SSD for an R2

I'll try to keep it brief.

1: SSD recommendation for R2 M11x - same as any other of the alienware forums recommendation (i.e. Crucial m4) or is the lack of sata iii mean another better, cheaper option, such as?

2. AlienRespawn is hit or miss with restoring a factory image taken with a HDD to a SSD? From what I've read in other threads, it worked easily for some but failed for others?

Thanks

 

There is a similar thread in the SSD forum that I recently replied to. Here is the contents of that post:

Crucial M4 is a pretty darned good drive. I would definitely get that, in whatever capacity you can afford. If your budget truly is closer to the $400 mark, then get the 256GB drive. If you can only comfortably spend closer to $200, then get the 128GB capacity.

Yes, the Crucial M4 is a SATA3-capable (6Gbps) drive, while your laptop is only SATA2-capable (3Gbps). But that really doesn't matter. The increase in maximum bandwidth between SATA2 --> SATA3 only affects Sequential Read patterns. Most of your real-world usage (about 95%) will actually be hitting your storage device with Random Read patterns. So in real-world usage, the difference between SATA2 and SATA3 doesn't really matter.

A high-performance high-capacity SSD like the Crucial M4 256GB has the benefit of being future-proof. You will be able to use it in your current machine today, and get great results. And you will be able to carry it forward into whatever laptop / desktop you use in the future, when you retire your current Dell XPS M1530.


P.S. Definitely avoid the OCZ Agility 2 drive. It is a previous-generation drive, using slower flash memory than OCZ's mainstream performance part (the OCZ Vertex series). If someone gave me an OCZ Agility 2, I still wouldn't use it.