Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

[seb87]

if i buy an m6400 with fx2700m , i can buy an ATI m7740 and change it ? it's possible to find an ATI M7740 ?

[larsv]

I've done all the investigation possible on which SSD is the 'best'. And my, and most unbiased and qualified sources say the Samsung 64GB SCL SSD is the best of them all. It's numbers across the board can be bested (but not by a large amount) on single issues but overall, all reviewers and testers picked the Samsung SLC SSD and I agree totally with them, as that's been my main drive for 6 months and it still amazes me watching the seek times of .01 for everything. Read and write speeds are a bit less than some MLC SSDs but the Samsung is one of the few where read/write speeds are within 10% of each other. But lots of camplaints and total failures of these MLC disks that the evidence tells are not yet ready for prime time. And yes it's a bit small by todays standards but with the m6400 you put your OS on the SSD and everything else on a big platter drive.

And yes SLCs are more expensive than MLC drives and there's a good reason for that. the SLC is a better, longer lasting and less prone to errors and such. I had to hunt to get one for less than five hundred and more but found a place that sold them for $589 all day but between 1AM and 4AM they all went down to $408. And it's the best 408 dollars I've spent to speed up things. Boot time from power on till the desktop is up and ready to work is 30 seconds or less. My 7200rpm clone that I use about a day a month takes around 90 seconds for the same thing. It might be actually longer, I've not cloned it off the SSD for a while now because nothing's changed enough to take the trouble. My advice? Don't buy an MLC drive at this time, pay a bit more and get SLC. I know only what I read about MLCs and everything I read admits, even if they really don't want to, that a SLC at this time is more reliable, consistant and has a longer life than it's MLC cousin. Lot's of folks here would maybe take issue with me but I've studied everything available and think I'm correct on this. There are one or two SLC drives recently out that are quite a bit faster than the Samsung but both are a grand or more. And if it's your first experience with SSDs you'll be plenty wowed with the Samsungs .01 access and usually about 90/80 for read/write.

Looking at my current Win7 boot partition, I have 49 GB used - all my work data is on a separate partition. An SSD with only 64GB capacity as boot drive would be a bit of a concern.

[gulfstreamtec]

Looking at my current Win7 boot partition, I have 49 GB used - all my work data is on a separate partition. An SSD with only 64GB capacity as boot drive would be a bit of a concern.

Wow, My Win 7 takes 14.something gigs. Can't imagine where 49GB goes except maybe the 'old windows' folder, which you can delete.

[larsv]

Wow, My Win 7 takes 14.something gigs. Can't imagine where 49GB goes except maybe the 'old windows' folder, which you can delete.

Well, it adds up.
Win7 Enterprise x64 was installed from scratch.
I do software development in imaging and photography, as well as business systems and mobile location-aware apps. Many platforms and tools.
Various dev platforms and SDKs - VS2008 (5G), VS2005 (4G), others.

Folders:
Windows 18.3 GB
Program Files 3.2 GB
Program Files (x86) 9.3 GB
ProgramData 1.1 GB
Users 8.8 GB
Hibernate (3G) and page files (4G)

[gulfstreamtec]

Well, it adds up.
Win7 Enterprise x64 was installed from scratch.
I do software development in imaging and photography, as well as business systems and mobile location-aware apps. Many platforms and tools.
Various dev platforms and SDKs - VS2008 (5G), VS2005 (4G), others.

Folders:
Windows 18.3 GB
Program Files 3.2 GB
Program Files (x86) 9.3 GB
ProgramData 1.1 GB
Users 8.8 GB
Hibernate (3G) and page files (4G)

I did not mean to tell you anything, particularly that a 64GB SSD was the way to go for you and apologize if it sounds that way. And my knowledge is only the large amount of reading I've done. I have NO practical experience with any SSD besides the one I have. Reliability & lifespan is still an issue with MLC but big gains have been made (again, or so I've read). I'm not competent to give you any advice other than read a lot and pass it on. And there's do much info that changes daily you can't read it all. The links below discuss both types of SSDs and you'd not be wasting your time to look them over. And I'd be interested to know what you finally decide. One of the links below is to this same site, just a different forum, and it has a lot of good info and all three links discuss the differences between SLC & MLC. That people still use the Hibernate feature is news to me. With a good SSD, and the speed it boots up and considering the variety of problems Hibernate has given me I just start from a dead stop rather than bother with a feature that just takes up space and on my XP at least doesn't always work right. Try to raise airblazer or one of the regulars that know what they're talking about. The guy mentioned in the last sentence has what must be a MLC SSD and like I said, he knows volumes more than me. So do a long list of regulars here, but airblazer has a larger version of my settup, Covet hardware, a bigger (much bigger)SSD and a large spinning storage disk. Best of luck and always take any advice I give as a suggestion that may or may not be of use. But buying any SSD you need all the info you can get because it's a complicated subject thay'd constantly changing.

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-slc-mlc-notes.html

Know Your SSDs - SLC vs. MLC

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/23/s...ility-worries/

[larsv]

I did not mean to tell you anything, particularly that a 64GB SSD was the way to go for you and apologize if it sounds that way. And my knowledge is only the large amount of reading I've done. I have NO practical experience with any SSD besides the one I have. Reliability & lifespan is still an issue with MLC but big gains have been made (again, or so I've read). I'm not competent to give you any advice other than read a lot and pass it on. And there's do much info that changes daily you can't read it all. The links below discuss both types of SSDs and you'd not be wasting your time to look them over. And I'd be interested to know what you finally decide. One of the links below is to this same site, just a different forum, and it has a lot of good info and all three links discuss the differences between SLC & MLC. That people still use the Hibernate feature is news to me. With a good SSD, and the speed it boots up and considering the variety of problems Hibernate has given me I just start from a dead stop rather than bother with a feature that just takes up space and on my XP at least doesn't always work right. Try to raise airblazer or one of the regulars that know what they're talking about. The guy mentioned in the last sentence has what must be a MLC SSD and like I said, he knows volumes more than me. So do a long list of regulars here, but airblazer has a larger version of my settup, Covet hardware, a bigger (much bigger)SSD and a large spinning storage disk. Best of luck and always take any advice I give as a suggestion that may or may not be of use. But buying any SSD you need all the info you can get because it's a complicated subject thay'd constantly changing.

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-slc-mlc-notes.html

Know Your SSDs - SLC vs. MLC

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/23/s...ility-worries/

No reason to apologize thanks for sharing you knowledge and experience!

My opinion re SSD is that for my personal needs I should wait until a good 100+ GB SSD is affordable. Subjective, that "affordable" thing.

Re hibernation... Vista and Win7 has a Hybrid Sleep function which writes hibernation data before going to sleep. That way, state is preserved even if battery power is lost. It's quite useful for someone who runs on battery a lot, but perhaps less so on an M6400 which likely is plugged in to AC power in most situations.

[Airblazer]

Hi guys..
first off..move your page file off the SSD drive and onto the 2nd drive if you have one...if it's a mechanical one of course.
Some ppl recommend getting rid of it altogether but I like to have it there..
2. Your documents/music/video/favourites/ etc can all go on the second drive (again if you have one). Only have your bare apps plus OS on your SSD if disk space is an issue.
3. Games...older games such as COD4/BF2 etc..I install them all to the mechanical drive..again very little performance gains from an SSD.


As for SSDs..if you can afford it get the biggest one you can get.
Do not get one of the older 1st gen SSD drives with a JMICRON controller...there notorious for stutters when accesssing small files (basically your OS).

Where your SSD drive comes good...

Bootup times...miles faster than a normal drive...I'm so used to mine that I make a cup of tea while waiting on my brothers/mates pcs which all have normal drives.

Photoshop---Opens in approx 6 secs...which is about 3 times faster than a mechanical drive.
Any video/editing etc will all be miles faster on a SSD basically.
If you can really afford it get either the OCZ vertez or the new Intel ones...
The new intel ones have a write speed of only 70megs as opposed to the OCZ of over 200meg.
However the Intel ones are optimised for 4k writes which means OS and application operation is faster than the OCZs etc.
All the above are MLC SSDs...SLC SSD drives are still miles too expensive.

[gulfstreamtec]

Hi guys..
first off..move your page file off the SSD drive and onto the 2nd drive if you have one...if it's a mechanical one of course.
Some ppl recommend getting rid of it altogether but I like to have it there..

However the Intel ones are optimised for 4k writes which means OS and application operation is faster than the OCZs etc.
All the above are MLC SSDs...SLC SSD drives are still miles too expensive.

airblazer, I hope you don't mind me sending you customers but what I told him was oh so true.
My question, since you've appeared is can you put the page file on a SD card and would there be any benefit in doing so? It gets used so little and I have a pile of them with plenty of size, but would it work? And any better than just moving it to my 320GB platter drive?

[larsv]

airblazer, I hope you don't mind me sending you customers but what I told him was oh so true.
My question, since you've appeared is can you put the page file on a SD card and would there be any benefit in doing so? It gets used so little and I have a pile of them with plenty of size, but would it work? And any better than just moving it to my 320GB platter drive?

My Win7 install won't let me put page file on a removable drive. Perhaps there's a trick to doing that.

[gulfstreamtec]

My Win7 install won't let me put page file on a removable drive. Perhaps there's a trick to doing that.

My XP install shows both a USB stick drive and the SD card when changing the location for the page file. Haven't been over to my 7 partition to check but it's odd that XP would do it and Windows 7 won't.