1 month with SSD(Solid State Drive) - Great.

[Druid_]

I thought there was support for TRIM and RAID 0 now. Intel supposedly have a driver released, just need to find out if your drive supports it.

http://www.guru3d.com/news/intel-brings-trim-to-ssds-in-raid/

 

Would love to get my hands on a Crucial C300 256gb, still way too expensive though imho.

[Pilotasso]

Found out today my boot drive is riddled with bad sectors.

 

Im bringging in the big guns now:

Getting an OCZ 120GB SDD drive for gaming, and a sansung 2TB high perfomance drive for my multimedia. I could have gone for bigger hardware but Ill leave that for when DCS: Falcon comes along. ;)

 

I will post a review of the new hardware in a couple of days.

[bumfire]

I thought there was support for TRIM and RAID 0 now. Intel supposedly have a driver released, just need to find out if your drive supports it.

http://www.guru3d.com/news/intel-brings-trim-to-ssds-in-raid/

 

Would love to get my hands on a Crucial C300 256gb, still way too expensive though imho.

 

I think that only supports mobos from intel, not mobos with intel chipsets from other vendors, but I dont know.

 

This is the first I have read about it.

 

EDIT:

 

The driver still doesnt do trim for raid, all it does is, if youre intel controller is set to raid mode, but you are not actually doing raid but just using single disks, then driver supports raid with the intel controller set to raid mode, thats all.

 

If the controller is set to raid mode, and you are using raid, e.g say raid 0 or raid 1 etc, then trim still wont work.

 

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/18653

Edited October 17, 2010 by bumfire

[*Rage*]

Found out today my boot drive is riddled with bad sectors.

 

Im bringging in the big guns now:

Getting an OCZ 120GB SDD drive for gaming, and a sansung 2TB high perfomance drive for my multimedia. I could have gone for bigger hardware but Ill leave that for when DCS: Falcon comes along. ;)

 

I will post a review of the new hardware in a couple of days.

 

Subscribed:thumbup:

 

Interested in what effect it has on game experience...

[bumfire]

Subscribed:thumbup:

 

Interested in what effect it has on game experience...

 

Just speeds up loading when loading a mission and also loads up scenery quicker whilst flying.

 

Overall you only notice quicker loaidng times, thats the only effect I see.

[Pilotasso]

Got the drives, testing the old ones, see you later after finishing reinstalling and benchmarking the SDD as well as the new HDD.

[SAM77]

Thought this might be interesting for future SSD

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3971/sandforce-announces-nextgen-ssd-controller-sf2000-capable-of-500mbs-and-60k-iops

[Pilotasso]

Just finished installing the OS and made the prilimary tests: HD tune pro 4.6 reads are 149MB/S minimum, 231 maximum and 220.6Mb/s average.

 

Higher than the guy running his I7 system here:

 

The loading times...ITS SWEEET.

 

Ill come back tomorrow to post some more scientific reports as I finsish setting it up with DS and lockon tittles.

Edited October 18, 2010 by Pilotasso

[Pilotasso]

OCZ VERTEX 2 120GB REVIEW

 

OK I installed everything I had when I swapped my HD for an SDD+another HDD. This is comprised by a OS clean install+Spyware doctor+CH manager+Logitech manager (G940). Thats on the Western digital and the SDD. I have not tried the same for the Samsung (only synthetic benches) hence the lack of program loading times at the bottom of this review for that drive.

 

Here are the results,

firstly Western digital 400MB RAID EDITION,

Secondly Sansung F3 1TB

and finaly the SDD thirdly:

 

HTUNE PRO

This was a standard drive 4 years ago

This makes the modern hard drives twice as fast nowadays.

A whopping 4X increase over my original drive and twice as much as standard modern HDD's today.

 

DCS A-10C Settings:

 

GUI entry:

Western digital 400MB RAID EDITION=13s

OCZ vertex 2=9s

 

Mission loading time (First instant action Georgia)

 

Western digital 400MB RAID EDITION=1min, 55s

OCZ vertex 2=1min, 9s

 

NOTE: There are alot of disk idle times while loading so the difference is less pronounced here.

 

Windows load at button start:

Western digital 400MB RAID EDITION=1min, 5s

OCZ vertex 2=44s

 

It has to be said that BIOS posting takes about 21 seconds so the actual drive loading times are 45s for the HDD and 23s for the OCZ vertex 2, thats 50% reduction right there.

 

In the end Im very happy, not only because my loading times have been reduced but because its so easy to multi task now. The numbers do not show the full story: While HDD read/write sequentially making multiple program openings a pain in the back side, SDD's can do it all the same time with no waiting times as long as it has bandwidth remaining. This is a huge advantage. For game play alot less stuttering, but I need more time to fully assess the differences in game play.

Edited October 19, 2010 by Pilotasso

[Shaman]

Hi!

 

Thread - tldr. Could someone who already is into this fancy stuff sum it up for me a little?

 

It is time for me to change HDD, what values I should look for? Technically wise (specs) - to have best DCS experience ever. Should I go RAID, then what setting and what drivers with what technical specs?

What values (specs) to look for in SSD that I consider as option next to new HDD or two HDDs.

Edited October 30, 2010 by Shaman

[Pilotasso]

what do you mean values? Specifications of speed or space?

 

right now if you going to HDD I would recommend Sansung SPINPOINT F4, 2 TB.

 

But if you got a higher budget go for an SDD and never look back. I recommend the 3.5" version of vertex 2 120GB SDD wich is the most affordable high speed SDD. It lets you install the OS and several games (I had upt 3 simulators and starcraft II and still got 60GB left).

 

My SDD is purring like a kitten and I recommend anyone to make the jump if money is not an issue. Its stutter free bliss!!!

[Shaman]

I wished to copy OS, FSX, XPLANE, DCS BS, DCS WH, LOFC2 on SSD, I don't care about the rest.

Is it actually necessary to have OS on SSD for stutter free flying or only the PAGE FILE?

[Pilotasso]

How much does each tittle take?

 

You may want a 120Gb or a 240GB SDD. Sandforce 1200 SDD's are the big hit now. Although you cant go wrong with Intel X25-M series either. They put up less impressive benchmarks but they are faster for small file operations which is what windows and most programs are made of.

 

As for the OS and pagefile, I got them both on SDD. if your aiming for a smaller SDD you may want to put the OS on the hard drive and page file and games on the SDD. Your windows experience wont be as fast but at least your games will.

 

the specs you will see for SDD's are maximum read and write, which for a fast SDD today is 285MB/s read and 275MB/s for write. But you are unlikely to hit those values in real applications, not even when benchmarking as speed changes with file size, and is not indicative of the whole story, hence the remark about Intel above.

Edited October 30, 2010 by Pilotasso

[HiJack]

the specs you will see for SDD's are maximum read and write, which for a fast SDD today is 285MB/s read and 275MB/s for write. But you are unlikely to hit those values in real applications, not even when benchmarking as speed changes with file size, and is not indicative of the whole story, hence the remark about Intel above.

Thats just awesome :D Nice tests there pilotasso!

[Pilotasso]

Hijack, one more thing: dont forget switch your BIOS setting for your SDD from IDE to AHCI mode. This is its native mode and will perform better with it.

Do it if you want to do a fresh install of windows. If you choose AHCI with OS installed you will get a BSOD on startup. you can revert it setting it to IDE again.

 

This is because by default windows will not automatically install AHCI drivers if you make the switch with the OS already installed. It will load AHCI drivers automatically only upon windows installation from a bootable DVD.

 

Theres a way to do the switch with the OS installed but I dont recommend it.

 

Vista and Windows 7 is recommended for SDD's. Windows XP is possible but it requires you some extra steps to set it up, and performance wont be as good.

Edited October 31, 2010 by Pilotasso

[Kuky]

Hey Pilotaso, I just read about IDE and AHCI settings in BIOS you talked about and wanted to know more about it and if it would be good thing to change to AHCI and from what I read pretty much only benefit from going to AHCI would be to enable NCQ but I am thinking this would have benefit for normal HDD that have spinning disk, in SSD there are no moving parts so I don't see how it could have any benefit for them?

 

According to a bulletin on the OCZ site;

AHCI

AHCI is not official supported on OCZ SSDs and may under some circumstances affect performance,

specifically during windows installation. Enabling AHCI can result in higher performance in synthetic

benchmarks for SSDs and HDDs alike, but can cause hang-ups and intermittent freezes in SSDs since it allows multiple access requests to compete for a drive that is not made to address re-ordering of commands in the queue. We recommend AHCI is set to disabled in both Windows and in the BIOS.

Native Command Queuing greatly increases the performance of standard rotational drives but it has no bearing on SSDs.

And an example of what p***es me off when people make claims and have no idea what thet talk about:

I have my Vertex 60GB configured to AHCI and my WIE is 7.3. I have no problems with lockups on my SSD, its nothing but bliss. I do use the native Windows driver though as the Intel one slows wiper down to a crawl for me. But in AHCI with newest Intel driver, I get by far the highest benchmark results.

Sometimes when I access my hard drives, there is a slight lag, but I always thought it was because the drives had to start spinning back up to speed as they are not always being accessed. Maybe its because Im in AHCI.

This guys wants to claim how setting his BIOS to AHCI does not causes this performance degradation with his SSD... then says he DOES have slight lag and how it's because the drive has to start spining? :lol:

 

By the way this is from this website: http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-hardware/18767-ahci-ssds.html

Edited October 31, 2010 by Kuky

[HiJack]

Great find Kuky! I will be converting to SSD during next week and was scheduling an image transfer from my current OS disk. This helped a lot :D

[SAM77]

http://hothardware.com/articles/OCZ-Vertex-LE-Sandforce-Powered-SSD-Review/

 

Last paragraph concerns AHCI and SSDs

 

The final summary also sheds some light on AHCI and OCZ

Edited October 31, 2010 by SAM77

[Kuky]

http://hothardware.com/articles/OCZ-Vertex-LE-Sandforce-Powered-SSD-Review/

 

Last paragraph concerns AHCI and SSDs

 

The final summary also sheds some light on AHCI and OCZ

 

hm... nice find, thanks for the link

 

Of AHCI, Trial and Error

In our first effort with the Vertex 2 Pro back in February, you may recall that while its performance was impressive, especially with respect to random write speed, we didn't feel we were getting all we could from the drive and it gave us a few moments of pause, especially in our IOMeter testing. We came to find out that all of OCZ's new SSDs based Sandforce controllers, benefit significantly in term of general performance if AHCI is enabled in the system BIOS. Historically, we found AHCI to be a flaky with certain SSDs and took the path of turning it off for our test setups. AHCI is a technology that was initially developed specifically for the latencies and inefficiencies of seek times and access on rotational media, so the benefit for it with SSDs, until only recently, was unfounded. It turns out that though SSD controllers from Intel and Indilinx don't benefit much from AHCI, OCZ's chosen Sandforce controller, as well as the Marvell controller in Micron's new line of SSDs, both benefit significantly from it. As such, in order to level the playing field, all of the storage benchmark tests you'll see on the pages ahead, were conducted with AHCI enabled for all SSDs tested.

[HiJack]

Well apparently it is easy to load the AHCI drivers eaven if you run in IDE mode at the moment. Here are the steps:

 

Start windows as normal in IDE mode, go to search and type in "regedit" click it. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES => System => Currentcontrolset => service then go down and click on msahci. Right click "Start" and click modify. Change the value to 0 and restart. Enter the bios, switch to AHCI, load in as normal. Windows will download drivers automatically, restart again.

 

(HJ)

[Kuky]

Have you tried this HiJack? I wouldn't want to try it and end up having to reinstall OS again :)

[HiJack]

No, not tried and if you do it will be on your own risk. I will try to activate it but will make a new Ghost Image of my disk first.

[HiJack]

I did a new image first but the installation of the AHCI driver worked just as described and I don't think there is any problem going back if you run Windows 7 and have the original installation media if trouble should arise. Worked great for me :D

 

EDIT: I'm on Windows 7 64 bit

[Kuky]

I just did it and seems to have worked... but now I have icon in taskbar "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" and in there my HDD are listed as if removable... I guess it's because they are now hot pluggable, right?

 

Thanks for that HiJack

Edited October 31, 2010 by Kuky

[HiJack]

I don't have mine HD's in the eject media tray!!! Try restart again.