I FInally Bought One - OCZ Vertex 2 64GB SSD

Now if only the larger SSD's, around the 128GB ones, would follow suit. I looked them up, and most are well over $200, some as high as $360. I guess in time, these will reduce in price as well.

60GB is perfectly fine, unless you're dualbooting between OS's. While today's standards in mechanical drives are headed towards TB's, rather than GB's, 128GB is a ton of space. Many of these 1TB drives on a home computer doesn't come close to being filled, as I have a total of 14 OS's (2 partitions, with 12 VM's), and my 1TB drive is only one third filled.

On my notebook that has a 100GB (93GB usable) drive, I was quad booting, and had one VM installed. So I have no doubt that a 128GB drive will meet my needs.

Nibs, I hope you enjoy your purchase, I know that you've waited a long time for it.

Cat

I did a clean install today. I had the OS installed when I did the BIOS update and it was a little quirky or buggy.

I did a secure erase of the SSD and then reinstalled Windows 7 Pro x64.

My ATTO Disk Benchmark score improved! Not a great deal but noticeable.



This was the previous test done three days ago:

I most certainly will buy one, probably not for this PC, but for my next notebook. Honestly, other than needed accessories (mouse, keyboard, RAM, etc), I don't want to spend any more money on this one. The SSD won't bring up my WEI score up a bit, as my Aero graphics is a 3.0, and that's my final score. It may render web pages faster, but that's it.

A more powerful system would probably benefit from a quality SSD, and hopefully within a few months of purchasing my next notebook, I can get one. But only a recent one, not a leftover first generation one. For my needs, still at least a 128GB one will be necessary. I expect the next version of Windows to be out within a couple of years (the beta/RC sooner), and want the largest one that I can afford, to dual boot between the two.

Linux will run just fine from the eSATA or USB 3.0 ports (I won't buy one w/o at least one of each), I can put the original drive in a case for that purpose.

Cat

This is an update regarding my SSD I bought a few months ago.

I had started to experience BSODs on a 2-4 times a week basis and couldn't for the life of me figure what the heck was going on. It was very frustrating to say the least!

In the beginning I had to install a special BIOS firmware update for my Gigabyte motherboard that was labeled: vF13e. It was/is a beta firmware written exclusively so the motherboard would recognize the SSD correctly.

I had installed the latest firmware update for the Vertex 2 which is v1.33 a few weeks back. So in my experimentation a couple of weeks ago, I decided to see if going back to the motherboard BIOS firmware vF12 (latest stable release) would make any difference now. I changed the BIOS on the mobo back to vF12 and rebooted. The system stayed fairly stable for several days with no BSOD and the drive was being fully recognized now too. OCZ must have tweaked their firmware for the SSD, but never mentioned it in the release information regarding the SSD and the Gigabyte motherboard issues. Last weekend I had another BSOD while listening to streaming audio on AIMP2 media player.

I decided then to do a complete clean reinstall of Windows 7 Professional and also doing a secure wipe of the SSD using the Diskpart feature of the install DVD where 0's are written to the drive taking the SSD back to a pristine like-new state. After installing all the chipset drivers and Intel RST driver in the correct sequence and then using SSD Tweaker software I decided to start hammering the setup.

The system is VERY stable now, no BSODs in a week's time and ATTO benchmarks look super! Also running the trial version of SSDLife Pro software SSD analyzer shows a life expectancy of over 9 years!



So it looks as if I did the correct thing in restoring the official Gigabyte BIOS firmware back to the motherboard. The vF13e was a BETA so I knew initially that it may have been a little buggy to start with.

The system is running the best it has since I bought the drive. After several BSODs I got a little discouraged and wondered if I did the right thing or not, now I know it was just a matter of changing the mobo's BIOS along with the latest firmware for the SSD from OCZ.

In addition I am now using the latest version of Raxco's PerfectDisk defrag software, version 12 which is now enhanced specifically for use with SSD drives.

Another note of interest, I have moved my Page File to the SSD now, since it's recommended that the file be at the same speed as the hard drive. In addition, I reduced the Page File size to 1 GB total since I have 6 GB of total RAM. No problems whatsoever and since the Page File consists of mostly reads there is no harm done. Most ubergeeks are recommending keeping the file on the SSD.