Crucial M4 opinions and advise

[TriplexDread]

After much deliberation for many, many long months I have finally managed to get some spare pennies together to replace my 160gb SATA boot drive connected too the SIL3114 controller chipset on my Mobo...


Opinions please?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT2...JL2A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342947582&sr=8-1


I thought for the price this was fantastic. Yes sure they will drop again eventually but hey ho, could be ages again.
At this price I thought iw was a fantastic bargain considering what they have sold for in the past.
The question remains however. I have heard some bad stories about hte SIL3114 Chipset regarding memory address access and using a SSD on them.
So it looks like I am going to have to purchase a SATA 3 PCIe card to go with it to enable full speed access.

I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to SSD and connection to chipsets and alike so does anyone have any ideas for me. I don't want to pay anymore than £30 for a SATA 3 controller.
Drive has been ordered and paid for. But its gonna be a bit useless until I get a controller card for it really to enable full speeds or best part there of..

I have the Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI board....


TIA people


Just to add this is the controller card i've been looking at

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170869361217?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

 

[floppybootstomp]

The Crucial ssd is a good deal, it's six quid more on E-Buyer. And Crucial are a good make, OCZ 256Gb can be had for £140 but imo Crucial the better make.

I've had a good look at the card and all looks good to me. It's also a handy cheap device for adding more SATA 3 devices to a board that already has SATA. 3 capability but limited ports (mine only has a pair of SATA 3 ports).

Plus it looks as though in addition you could connect SATA 2 disks to the external ports for faster data transfer from external disks. Assuming you could sort out a power supply to an external bare SATA 2 drive that is.

 

[TriplexDread]

Yeah I was looking at the OCZ drives but heard a few people down the line saying they have failed miserably quite a few times.

Cheers mate. I think the card maybe a copy as the ones on sale here are 3 times the price, but maybe they are buying them from china as well lol

 

[Reefsmoka]

OCZ and Crucial are probably on par for SSD's. Always here good things about the M4 aswell as the OCZ Vertex range. Intel are also rated very highly. Most newer SSD's have overcome the problem of premature degrading and now last far longer. You get what you pay for with a SSD.

 

[Abarbarian]

Plus it looks as though in addition you could connect SATA 2 disks to the external ports for faster data transfer from external disks. Assuming you could sort out a power supply to an external bare SATA 2 drive that is.

Something like this but with SATA 3 capabilities would be a good choice.

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Stor...5”+HDDS,+SATA+to+USB+&+eSATA+?productId=37256

I use the one above and keep me hdd's in some coloured plastic cases I got of e-bay.

E-SATA is just as fast as having your hdd connected to the mobo.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Aye, I forgot about e-Sata external docks. So I looked for a current one, tried lots of suppliers and finally came out trumps at of all places...

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/dynamode-usb-hdk-e-esata-usb-hdd-docking-station-08136017-pdt.html

Fair price too, looks good

 

[TriplexDread]

Not really looking for external docks but appreciate the look see

I'm hoping all goes well on installation

Can I still clone my present drive to the SSD or is it best to do a clean install?

 

[floppybootstomp]

Shouldn't be any probs cloning present setup to SSD providing you have software to clone HDD's containing OS's.

 

[Abarbarian]

Clonezilla will definitely do the job of cloning a Windows install. There is an excellent step by step walkthrough here.

http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?showtopic=56462

Flops that dock is only USB 2 and they are pretty flimsy but do work.I got one for someone as a present last Christmas.

Here are a couple of USB 3 ones.

http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...248387&ei=BSkNUPbtNYmO5AbPoYH4Dw&ved=0CBgQrRI

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=eSATA/USB+HDD+Docking+Station&hl=en&cr=countryUK|countryGB&prmd=imvns&gbv=2&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=7486445892420376863&sa=X&ei=OCgNUK3hJYT80QWy9OWtCw&ved=0CJcBEPMCMAM

 

[floppybootstomp]

Flops that dock is only USB 2 and they are pretty flimsy but do work.I got one for someone as a present last Christmas.

Ah, I saw it had an e-SATA connection and rather overlooked it's USB capability

 

[Abarbarian]

Ah, I saw it had an e-SATA connection and rather overlooked it's USB capability

It will still be as quick as stink with E-SATA .

When purchasing an eSATA controller or bus card or dock, be sure it supports the SATA standard required by your SATA hard drive(s). Hardware that supports newer standards is usually backwards compatible with older devices, but the reverse does not hold. An eSATA controller made for SATA 150, for example, will not be able to support the faster transfer speeds of a SATA 300 hard drive.

 

[floppybootstomp]

It will still be as quick as stink with E-SATA .

When purchasing an eSATA controller or bus card or dock, be sure it supports the SATA standard required by your SATA hard drive(s). Hardware that supports newer standards is usually backwards compatible with older devices, but the reverse does not hold. An eSATA controller made for SATA 150, for example, will not be able to support the faster transfer speeds of a SATA 300 hard drive.

Ya don't say. Of course, I never knew that

Listen up, I been thinking. Le's go back to the card TXD listed and note that if a pair of SATA 3 drives are connected to the internal ports on the card, there will be two external ports that will work with SATA 1 or 2 drives.

The external ports on the card take an E-SATA lead. So, the device I listed at PC World - considerably cheaper than the two you listed - will work with the SATA card. So in this instance we are not concerned with the dock's USB capabilities, it's a redundant issue.

So, Buster, I was quite correct to link to that dock, USB is not an issue here

 

[TriplexDread]

Help

Why is my SSD soo slow even on SATA 2 i'm getting crappy speeds

My boot is about 90seconds, yeah faster than normal from what i'm lead to believe that is still slow

I don't have an option for AHCI on my board

I have tried the intel drive fix driver then realised I have an Nvidia based board (DOH!)
I also tried the registry fix.

I tried turning on the RAID to apparently enable the AHCI automatically. That didnt work
I tried telling raid to only use the singular drive as JBOD, that didn't work it just crashes to BSOD when windows splash screen appears.

Am I stuck until my SATA3 card arrives? Is that screen shot standard speeds for SATA2?

Any idea guys and gals?

According too Crucial these are expected speeds;

• Sustained Sequential Read: Up to 500 MB/s(SATA 6Gb/s)
• Sustained Sequential Write: Up to 260 MB/s(SATA 6Gb/s)
• 4KB Random Read: Up to 45,000 IOPS
• 4KB Random Write: Up to 50,000 IOPS

 

[floppybootstomp]

Don't expect miracles with SSD's.

Prior to my using an SSD for my primary disk I was using a pair of Western Digital 150Gb Velicoraptors in a RAID 0.

The SSD is at best just the same speed and in my opinion possibly a little slower, and I have my SSD plugged into a SATA 3 port.

Oh, it's fast alright, but not as fast as all the hype surrounding it.

My advice: excercise a little patience, wait until your disk is running through SATA 3 card, then re-apraise.

 

[TriplexDread]

Yeah in all honesty I think the SATA 2 aint really helping things

Card was ordered this week so will try it on that when it's connected up

As I said 90seconds is still a lot, lot faster than previous speeds


Cheers FBS