wow ssd drive is awesome

just stuck a crucial 256g sata 3 in(seems cheap 350 quid but great reviews)- the clone process was so easy- it came with a disk and cable- i networked into another pc's cd drive and the process took just over an hour to clone a drive with 120gigs of data on and put it in the mx11- the hd experience score has gone upto 7.9 for hd. and my pc is flying like the wind.

 

This is REALLY tempting me into getting one and finding another use for this regular old, hard disk drive of mine.

 

Wow, 256GB. I have an Intel X25-M 120GB, and love it.

Some SSD kits come with a hard drive enclosure so you can use your hard drive for external storage or backups or whatever.

 

i think its worth it- especially to the niche market that is the mx11 owners as it is a very luxury product.

problem is tho- i think ssd drives are like - once you have tried it you wont go back- so will i replace my other pcs hd's soon.

probally!

the price i am sure is gonna plumet in the future and ssd's will be the industry standard in a couple of years, the improvement is quite staggering

 

Once you go SSD you never go back! Single most noticable performance upgrade you can do to a PC.

I got a 100GB Vertex 2 for my R2. Popped the old 320GB in a little external caddy so i've now got 1420GB of storage with me in my backpack (inc my other 2.5" 1TB Samsung).
The PC boots so fast their is no point in putting it to sleep! I have Steam on the Samsung then use Steam Mover to move the games I'm currently playing onto the SSD.

 

I put a 240gb OCZ Vertex 2 in my m11x and WOW did it make the thing fly. Plus I love the fact that it's totally silent when the fan is off.

And yeah, absolutely true. Once you go SSD you can never go back. I switched out my desktop's main drive for a SSD and my wife's little netbook.

 

It is true, once you experience the speed of an SSD you don't want to go back to a traditional HDD.

I bought a Hitachi 7K500 hard drive which is one of the fastest laptop hard drives around. I figured at the time it would be fast enough for me. I later bought a Kingston V+ 64GB SSD because the price was almost down to $1 per GB after rebate. I figured that since it was so cheap I could test the SSD waters and see what the big deal was. Even though the V+ is an entry level SSD, it was much faster than my Hitachi hard drive. I ended up returning the V+ only because 64GB was enough as my only storage space in my M11x. I kept looking for a deal on an SSD in the meantime until I found my current Intel 160GB X25-m for $220 shipped on ebay. The Intel is faster than my V+ was, and offers enough storage space for me. This SSD is great and now I can't go back to a hard drive.

This seller always has listings for the X25-M and is who I bought mine from. It was practically new, with only 70GB written to the disk and 12 power ups. These SSD's were originally OEM out of HP laptops. It came with old firmware, so I updated to the current firmware and now I'm set. Very happy with the speed of the Intel.

 

OCZ, Corsair, Intel wish one is the best for m11x r2

 

Get one that's based off a Sandforce controller. They have the highest write speeds, faster than the Intel chips. OCZ Vertex 2 or Agility 2 series use it, or newly released Vertex/Agility 3 use the newest chip. Corsair uses Sandforce in some of their SSD's as well.

Look on Newegg for the write/read times, read some reviews (tom's hardware, anand tech). When I bought mine the OCZ Vertex 2 drives were the fastest ones out there, followed by the Agility 2 and Sandforce based Corsair drives.

 

Intel has the lowest fail rates of their SSDs. Their SSDs have lower failure rates than standard mechanical hard drives.

OCZ, while cheaper and NOT noticeably faster, have higher failure rates than ANY other companies SSDs and obviously higher than regular mechanical drives.

I went w/ a Corsair 256gb SSD.

CT256M4SSD2 Crucial M4 2.5 inch 256GB SATA3 Solid State Drive(MLC) - SSD Solid State Drives - SuperBiiz.com

Use code "rapture15" to knock off another $15 bucks.

405 w/ free shipping and no tax is about $30-50 cheaper than you will find this drive anywhere.

 

This is kind of a bad screenshot (At work now, but will post a more legible pic when I get home) but it amazes me how much of an improvement I get from installing my first SSD in my M11X: (I have the Intel 320 Series 128GB)

 

Anyone got a link to the thread that takes apart the m11x guts and shows pics of how to install the ssd?

 

Just open the bottom panel and there's your HDD. Just search youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeqQQU_PWRg

 

Okay, here is a better pic of my benchmarks for the Intel 320 Series SSD (120GB)



*EDIT*
Here are the benches from my 500GB mechanical for comparison:

 

I am waiting for 500GB+ SSD.

I just need a lot of drive space as I have a lot of things needed to be stored.

It's really sad that the highest SSD capacity is 256GB...

 

There are up to 600GB SSD's out there in 2.5" form factor(laptop), but the price is rather cost prohibitive.

The solution is to get external mechanical hard drives to keep data on.

 

Or set up your own Windows Home Server using and old PC. Remote access to your files from anywhere you have internet access.

 

It's great y'all like your SSDs so much, but just as a counterpoint, I don't see any reason to spend a lot of extra money for no functional improvement and less storage space.

One benefit of an ssd, booting up faster, can be bettered for free by just using sleep mode.

 

I used to think the same way about the cost-vs-capacity of SSD's, but after having my first one (Intel 320 120GB SSD) I can safely say that I won't be going back to mechanical drives for my main OS drive. Not only are boot times faster, but launching programs, etc are two-to-threefold faster. I've already got plenty of mechanical drives for storage, and will be consolidating all of that with a good NAS so that I can access the content anywhere.

 

There are pros and cons definitely. SSD's make more economical sense when you have two drive bays available, one for SSD for OS and apps, and HDD for storage and games. They are getting cheaper, but until 240GB+ SSD's become < $1/GB I don't think it's too economical for a compact notebook if you need that much storage.

I have a 120GB Intel that I bought for $160, and a Kingston 96GB V+100 that I just bought for $85. So there are deals to be had. You just have to manage your space accordingly. Although if it's your main machine then I can see the need for more storage. I have a 750GB HDD + 120GB SSD in my Sager notebook, but for my portables 100GB is more than adequate.

 

I consider a faster computer to be a functional improvement. Less time me waiting for a menu to load, or a new tab to come up. SSD makes the computer faster all around, not just booting. Programs start faster and are quicker to use. The typical windows caching is faster on an SSD. Playing games is quicker, less load time.

Much of the time we spend using computers is waiting for data to load, either waiting for data to load from the network or data to load off local storage. And an SSD is many many times faster than a traditional HDD, so you spend less time waiting for your computer. That's clearly a functional improvement.

Its one of those things that you really can't appreciate until you actually make the switch. If you've been using your laptop with a regular HDD for months and swap to an SSD you'd be amazed at the difference. Its not just booting, EVERYTHING is faster.

 

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed the first time I switched to an SSD. Then after using it for a couple months and switched to a machine with an HDD, that's where I noticed a WORLD of difference, and couldn't wait to get back to my SSD. Almost like you don't notice as much when using it until it's taken away.

 

Agreed. It's a HUGE difference when I have to use my work machines with their slow 5400 rpm HDD's. (Yes, to cut costs they use 5400 rpm's) Then when I get home I fire up the M11X and things open like there's no tomorrow.

 

exact same story, here


Vertex 2 was my first ssd, installed into my m11xr2. I finally used my desktop after a month, and it was crawling slow... needless to say, it now has an i7 2600k/gtx580 and a nice 128GB C300

 

Another benefit of the SSD, especially for mobile applications, is increased battery life due to less power consumption. Mine increased almost an hour after moving from mechanical to solid state - 6:08 minutes on R2, from 5:10.

 

This is part of the problem I am having with my main PC vs my M11x.

I have just installed a 120GB Vertex 2E into my desktop (£150 why not) as a boot & Steam drive and the responsiveness is amazing.

My M11x, whilst not slow, feels like it is dragging its feet now.

 

2.5" notebook HDD are notoriously slow. Even 7200 rpm ones will lag way behind a 3.5" desktop HDD. That's why SDD in a notebook is so magical.