SSD in XPS L502X Questions.

1. I'm planning on getting a 64 GB SSD, if you have installed a 64 GB SSD, how much space is left after installing drivers?

2. What brand of SSD are you using, which do you recommend me?

3. Does the left side of the laptop feel a lot cooler when using SSD?

 

1. Don't know but get 120-128GB min if you can afford.
2. Stick to intel, crucial/micron, or samsung. If you want to enjoy SATA III speeds, then your choice will be limited to crucial M4 or intel 510.
3. Yes

 

1. Well Windows 7 will take up 20+GB on a fresh install, plus there are all those updates Microsoft likes to release. I don't remember the space after driver install, but you are in the 30GB range in order to allow a little room to grow. You can move the entire USERS folder to a secondary mechanical hard drive if you swap the DVD drive out for a caddy and put the old drive there, this will help some. I recommend 120/128GB for a SSD drive, less to worry about with that space. You never want to exceed 80-90% capacity used on an SSD.

2. Crucial M4 is the best option for SATA 3 right now, which the l502x can use fully. Intel 510 is good too, but usually is a lot more expensive than the M4 and not any faster in real usage. The 128GB M4 was just on Shell Shocker on Newegg for $170 the other day, a great price for that drive. It goes on sale fairly often.

3. Well, it will be lowered, but most of the heat you see is from the CPU/GPU so you will likely see only a minimal improvement. SSDs do run cooler than mechanical hard drives, but even mechanicals only put off a small amount of heat compared to the CPU and GPU.

 

120gb vertex 3 is great for me.... No problems and its stonkingly fast.

 

Unfortunately there are countless people with Vertex 3 issues, and other Sandforce-based drives. I'm glad to hear yours works fine though, don't get me wrong. I just think it is sad how Sandforce and OCZ have been handling the problems.

 

On Question 1: I have done 3 Windows 7 64-bit *with* SP1 installs recently, two on 120 GB SSDs (one Intel 320, one Intel 510) and one Crucial m4 64 GB). the raw install will take 15-20 GB. Windows 7 *with" SP1 integrates a lot of service packs, and is a smaller install than installing Windows 7 RTM and then manually installing SP1. If one disables Hibernate (at the command prompt, "powercfg -h off" without the quotation marks), one will "save" the 8 GB or so that hiberfil.sys takes in the root C: drive; whether one does this depends on whether he wants to use the Hibernate feature -- arguably a current-generation SSD is fast enough from a cold boot that not much time is saved by keeping and using Hibernate, although this is a user preference. If the machine has "enough" RAM, then the page file can be reduced, saving further SSD drive space. Remember that even after a Windows 7 x64 with SP1 install, there will be several GB of Windows Updates that will be available/needed anyway. On my installs on machines with 8 GB of RAM, I have disabled Hibernate and eliminated the 8 GB hiberfil.sys, and have reduced the page file to either 1 GB or 400 MB. The result is a raw Windows 7 x64 with SP1 install that is under 9 GB -- but Windows updates and very basic programs quickly bring this up to around 15-16 GB. With Acrobat Reader, a graphics editor or two, a video editor, a cut-down MS Office, and *no games*, the drives are soon at around 23-24 GB. I have read (and may be wrong here, and may need to be corrected) that write amplification starts to increase significantly as one uses more than 50% or so of *available* SSD capacity, remembering that 7-10% or so of advertised capacity is reserved internally by the SSD and not available. In sum, on an Intel 320 or 510 120 GB drive (111 GB available), the very basic Windows 7 x64 with SP1 plus Windows Updates plus very basic programs with no games, takes under 25% of available SSD capacity. On a Crucial m4 64GB, the same install would take 40% or so of available SSD capacity. With a 120 GB drive, you are not worrying about capacity issues. On a 64 GB drive, you have to be careful about how much you install -- and remember that some programs (Adobe, NVidia and Microsoft are examples) will leave a full set of unpacked installer files on the OS drive, to be available for future updates that will look for those files. So drive capacity and managing drive usage does become a concern (not necessarily a problem, but you have to watch it) with a 64 GB drive.

On Question 2:
Personally I have used a variety of Intel second-gen SSD drives (80 and 160 GB) and now two third-gen SSD drives, no problems whatsoever, but not the top performers; quick boot and quick application loading are strong points. Crucial third-gen m4 is quite fast (particularly on SATA III 6 GB/s). Crucial has recently release a 0009 firmware update for the m4 that does increase sequential read speeds, although little effect on other speeds, such as 4K. As a personal matter I feel comfortable with Intel and Crucial. SandForce drives, such as OCZ, Mushkin, etc. are faster, but with less of a reputation for "no problems" operation.

 

I bought crucial M4 , I will install it and update the thread

 

Don't forget to get the 0009 update, it brings massive speed improvements. Oh and turn off indexing as well!

 

Hey man, How do I update it? after the installation from the support site?

btw.. when you formatted it for the first time.. was it slow?

 

Go to Crucial's firmware page: Crucial.com Product Downloads - Firmware Updates

You download the ISO file, burn it to a CD, install the SSD, boot from the CD, and it'll step you through it (basically it detects drives, and asks if you want to update the drive). Check the instructions on the page I linked though. make sure you get the ISO for your size drive, there might be a difference between them.

As for slow, do you mean the format was slow? If so, you must have done a full format, a quick format is all you need. Just update the firmware, then install Windows, and let it format during the install. It all goes pretty fast, the format is a few seconds long.

 

Thank you, I have updated the firmware and it is really fast!


zjacobss, I got the 128gigs Crucial M4.. I got it from newegg for 200$, please note that if you use Dell recovery then you will lose around 30 gigs.. in another thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/608497-m4-ssd-issue-xps-15-new-setup.html , Risco and Madmattd helped me to get my SSD running and I have installed a fresh original copy and activated it, once I was done with the installation my SSD showed as 119 gigs while in the Dell copy it showed 99 I think...

For the hardisk vibrating and heating issue, there is no heat at all in that area anymore! so it was the hard disk... there is slight vibration sometimes from the FAN and if I use a dvd.. I will change the FAN and heatsink next week..

I have also noticed that my toucpad gets warm sometimes but it is not from the SSD for sure, I dunno if this is new or I never noticed it but I will see what happens after I replace the FAN, now I will contact Dell to send me a new hard disk and send them the old one, then I will buy a Caddy and remove the DVD and insert it , Hope that helps

 

Just in case anyone wants to do the Dell recovery to an SSD: After doing everything, just give a letter to the recovery partition in windows Disk Management, enable the option to show hidden and system files under folder options, go into the recovery partition and delete the ~8GB Dell recovery image. Using windows Disk Management again, you will be able to reduce the size of that partition to ~300MB. May be a small price to pay to avoid the hassle of new windows installation (and more importantly) looking for and installing all drivers.

 

Thanks everyone for the replies!
This is the SSD I want to buy now: CT064M4SSD2 - 64GB, 2.5-inch Solid State Drive , from Crucial.com

Too bad I don't have money to go higher and I need to get a HDD Caddy too.

 

I think you should wait and get the 128 at least because once you install it .. you will lose alot of gigs.. mine went from 128 to 119 without consuming anything.. and then rest took around 30.. so basically if you get te 60 then you won't have enough.. now I have 92 gigs left.. imagine from 128?

 

I think 64 GB will be fine, I just need Photoshop on it and maybe one game. I've also read some tweaks to free space.

Anyone know if this hdd caddy will work?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-IBM-43N...e_Internal&hash=item45f9754811#ht_1925wt_1392

The one I've seen people using here is out of stock at the moment and the one in the link above looks like the same, I'm not sure.

edit: And what about this one?
http://www.amazon.com/SATA-caddy-12...1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1315063474&sr=1-1

 

The one from ebay will NOT work (well it will after some minor mods, but you can't attach the Dell faceplate to it, so it won't look nice). Don't know about the amazon one, but you can get this one to make sure it works: 12.7mm SATA 2nd HDD Caddy FOR ACER HP DELL ASUS DV25 | eBay

 

I prefer to buy from amazon because I'll get the SSD from amazon and I can save some money by shipping just one package instead of two (international).
But I don't know which one will fit.

 

The "loss" you refer to is typical of formatting a drive. Manufactuers display capacity based on a MB=1000 bytes, while when you format, the MB is based on 1024 bytes. Go to your My Computer, right-click on the drive and view properties. The capacity right over the pie chart will be darn close to 128,000,000,000 bytes.

 

As I said, the ebay one you listed will NOT fit. The Amazon one *should* fit, but there is a mention of "IDE interface" in its description - probably a typo, but you may want to double-check with seller. The ebay one I mentioned will fit. There are a couple of ebay sellers in Hong Kong that also sell the universal caddy for $10 or less with free international shipping, but you may want to email them to make sure the faceplate is removable and replaceable. Example:
12.7mm SATA 2nd HDD Caddy FOR ACER HP DELL ASUS | eBay

 

So the one you mentioned before will perfectly work without problems and I can change the faceplate too? If so I'll better get that one then.

 

Are you installing the new SSD in the HDD caddy? or you want to put your old drive in the caddy that you will buy? I was wondering if the Sata port that is being used by the DVD is Sata 3..

 

It's not. Best put the SSD in the primary HDD port, and the mechanical in the caddy. Plus you want the boot drive more "secured" from accidental removal anyway.