Nice SSD

Um, nice 120GB corsair SSD unit, machine boots up lighting fast and software stars up really fast. but is it worth £150? Not sure.

Go for Crucial M4.

In reply to a post by Zadeks:

Go for Crucial M4.

More expensive and it don't seem to have as good specs, unless i am reading it wrong.

Happy with my corsair, but just wondering if the speed difference is worth the money.

They haven't had any major issues like Corsair and OCZ have had.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

just wondering if the speed difference is worth the money.

Only you can answer that question based on your disposable income.

In reply to a post by Zadeks:

They haven't had any major issues like Corsair and OCZ have had.

I heard that the Corsair had a problem and had to be recalled, I must admit I was a bit worried. But the drive is working fine here, i did not know OCZ had a problem. do they both use the same controller?

In reply to a post by clmfsh:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

just wondering if the speed difference is worth the money.

Only you can answer that question based on your disposable income.

Disposable income got little to do with it, if I could not afford it I would not have bothered no matter how fast it was.

The problem her is that I did have a Seagate Momentus XT drive, which is a hybrid, part SSD and part normal drive and that was pretty fast. but it had problems, the thing kept shutting down and then causing the computer to crash or just bits of software fail.

i did eventually find a fix, but it was not a prefect fix, so I decided to order a SSD drive and use the seagate as a second drive.

The speed difference in booting and running some software between the Seagate and the Corsair is not that much to be honest.

I swapped the 120GB drive in my 2007 Macbook Pro for an OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD, boot time is now 20sec (was 45sec). Got it while it was on offer too so it cost me £119.99.

In reply to a post by TheHorseman:

I swapped the 120GB drive in my 2007 Macbook Pro for an OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD, boot time is now 20sec (was 45sec). Got it while it was on offer too so it cost me £119.99.

That is pretty good, i don't seem to get offers like that

I think i saved about 30 seconds on boot up, so not bad, the other drive was pretty fast anyway as I said before it was a hybrid so no doubt a fair bit of the boot up files was int he SSD part of the drive, but 30 seconds is 30 seconds.

I've been tweaking my Dell laptop for a day or two and have it quite sweet. Quick spec (WEI)

Core 2 Duo T5550 @ 1.83Ghz (4.8)
2 x 1GB DDR2 333Mhz (4.5)
GM965 Chipset : 965 Express 440MB gfx (3.5) - Not quite sure what ratio of this is shared memory.
Seagate 136GB 7200rpm (5.2)
Vista 32, SP1

On Tuesday it took over two minutes to get from power on to 'workable'. Now it's workable at 39 seconds.

Before and After (I waited a while the first time, as there were several services cutting in at various times, whereas now almost all scheduled tasks and delayed start services are disabled.)

Savings of 297MB or a 32% reduction in mem usage from the beginning. Not a bad wee system now, albeit it's just a stopgap Internet and minor task machine.

it is the amount of time my computer takes to get past post that is the annoying part.
The graphics card comes up with some text, then a nice picture telling me what the motherboard board is, then it goes though the IDE drives, well drive in my case, then it gets to the hard drives, then back to the picture and eventually it will start to boot windows.


If I took the second DVd rom drive out and switch off the IDE port, that would make it a bit quicker.
I think the machine takes longer now to go though the bios than to boot windows

You should be able to disable the splash sceen. What model of mobo is that?

In reply to a post by camieabz:

You should be able to disable the splash sceen. What model of mobo is that?

It is a Asus M4A88TD-M Evo

Oh yes i can get rid of the splash screen, but it is still doing the same thing if the screen is there or not, the screen is just hiding all the text telling me how much memory and other bits that is only useful when I need to know about it.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

That is pretty good, i don't seem to get offers like that

I think i saved about 30 seconds on boot up, so not bad, the other drive was pretty fast anyway as I said before it was a hybrid so no doubt a fair bit of the boot up files was int he SSD part of the drive, but 30 seconds is 30 seconds.

I usually miss things like that, I guess I got lucky this time. It went up in price shortly after i got it and by £30 too

...... And you have turned off all the facilities in Wnidows that will shorten the life of an SSD due to the limited number of write cycles on each ROM cell?

In theory Windows 7 will do most of them (it sees it is an SSD by noticeing that the rotational speed is zero!) and it has got TRIM both in the SSD and by using the true Microsoft disc drivers or others which definitely support TRIM? You cannot actually see if TRIM is working until it is too late and the SSD starts to crawl!

Do not believe that "garbage collect" is the same as "TRIM" - it is not.

You have got the disc aligned on 4K clusters? Huge performance hit otherwise. Windows 7 is supposed to create discs that way but earlier versions dont.

And should you ever need to regain lost performance you use the "secure erase" facility to delete everything on the disc and recreate it from scratch.

Easy to check TRIM after new install of Win7. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7i...

SSD isn't going to crawl.

Ah, well the only other things you can is set boot to C: and disable the otherboot devices. Disable anything not used, such as wireless (if using wired), firewire, FDD, parallel and serial ports. Also if there's an HDD delay setting, ensure it's set to zero.

Not much else you can do.

In reply to a post by greenglide:

...... And you have turned off all the facilities in Wnidows that will shorten the life of an SSD due to the limited number of write cycles on each ROM cell?

In theory Windows 7 will do most of them (it sees it is an SSD by noticeing that the rotational speed is zero!) and it has got TRIM both in the SSD and by using the true Microsoft disc drivers or others which definitely support TRIM? You cannot actually see if TRIM is working until it is too late and the SSD starts to crawl!

Do not believe that "garbage collect" is the same as "TRIM" - it is not.

You have got the disc aligned on 4K clusters? Huge performance hit otherwise. Windows 7 is supposed to create discs that way but earlier versions dont.

And should you ever need to regain lost performance you use the "secure erase" facility to delete everything on the disc and recreate it from scratch.

All is fine, Trim is supported and working, defrag is switch off and windows have done what it needs to do.

if the drive last for 5 years or more I will be happy, by that time larger drives will be around and will be more reliable.


The only thing that did shock me for a while is my monitor software said that the drive temperature was 128C, but i take that is because there is no sensor in the drive as it don't need one.

In reply to a post by Zadeks:

Easy to check TRIM after new install of Win7. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7i...

SSD isn't going to crawl.

thanks for that I made sure it was on,

Oh no it is not crawling, but vegas still takes ages to load up

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Ah, well the only other things you can is set boot to C: and disable the otherboot devices. Disable anything not used, such as wireless (if using wired), firewire, FDD, parallel and serial ports. Also if there's an HDD delay setting, ensure it's set to zero.

Not much else you can do.

all other boot drives are disabled, c is always first, I use F8 if I need to boot from another drive. everything i don't use is already disabled, no HDD delay.

I did a check and when you said about the splash screen i thought I would get rid of it and it does make a small difference, but not much

when I got another large hard drive I will get rid of the 160GB and the 250Gb , then I will have a spare Sata connection and will get another Sata DVD writer, then I can take the IDE one out and turn off the IDE port.

I am not that bothered really, my computer is normally in sleep mode and it takes seconds to wake up

Go for the M4 yes there may be one or 2 out there faster, but none more reliable, and they have just had new firmware out(0009) which makes it faster and smoother ... and they also go for around £135 which is cheaper than the one you asking about, and its 8 GB more as they come in at 128GB.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid...

There at £132 for a M4 128GB

In reply to a post by Wab:

Go for the M4 yes there may be one or 2 out there faster, but none more reliable, and they have just had new firmware out(0009) which makes it faster and smoother ... and they also go for around £135 which is cheaper than the one you asking about, and its 8 GB more as they come in at 128GB.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid...

There at £132 for a M4 128GB

The 128Gb thing is a bit of a swiz, my Corsair is 128Gb as well, but it will not use it all. From what I have been reading the drives are still classed as 120Gb as the extra 8Gb is left to take over when the memory starts to fail.

My corsair is fine, it does what I want, but thanks anyway

It depends on the make and model of SSD.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by Wab:

Go for the M4 yes there may be one or 2 out there faster, but none more reliable, and they have just had new firmware out(0009) which makes it faster and smoother ... and they also go for around £135 which is cheaper than the one you asking about, and its 8 GB more as they come in at 128GB.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid...

There at £132 for a M4 128GB

The 128Gb thing is a bit of a swiz, my Corsair is 128Gb as well, but it will not use it all. From what I have been reading the drives are still classed as 120Gb as the extra 8Gb is left to take over when the memory starts to fail.

My corsair is fine, it does what I want, but thanks anyway

I have just got and checked a M4 it shows the full 128GB, Is yours the Corsair's first generation of solid-state drives? as they were not terribly good.

But that aside they are by far and away the most reliable SSD on the market, and with the new firmware released a few days ago (think it was the 15th) speed wise its as good as any on the market.. but its a much safer bet.