SSD or not?

Hi,

I have just bought an extenal HDD (500GB) and was thinking of leaving all my Steam games etc. on my laptop HDD, and move all my random videos/photos/misc files from the laptop SATA HDD to the external HDD.

But I was thinking... would it be better to invest in a SSD? Or stick to what I've just done? As I'm hearing good things about SSD.

Would installing an SSD - VOID my Dell warranty?

Your thoughts?

 

I've got an SSD in my laptop and i love the boot times, it depends what you want from it i guess.

Personally i've had nothing but trouble with my Alienware laptop and as much as i love the hardware i am contemplating sending it back. I've had it for just over a week and i've probably spent about 2 hours gaming on this with the rest trying to get games working.

 

I'm in the same boat as you. With ssd's becoming cheaper its almost a no brainer. Although there issues sometimes, I would hate to splurge on an ssd just to have issues. Im thinking of:
Newegg.com - Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F120GBGT-BK 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
120gb would be a a challenge, but i can work around it.

More practical would be this:
Newegg.com - Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F180GB3-BK 2.5" 180GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

SSD wouldn't void your warranty, just my guess though, I'm pretty sure.

The stock drive is still blazing fast, with my tweaked start up, a cold boot up only takes 40 seconds to a minute. But I also don't do too much hdd writing that an ssd would take advantage of. Only benefit would be fast boot times and fast level loading in games. That's why I'm hesitant on getting one.

 

Please research the issues some m14x owners have with SSD's on this forum. There's plenty of threads around that contain important information.

 

Hey man, I got this laptop at launch, while I love this laptop for gaming, I had a huge problem with load times in battlefield 3, would take 3-5 minutes to load each map. After trying every tweak out there I broke down and picked up this SSD two weeks ago:

Newegg.com - Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CW120G3K5 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

I had done a ton of research and found for reliability Intel was the best and there has been a lot of posts about SATA 3 not working a hundred percent of the time on the M14x. So that is why I went Intel and SATA 2. So as posted previously think about what you are looking for and do some research. But coming from someone who was on the fence about getting an SSD for a while, its totally worth it.

 

Sorry to invade but its kind of related. How would having the hard drive in the ODD spot work? For example, could I have my OS on my SSD and my Steam games for example work perfectly fine all from the HDD? Im always running out of room on my 500GB drive because I keep all my Steam games on one drive, and cant put them on an external HDD easily (Making my current USB 3.0 2tb useless). So how would a 1tb 5400RPM hard drive in the ODD spot + maybe an 80gb SSD sound?

EDIT: Heck even smaller. If someone can find me the fastest SSD that has just enough to hold just the OS im fine (obviously this is to keep cost down)

 

Gearsguy, you can do that, but i believe the ODD port is SATA I ,it'll be slow but good enough for storage

 

Sata 1 + 5400RPM? Scaring me, but double the storage sounds awfully nice..

Heres what I was looking at specifically

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Newegg.com - Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F60GB3A-BK 2.5" 60GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

ALL my games would be on the 1tb drive so would loading times take forever?

 

I have an ssd in the main bay and the original hard drive (seagate momentus 750gb 7200 RPM) in the optical bay, and games load reasonably fast, data transfers too. With a Western Digital scorpio blue 500gb 5400 RPM drive, the load times were noticeably longer and data transfers were about half as fast. But i think the newer 1TB 5400 RPM drives are said to have transfer speeds as fast as older 7200 RPM drives so it should be fine.

The way I see it is (someone correct me if I'm wrong) the SATA 1.5Gbps connector for the optical drive has a theoretical maximum transfer speed of approx. 1.5Gigabits per sec/8 = 187.5 MegaBytes per sec, which is still higher than real life maximum transfer rate.

 

I picked up a Samsung 470 128gb SSD for 150 in december from newegg. Well worth it.mfits my domain load, all my work crap, and 6+ games (including swtor).

 

Hi, Im running a Corsair Force 3 - I can absolutely confirm that all BIOS upgrades from A06 upwards lock Sata port 0 to Sata 2 speeds.

I have had my SSD running without any problems at full consistent SATA 3 speeds without any BSOD or freezes on A05 for four weeks now. I have also found that un-installing the Intel RSD drivers made a big difference in speed (from approx 300mb/s to 480-550mb/s) - Windows boot time went from 19 seconds to 15.

I did a quick comparison video which compares load times of Windows and a few games against the standard 7200 HD here:

Alienware m14x CORSAIR SATA 3 SSD vs HARD DRIVE load time comparisons Windows 7 Battlefield 3 SWTOR - YouTube

 

I was looking all around this forum for cases of problem using SSD in m14x and as you mentioned, it does seems Intel 320 is the most stable SSD.

I am looking into upgrading from current HDD to SSD Intel 320. Is it sorta plug and play the cables?
And I will have to change the Bios from SATA to xxxx [forgotten] and boot it up to install Windows?
Cheers mate!