guess you’re using windows 7? I think I’m right in saying you need windows 7 to get full benefits.

 

64 GB seems a little on the low side for me, but it seems like you've done your research and don’t need any bigger.

OCZ ssd's are supposed to be fairly good as well. Have you looked at these?

 

EDIT

 

Opps you clearly said your using windows 7, sorry^^

 

Yeah moving to 7 in the summer - the prices i've got coming in are around £300 for i3's, 4gb kingston ram, intel board, these hard drives in a mini tower case.

 

I'm going to find a price on upgrading to the 90gb oCZ model.

[ihaveaproblem]

If you get these I bet the teachers still say their 10 year old monster tower deaktop ( That they've asked you to fix 5 times in the last year ) is still faster and the network sucks!

 

What brand are these desktops? They seem nicely priced.

 

 

Edit

 

Just a thought. Could you use the hard drives from the current desktops as a secondary to store some of the "rubbish" (Pagefile, Temp Files and less used applications) to free up some space on the ssd.

Edited June 14, 2011 by ihaveaproblem

[glennda]

If you get these I bet the teachers still say their 10 year old monster tower deaktop ( That they've asked you to fix 5 times in the last year ) is still faster and the network sucks!

 

What brand are these desktops? They seem nicely priced.

 

 

Edit

 

Just a thought. Could you use the hard drives from the current desktops as a secondary to store some of the "rubbish" (Pagefile, Temp Files and less used applications) to free up some space on the ssd.

 

Custom built for us buy a company - not ordered anything yet but there initial price came back in stupidly cheap!

 

I've put out to about 3/4 of them and 2 have come back around that mark - but when you buy 300 people tend to bight your arm off for an order!

[Arthur]

As you say, you should be alright with a 64GB SSD, but an 80GB or 96GB SSD would give you a little bit more breathing room.

 

Our current image with the largest bits of software installed is currently 25GB so that leaves us with 35GB to play with.

35GB minus...

100MB     System Reserved Partition
4GB       Pagefile
5GB       Cached MSIs (Windows 7 now [url="http://csi-windows.com/toolkit/csicachedpackageassource"]caches entire MSIs[/url] in %SystemRoot%\Installer) plus various temp files and junk which build-up over time.
4.3GB     The difference in disk space requirements between [url="http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/401/kb401335.html#A1"]CS3 Design Premium[/url] and [url="http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/891/cpsid_89122.html"]CS 5.5 Design Premium[/url] (just in case you do upgrade in a couple of years  ). 
         The Master Collection requires [url="http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/mastercollection/tech-specs.html"]24.3GB[/url] if you install everything!

= 21.6GB free.

Keep in mind you need at least 7.4GB free for the installation of service packs on 64-bit OSs (I'm thinking of when Windows 7 SP2 comes along which should have similar reqs. as SP1).

 

By the way, avoid installing Intel's RST drivers if you can. The "Link Power Management" feature causes issues with certain SSDs (C300s, M4s, Vertex's etc.). Whatever SSDs you choose, make sure they come with the latest firmware installed. The C300's should come with firmware rev. 0007 already applied if they are brand new, but I would check with the supplier because it would be a huge PITA to flash 300 SSDs to fix the reliability issues earlier firmwares had.

 

OCZ SSDs are supposed to be fairly good as well.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Oj72s.png

[ihaveaproblem]

Seems like that chart says otherwise:P I've only heard people say they are good, but maybe not then:)

[dayzd]

Not trying to throw a spanner in the works, but you may want to look into the lifespan of current SSDs.

 

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror (and co-founder of StackOverflow) recently wrote an article about his personal and professional experience of SSD lifespan, which, I'll be honest, has put me off using them for a while yet... At least personally.

[Pottsey]

Make sure they have the newest bios. The older bios does not like sudden power drops and I even had one die due to that reason. The newer bios has better power management and less problems with power drops.

 

Performance wise I would never go back to a none SSD drive.

[K.C.Leblanc]

I've not tried them personaly, but I've heard these are worth a look for laptops.

 

Storage » Internal Hard Drives » SATA - HYBRID - Overclockers UK

[mac_shinobi]

Not trying to throw a spanner in the works, but you may want to look into the lifespan of current SSDs.

 

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror (and co-founder of StackOverflow) recently wrote an article about his personal and professional experience of SSD lifespan, which, I'll be honest, has put me off using them for a while yet... At least personally.

 

I haven't seen that review on coding horror but I did see that the corsair drives weren't that great

 

MPG - SPECIAL REPORT: Real World SSD Performance - Severe Duty: OWC Extreme Pro RE vs Crucial RealSSD

[glennda]

Not trying to throw a spanner in the works, but you may want to look into the lifespan of current SSDs.

 

 

Thats where a 3 year warranty comes into use