Upgrade SSD - so now you have a Solid State Drive

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Installation Upgrade and use of a SSD, will it make your computer faster?

SSD's come in IDE and SATA format. So if you have an older computer that is IDE you can get in on the new wave.

This article will help you install a Solid State Drive, if you want to use it for extra removable storage or if you want to use it for your boot drive. The drive I picked was the SSD 64G OCZ OCZSSD2-1C64G R. I picked the 64 Gig from Newegg.com because the reviews were good and OCZ backs their products.

Question: Why would you swap your mechanical hard drive for a SSD?

Answer: If you use a laptop in a vehicle for long periods of time the vibrations and shock of rough roads may cause a mechanical hard drive heads to impact the platters while the drive is in operation. Where as a SSD doesn't have this problem.

Shockproof you laptop with a SSD! I did :)

First let me say that this is not a cheap upgrade. So I am trading some money for speed, for the same cost I could have bought a 500 Gig mechanical drive but the read speed would be somewhat lower. The SSD read speed is higher but the write speed is lower than a mechanical drive. This will not bother anyone that optimizes their OS and moves the swap file off the boot drive to a second drive.

Note: On the www.fix-it-blog.com I answer questions about the SSD and how you can use it here.

(note - place you mouse pointer over the image to view a larger image).


Manufacture image # 1	Manufacture Image # 2	Box and SSD image # 1	Box and SSD image # 2

OCZ Core Series OCZSSD2-1C64G 2.5" 64GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD)

Width: 3.95"
Depth: 2.76"
Height: 0.38"
Weight: 0.17 lbs.
Features: RAID Support
Max Shock Resistance: 1500G
Sequential Access - Read: 120-143 MB/se
Sequential Access - Write: 80-93 MB/se

When you receive your new drive it may or may not be formatted, the OCZ drive was formatted. That was irrelevant for my use, I am going to over write the drive with a ghost image of my system.

The drive is very compact and from my observation will create less heat than a mechanical drive because of no moving parts thus drawing less power.

Installing the drive is very straight forward. Secure the drive in the computer, connect your power and the drive interface cable.

Start the computer and go in to your BIOS setup, check the BIOS to insure that the drive is recognized by the computer.

For more information on upgrading your desktop or laptop to a SSD see see page 121 through 131 in the Self Computer Repair Unleashed! E-Book

When I installed the drive I set it up as the third SATA drive in my computer. Through the BIOS setup I made it the boot drive. After installing the ghost image (see notes) I restarted the system and received a non-system boot drive error.

Duh - I didn't set the new partition as Active, there for the BIOS couldn't find the boot sector of the drive.

Next I started up my computer and checked the drive for functionality, very nice. Very fast. The image I used is about five months old and nothing is missing.

Because I didn't remove the drive that was the boot drive, a 300 gig that has three partitions, C: , D: , and E: I had to delete the partition of the old C: drive before the system would boot properly. I didn't have any qualms about deleting it because I had a good ghost image of the partition with a current backup.

Once I booted the computer again all I had to do is up date my image to the current backup.

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From my observations this makes my computer faster, I have the program Desktops (this program allows me to have four individual desktops. I have been using this program for over a month, I open programs I use frequently each in a different desktop. The programs open faster than with a mechanical drive. Actually when you click on the short cut it opens before you can move your mouse pointer. Very nice.

Because I have optimized my computer and the swap file is on a ram drive thus the write speed to the Solid State Drive is not a factor for the swapping of programs in and out of the swap file when the physical memory has been exceeded.

What the drive looks like inside: (note - place you mouse pointer over the image to view a larger image).


Top of case	Open case	8 Memory modules	Back of PCB	PCB out of case

The PCB fits in the case very tightly, how ever there is not any shock absorbent material between the case and the PCB. (Printed Circuit Board )

Looking at the front side of the PCB you have eight memory IC's of 8 gig each, this gives you 64 gig of Flash memory. On the back you have the connection points for eight more IC's, this leads me to believe that the Case and PCB for the 64 Gig and 128 Gig are the same.

KISS - Keep It Simple Stxxxd very nice, compact and low power usage, low heat producing.

Did it make my computer faster?

A) The boot speed is a little faster than a mechanical drive.

B) The reaction time for a program to execute from a short cut is extremely fast.

C) Programs run much faster, such as web browser changes pages faster,

So for an overall experience the computer is faster, opening a 65 Meg spread sheet before upgrade would take a couple of minutes, now three seconds! Yes it is faster.

The test computer has a Core 2 2.4 GHz Quad processor, 4 Gig of memory, and video card with 512 Meg of memory. My main test was a couple of games I like, one of the games I play is graphics intensive and will drag between scenes while the images are loaded, sometimes the change is noticeable up to a second or two. With the SSD there isn't any noticeable drag.

Unless your hard drive is failing or you need to upgrade then the cost is prohibitive for those on a budget, as I noted at the top of the article I traded speed for money, as your primary boot drive the cost of the 64 Gig SSD is comparable to a 500 Gig mechanical Hard Drive. I was under the impression that the computer would boot faster (a few reviews I have read suggested that) but my tests tells me it is not significantly faster to load the OS. Now if the SSD was integrated in to the motherboard on the main bus this may hold true. But using the sata interface and a cable will cause a bottle neck, thus prohibiting the higher transfer rate that pure physical memory on the motherboard has. In a laptop and the SSD being the only drive it may prove to be significantly faster. Defiantly a weight and power saving for the laptop owner.

Notes:

When you install the drive if you are going to use it as your boot drive you have to use a program such as the DOS FDISK or Windows CD install disk to set the MBR as Active otherwise the system will not boot from the drive.

Update -

Since I wrote this article I have added SSD's to all my laptops and have one newer Solid State Drive that I use as an external storage device. The latest versions of SSD have a USB connector along with the SATA connector. Very nice.

You will find more information on bootable devices in the Self Computer Repair Unleashed! E-Book starting on page 87. (view a sample of the manual).

Hard Drives, Internal or External, All available at Newegg.com

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