Has anyone used a SSD drive, they are Sata 3 is that any different for connection on a motherboard. I am using sata 2 right now what is the difference.


noah

Not all SSD Drives are SATA III... Some are SATA II...

I had an SSD in my old MacBook Pro, and now in my iMac as the boot drive. It's SATA2, so was a simple, basic install (once I had the mounting parts).
And ohhhh - so much faster! :D

You can use a sata 3 ssd in a sata 2 slot, you just wont be able to take advantage of the additional bandwith.

Thanks, that helps allot. I will look for one.

noah

NCIX has a refurb 120 gb Corsair Force Series SSD, SATA II, in the weekly specials for $119.99, and no mail-in rebates. They went up last night. For that price I ordered one.

This is the 2nd time this price has been on.

nice I will look

I'm definitely a fan of SSD drives. While they are pricey, for an OS drive they definitely make things a lot snappier than before. One word of caution however: once you upgrade, it's fairly hard to go back to a mechanical drive again.

The latest greatest SSD's are Sata 3 and you can use a Sata 3 drive on a Sata 2 controller (I'm using one currently)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review/3

Shows the difference between using a 3GB Sata 2 controller and 6GB Sata 3.

For day to day computing you wouldn't really notice any difference between the Sata 2 and Sata 3.

I love my SSD. I removed my mechanical HDD's entirely. 120GB is enough for a desktop as long as you have a proper server.

I have a SATA2 SSD limited by SATA1 bottleneck (stupid lenovo.. the chipset is fully capable of it, they just cripple it)

And it's still night and day to a mechanical drive.

great info thanks, one question though, are the sata 2 cable the same if you buy 2.5 or 3.5 ssd. I want to put this ssd in my desktop, just wondering if the smaller 2.5 will work with the same cable. I do know you have to buy the bracket to adapt 2.5 to 3.5 to fit into the desktop.

same same. Desktop and laptop SATA drivers are interchangeable.

Also, since it seems to be asked a lot on the internet :p
SATA1, SATA2 and SATA3 cables are the same (so don't get tricked into buying special cables).
The only difference is the hardware on either end.

ssd drives sound great. Unfortunately, they supposedly don't work well with older BIOS's or XP.

- something to do with TRIM, and the way the drive becomes fragmented - such is my rudimentary understanding of the drive reads/writes.

P

NCIX has a refurb 120 gb Corsair Force Series SSD, SATA II, in the weekly specials for $119.99, and no mail-in rebates. I generally don't mind buying refurbed products but I am not so sure that I want to get a refurbed SSD as if it has rare intermittent problems it could drive you nuts.

I generally don't mind buying refurbed products but I am not so sure that I want to get a refurbed SSD as if it has rare intermittent problems it could drive you nuts.

It is a risk and I'll run the snot out of it for the 30 day return period. It's a cheap way for me to check it out. It will start out in my own desktop computer and if it is stable for after 2-3 months I will try it in a laptop. From the feedback from the first time these were sold, if there are problems seem to show up in short order. They don't seem to be having more issues than the brand new ones, though that's another kettle of fish.

ssd drives sound great. Unfortunately, they supposedly don't work well with older BIOS's or XP.

- something to do with TRIM, and the way the drive becomes fragmented - such is my rudimentary understanding of the drive reads/writes.

P
There's no Trim in XP itself but some manufacturers have their own Trim tools. Windows 7 natively supports Trim but I have used my SSD with XP and it worked fine. Just don't defrag a SSD.

I was reading on the net you need to change in the bios the sata to AHCI, I cannot only have raid and IDE. They say I will not be able to update the firmware if i do not switch to AHCI.

Found some more articles and setting the Bios to Raid will put it into ahci as well. don't know want it cleared up before I buy a ssd drive.

It is a risk and I'll run the snot out of it for the 30 day return period. It's a cheap way for me to check it out. It will start out in my own desktop computer and if it is stable for after 2-3 months I will try it in a laptop. From the feedback from the first time these were sold, if there are problems seem to show up in short order. They don't seem to be having more issues than the brand new ones, though that's another kettle of fish.
My OCZ Vertex 2 failed after 2 months. It completely locked up and was no longer detected by BIOS, which turned out to be a common problem related to Win7 resuming from sleep mode. OCZ replaced it, and with the latest firmware update I have been running problem free for four months.