Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

if i have to chose beetween fx2700m and m7740 , for cad and 3dstudio use....and a little gaming...is better the first or the second one ??

 

Thanks Blazer, I sort of figured it out but my SSD is rated 90/80 for read/write and that's OK for now. I don't know if you use or have tried AS SSD, a benchmarking program for SSDs (because supposedly the regular benchmarking programs aren't reliable with SSDs) My read/write numbers are much the same as when I bought it a year ago but access times have gone from .1 or .2 to .4 & .5. And that surprises me because I've been doing practically eveything you can do wrong. A full format on it almost weekly and from what I've read the numbers should be a lot worse. I've even occasionally defragged the registry and system files. It's not really noticable except my boot time's gone up 4 seconds to almost 30 and sooner or later I'm going to have to figure a way to do a secure erase because no matter how good an SSD is they all degrade, performance wise over time, as I'm sure you know. And mine was made before any Trim commands were incorporated into the controller. I've tried using gpart to do it on my Toshiba without success and HDD secure erase sounds like it won't even work on the 6400 because of some BIOS adjustment Dell won't let you make.

And one more question, earlier you told me that all Dell branded SSDs are Samsung but the ones I saw at the Dell store look like a different case than Samsung uses. On one side of them there's sort of a outlined depression that resembles another brand I can't remember the name of right now and mine is the standard flat, brushed aluminum surface all the Samsungs and OCZ Samsungs I've seen have. I'm not fanatically devoted to Samsung or anything but if I do upgrade I'd like it to be a Samsung at least for now considering the new MLCs like yours are the ones getting the rave reviews. From what I've learned most SSDs have some Samsung part in them. If not the controller the chips. When I bought mine a year ago MLCs were pretty much canned in the reviews but a lot has happened in 12 months. Since I don't need or want 256GBs for my system disk I'm hoping the price of 128GB SLCs come down by the time I'm ready for another. But I'm going off the rails here, all these words for one question. Does your Samsung have any kind of Trim or cleanup command in the controller? Samsung told me to use HDDErase to restore the original seek times but I don't think It'll even run on the M6400 unless something called 'campatibility mode' can be set in the BIOS. I guess I'll try that but it's a complicated procedure for me. Aligning partitions and all this stuff I didn't know about is interesting to learn but a halfwit like me flying solo puts my Covet at risk possibly and I don't want to ruin anything if possible. Hence all the questions. Thanks for answering more than your share of them.
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Precision Covet | QX9300 | 4GB | 64GB Samsung SSD & 320GB Seagate | XP Pro 32bit & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

 

Ouch

no wonder your access time are rapidly increasing...

As for TRIM being in my SSD..nope..those SSDs are coming out soon enough though.
So far all the Dell SSDs I've seen are Samsung but maybe the US are using different ones. It wouldn't surprise me especially with the choice of SSDs over there.
TBH I never worry about my SSD....I do the clean install, install the chipset and raid/achi drivers and switch the page file to the mechanical drive.
I never bothered benchmarking it as it's very fast for booting and games start up asap as well as apps like photoshop cs4.
I might do a clean install every 6-9 months but that would be about it.

 

question...how much i can ask for my dell m6400 covet ??

i want to sell it in italy , europe...€ not $

- Intel P8600
- 2x1gb Pc3-8500
- nVidia FX2700M 512mb
- Hdd 120gb 7200 Rpm Free Fall Sensor
- monitor 1920x1200 E2E RGB Led
- dvd burn slot-in
- vista 32bit / 64bit
- wireless Intel 5100 N
- Bluetooth
- warranty 2 years NBD and 2 Years Complete care
- 9 cell battery
- ac power 210w


all cd driver etc...all partes external and monitor changed by dell this week. external and monitor are new.

 

...and...

the display of the covet is very different by the 1920x1200 led ( not rgb , white led ) ??

 

Information for the M6400 + 3007WFP-HC monitor owners...The so much desired cable from Dell that can connect these two (Display Port --> Dual Link DVI) and can drive the beast 30' monitor to its full native resolution - 2560x1600... IS OUT!!! Here is the link...
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Cables/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=19&sku=330-5521

Cheers mates

 

Yea, well it was meant as a learning experience and damn if there's not a lot to learn. A year ago after a lot of comparing the 64Gig SLC Samsung was top of the charts as far as overall quality and speed and endurance was concerned. MLCs were pretty much discouraged when quality was part of the criteria. And it's been worth the $408 I paid for it several times over and if I can just hold off my gringo "instant gratification takes too long" attitude and things continue like they are in another 18 months everything will be different again. And complaining that my boot times went up to 30 seconds would sound funny if we were talking about this 18 months ago.

Have you decided or tried to do a 'secure erase' yet? Because I'm yet to find anything easy about it and the BIOS in the Covet isn't any help at all to this on the job trainee. I've shut off indexing and all the recommendations I now know I should have been doing from the start.

And I hadn't thought about different options depending on where you are. Enclosed is a picture of the Dell 256 GB SSD sold in the States. Maybe you can see the depressed (by a mm or so) area the tag is on. That's not any Samsung I've yet seen and it might have been the SuperTalent I saw that had an identical case. Does yours look like this? And what'd be your recommendation for doing a 'secure erase' with the 6400?
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Precision Covet | QX9300 | 4GB | 64GB Samsung SSD & 320GB Seagate | XP Pro 32bit & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

 

Maybe it's different wherever you're at but in the U.S. if it has the FX2700 then it's not a Covet. The FX3700 comes standard on all the Covets I know about. But as I'm learning that might be different depending where you are. And from my limited experience selling used laptops you're doing good if you can get half what you paid for it if you bought retail.
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Precision Covet | QX9300 | 4GB | 64GB Samsung SSD & 320GB Seagate | XP Pro 32bit & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

 

SLC's are still way too expensive...the MLC's are the ideal buying offer right now, being the mid way between the magnetic drives and the SLC's, especially if you consider that certain MLC out there can now approach the speed limits of a Sata2 controller, at reasonable prices, at acceptable data volumes.Of course if we are talking about workstations built for severe corporate use with extreme data sensitivity ect...well that's the market niche the SLC's refer to at the moment. But their price needs to calm down anyways...
and also...who is gonna praise a drive that can last 150 years?certainly not a home user.MLC's can last from 10 to 50 years with comfort, isn't that enough?

 

They're all to expensive if you're comparing them to todays magnetic drives which in my personal experience are very durable. I've only had one drive die and that was in it's first week.

The 9 year old Hitachi from my old old Inspiron is still in use as an external backup of a backup and shows no signs of any degradation. I'm an engineer but not an electronics one and I'm quite amazed at the pile of drives I have in external boxes that have fallen from shelves onto ceramic tile floors and still work, another I had to use pliers to get it out of a box that had bent in when it fell and it has two indented points where the pliers were held tight to pull it out, and it runs fine and all sectors are good.

My little, and by todays standards slow Samsung 64Gig SLC will do me fine for a couple of years when this whole conversation will be different. I want a 128GB SLC and I'll pay 500 bucks for the first quality one that hits that number (it's $1500 now). In the meantime I'll eventually figure out how to 'secure erase' what I have and restore it to like new condition. But I will never go back to having my OS on a spinning disk.
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Precision Covet | QX9300 | 4GB | 64GB Samsung SSD & 320GB Seagate | XP Pro 32bit & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit