Thread: SSD Time

SSD's are the reason I get first pick in vehicles on BF4

Amazon forgot to pack the SSD in the large order I placed (did all my Christmas shopping online this year ) so they had to send me another one. Finally got here tonight. Usually a fresh Windows install takes 45-60 minutes to complete. This one took 6 minutes with about 4 of those minutes loading files off of the DVD. Now that Im going through installing the necessities (drivers, programs, etc...) I can come to appreciate how quick a restart takes as well.

Im sure this is true for any HDD to SSD conversion but hot damn, I am happy with my purchase thus far! Definitely glad I opted for the 256GB drive instead of the 128GB one as well. Just gives me more wiggle room to easily decide if something is worthy of being installed on the SSD instead of the secondary HDD.

The only issue Im going to run into is deciding when to rip the bandaid off to start installing less important programs on my secondary HDD since it currently houses my Win7 installation I came from. I dont want to accidentally clear important files/cfgs/whatnot from there so I can install some Steam games. I wonder if I do a mirror copy of some sort onto another HDD if I can still boot that copy up into Win7 if need be...

Purchased a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB on cyber monday for a deal.
Decisions, decisions.... Put in my Lenovo Ideapad Y580 or my main desktop rig.
Either way, trying to figure out how to initialize the drive (USB to SATA/IDE adapter). Drive isn't being recognized. Might try formatting the drive on my desktop to NTFS first and try again.

Originally Posted by Bane

Purchased a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB on cyber monday for a deal.
Decisions, decisions.... Put in my Lenovo Ideapad Y580 or my main desktop rig.
Either way, trying to figure out how to initialize the drive (USB to SATA/IDE adapter). Drive isn't being recognized. Might try formatting the drive on my desktop to NTFS first and try again.

You have to go under device manager --> disk management and it will show up as unintialized....right click initialize select MBR if you are going to use it as a boot device and format. It will do this automatically during an OS install.

If it doesn't show up under disk management connect a different drive to the exact same Sata--> USB connector. If the second drive shows up without changing anything but the SSD still doesn't its possible you have a DOA SSD. You can visit the manufacturers webside and check for a firmware update but if its bricked you likely can't update the firmware and you will have to RMA the SSD

The funny thing is, two identical SSD drives aren't showing up.

Under disk management, I tried to initialize the drive with MBR but the utility claims that there is not enough space on the drive?
Granted, the computer only sees the adapter and not the drive, and the uninitialized drive doesn't show up with any space.

I plugged the drives directly into my desktop motherboard as well in hopes of formatting them, but my desktop computer is having issues recognizing them too. Any specific settings that I need to be looking out for?
I'll be plugging a spare SATA drive I have around into the adapter to see if the computer recognizes it... it has in the past.

Originally Posted by Allane

This is very true for SandForce, which is why I didn't suggest any drives (Intel) using that controller. Their main advantage is that they're extremely affordable while being fast with the large majority of data. They've been plagued in the past with OEMs (OCZ comes to mind) trying to butt into the market, pushing out drives with SandForce, but with poor support. Only Intel does a good job with SandForce based drives these days, but Mushkin's been trying, and the now-defunct Patriot did a great job.

For a while, Sandforce was the only way to get a high performance drive for a reasonable cost. I have 3 Sandforce SSDs in my home, and they all work perfectly. One of them required a firmware update to prevent some issues if the PC ever went into stand by or, God forbid, sleep mode, but I was well aware of this issue going into the purchase as I was an informed consumer.

I currently have 5 SSDs total, 4 of which are OCZ (2 x Vertex 2, 1 x Vertex 3, 1 x Vector), with the last being a Samsung 840, which is a great drive, but I love the Vector.