As long as it uses an Indinlinx or Sandforce chipset, you're good. Don't buy anything else. The brand, like Kingston, is not all that important, the used chipset is. I believe Kingston uses Samsung memory chips anyway (most SSD munfacturers do).


While it's true the problem doesn't arise with Vista and 7, this is only true IF you do the partitioning with said OS'es. But if you clone an older HD to SSD, and the older HD was not partitioned with Vista or 7 to begin with, the target drive, in this case the SSD, won't be aligned either. Vista or 7 will not magically align an unaligned partition if you used it with those OS'es, you'll need to do that manually.

I know you may not have enough sata ports, but just in case you do manage to temporarily free one:
how about simply adding the new disk, creating a mirror from the old one, then breaking the mirror and removing the old one for good? That's extremely easy with Windows Disk Manager.


Edit: Oops, no, forget it. XP Pro does not do mirroring IIRC. Win Server 2003 does, only. I don't have an XP box close by to check in this very moment, but I'll check as soon as I can.

Edit: Also, I am assuming the new disk is larger than the old one, which is not necessarily true with SSD... Is it?

My computer is Vista, not XP. The system C:> drive is the IDE drive, it is a small (by today's standards) 80 GB drive which I will replace with a 128 GB SSD.

All of the hard drives (six of them, 4 internal, two external, connected 4@ SATA, 1@ IDE, 1@ USB, 6.7 TB total) were formatted/partitioned with Vista. All disks are single-partition.

No problem temporarily freeing a SATA port - one of my SATA ports is dedicated to an external eSATA dock so the mechanics of formatting and cloning the system drive are simple enough. It's the details of just how to do it that I am uncertain of. Can you explain that mirror trick in more detail?

tanstaafl.

Of course! IIRC Vista should be able to create mirrors via software, that is directly from the disk manager and w/o needing a dedicated hardware raid controller. If I am wrong, you will simply not find some of the menu items I am listing below.
I am basing the simple procedure below on Windows 7, but Vista should be pretty much the same in terms of menu structure.

0. Connect the new drive to your PC. Possibly placing it in its final location and using its final SATA port and cable. So you won't have to remove it later. It'll just stay there "for good". Boot your PC.
1. Start->Right-click on "my computer"->Manage
2. Storage->Disk Management.
3. Activate/import (whatever needed) your new disk, and upgrade it to Dynamic
4. Upgrade your old disk to Dynamic if it is still basic (right-click where it says basic)
5. Right-click to your old disk, selec "Create Mirror" . If Vista has this feature locked for license reasons (As I was saying, I can't remember which of Vista flavours, other than the Server - aka Windows Server 2008 R1 - is capable of doing mirrors and which is not) you will simpli not find the option there and this whole thing is not possible.
If you find the "create mirror" option, just click on it and select the new disk when prompted.
6. Let it build the mirror. It may take from 10 minutes to hrs, depending on the size of your disks, more precisely on the amd of data in the old disk. In your case, I'd expect 20 mins.
7. When done, you have a mirror system in place. Reboot your machine, just to be sure all is ok.
8. Shut down, remove old disk from your case, boot again. You will be prompted whether you want to boot from the mirror (C: duplex) disk as the old one is gone. Say yes. You system will boot, and if all is ok it will be blazing fast due to the SSD.
8. Logon, back to the Disk Manager. You will find your old disk there, marked as missing. Right-click on it, select to break mirror, accept all disclaimers, and then "remove" it logically (right click, remove).
9. Done.

Should anything go wrong, you can always plug your old disk in and boot from there, so it is fairly safe.

I've done this zillions of times in Windows Server of all flavors in the last 10 years, since Windows Server 2000 times, and I never had an issue. And, you've got 9 points up here just because I am trying to giude you step by step. What you're doing is really a piece of cake process, quite obvious and streight-forward.

I actually keep a mirror in my home server as well, so my HDD upgrades simply involve adding a couple of steps to create a new, larger mirror. Very convenient and simple.

I hope this helps. If not, let me know and I'll try better



Edit:
I forgot. When the process is complete, you will find yourself with a 80GB partition only in the new 128GB SSD. Still in disk manager, right click on the partition and expand it to fill the remaining space. Remember its a "Dynamic" disk, you can do a lot more basic formatting, resizing, moving stuff with it, now.

One more consideration.

If you are planning to move to Windows 7 32 bits (since you ahve Vista 32bits), the upgrade process from Vista takes a long time, but is very accurate and completely automatic.
I use daily a laptop that I had formatted last to install Vista RC1. It got updated several times, and actually the whole hdd migrated to more powerful laptops three times, and eventually upgraded to Widnows 7 Ultimate when it was released; in spite of all this fiddling, it is fast and nice.
So, if this is your case and your Vista flavor does not allow mirrors, you may consider upgrading to 7 Ultimate first, and then migrade to your new SSD via the mirror trick.

Too bad not going to 64 bits, however, since you're at it. Unfortunately, that means formatting.

Reportedly works under WINE.


The architectural cad world is very well represented on Linux, but predominantly through expensive profressional-grade CAD software packages. I suspect that Doug's use trends more towards the 3D floorplan visualization, than the CAD side of things. Probably sweet home 3d is the most comparable (which is java, and works on Windows, too). Moving up a few notches from there is CYCAS.


Especially since the ability to undelete depends on what filesystem you're using. The last time I needed an undelete program, I had to dd the disk to a file on a different filesystem, and grep for strings I knew the files contained (fortunately, the deleted files were just plain-text).


And you don't even need a downloaded program to do it!

That is a lot of really good information. Thank you very much.

I know for certain that my computer does indeed support mirroring, since when the guy built it for me (he was chief engineer at the radio station where I worked) he set it up as a RAID system. The RAID failed and, not being a fan of RAID I changed over to a setup of individual hard drives. Since that time my hard drive storage has increased from 680 GB to 6.7 TB, nearly a ten-fold increase. And of course, every bit and byte stored in my computer is crucially important. Yeah, right.

I still have to shop for the SSD, and am not having much luck finding the Intel or Sandforce models you recommend. Any recommendations as to where to look? Edit: That's because Intel doesn't make a 128GB SSD. They have 80GB and 160GB. If their 80GB is smaller than my 80GB mechanical drive, I can't do the mirror, so I guess I'm looking at the 160GB.

I did have one thought of a minor problem: I am replacing a 3.5" drive with a 2.5" form factor, so of course the mounting hardware isn't going to work. Are there 2.5"<-->3.5" mounting adapter kits out there? There must be.

This really does look to be a straightforward process, unless I run into problems because my BIOS is unhappy with the SSD instead of a mechanical drive, or Microsoft is unhappy because my copy of Windows is registered to a certain hard drive. Hopefully if either of these problems arises it will be relatively easily solvable.

If I move to Windows 7 (no really compelling reason to do so right now) I will bite the bullet and reformat and go 64-bit. I have heard too many horror stories about upgrading to a new OS (rather than nuke and repave) because when you upgrade you are just bringing all the old faults and registry problems along with you. My install is five years old now, and I'm sure there are little things not quite right, lots of software has been installed and removed over the years and we know how that leaves detritus. Maybe next year, when the new SSD is all installed and settled in and I am looking to increase my frustration level by an order of magnitude.

tanstaafl.

There's a possibility that it does so via hardware controller built into your mb, in which case the procedure I suggested is going to be useless because you are going to create a mirror via the BIOS+Intel (typically) utility that comes with the raid controller.
However, the concept is unchanged: add new drive, create mirror, then break it, then remove old drive.


I got my Intel 80GB x25-m from Amazon.co.uk last May...


... and it comes with the adapter kit. I would assume many of them do.


I think that's very unlikely.



Correct, that was my point actually. I myself have actually gone through many horror stories up to the Vista->7 upgrade. It is the only one that took an entire night to complete, provided me with a very thorough analysis of what was done and how each piece of installed software would behave with the new OS, and worked just fine.
Admittedly, an entire night is a long time. Still, if you let it run and leave, it could be worth a thought.
Actually, I just dislike the idea of the upgrade to a new OS per se. I just tried it out of curiosity, ready to format all and reinstall since that particular install had gone through similar upgrades previously and was moved to new hardware three times, and I figured it was really time not to be lazy any longer and restart from scratch. But I wanted to see how bad the upgrade would be. And after 1 year I am still using that same machine every day happily. It is just fast. 3 GB RAM helped.

How about this one?

tanstaafl.

Duct tape and cardboard work amazingly well, and cheap, too!

Remember, these SSDs ain't your grandpa's Fireballs!

96GB? I'm not familiar with that exact model. But I did just now pause and pull out the 120GB SSD from the notebook I'm typing this one -- looks exactly the same on the outside, and I love this one.

(..and then plugged it back into the guts of the notebook, waited a few seconds for Linux to figure out what happened, and then things continued as normal.. no reboot).

EDIT: Ah.. just saw this part of the spec: "Sustained Write: up to 100 MB/s" --- That's slow for a state-of-the-art SSD, so it's more like an Agility series I drive than a true Vertex model.

Not according to Google.

Right. As I mentioned earlier, I meant to claim credit for "capriciously", not "capricious".

tanstaafl.

There, you see? It's why I rely on you good folks on the empeg bbs instead of my own limited knowledge.

Can you point me towards a site where I can purchase an SSD in the 120 GB range (a little smaller, a little bigger, not a problem) in the $200--$300 range? An SSD that you would be happy with and recommend?

tanstaafl.

Ok, I just clicked on the link, and if that's what happened to you, yes, you did have a hardware-based RAID. That's not what I am referring to above. Which may still work, anyway.

If you want to check in advance, just go to disk manager and upgrade your current drive to dynamic. Than right click on it and if you see a grayed "Add Mirror" option, you can create a mirror and all the system is waiting to enable that option is a second hard drive with enough empty space.

Here's what I see... (right-click to view image, zoom to read it.

tanstaafl.

I bought my original 120GB Vertex from newegg. They have a ton of different drives there now. The other drives I have here are vendor samples.

From the Vertex line, I really like the 100GB "Vertex LE", which has a lightening quick Sandforce controller inside. But it is only 100GB of space..

Cheers

Bummer, it only let's you create spanned and striped volumes, not mirror ones. What a silly thing to disable the feature.

You'll have to create the mirror via "hardware" (Bios + Intel utility).

Or you may hack a system file with an hex editor to enable the mirroring (I should have the info needed somewhere). At the next update that system file may (and will eventually) be replaced by a new version uncapable of mirroring, but by then you'll be on the SSD. I don't know whether I'd recommend something like that. I did it once in XP and irt worked, but stil...

Mark, the reviews at Newegg on that SSD are a bit unsettling, a third of them are negative. However, the performance numbers are astounding. Should I put much credence on the reviews?

100GB is plenty of room for my system drive, I am only using about half that much space now. I guess there are enough different ways to clone my existing drive that even though taym's suggestion of mirroring then breaking the mirror won't work for me it won't be a huge problem. I'll wait a couple of days and if nobody comes up with a better suggestion, I'll buy the drive you recommend. You haven't steered me wrong yet!

tanstaafl.

Is this a process easily explained, or should I look at alternative methods of cloning? You mention an Intel utility... my CPU is AMD, my chipset is Nvidia. Is that relevant?

tanstaafl.

AMD+Nvidia: I don't know how to create a RAID there. Best case scenario is only having to operate in the bios. But whether it is possible to do so without loosing data in the original disc or not, I don't really know either Sorry I can't help there.

There are firmware updates at OCZ for their drives, and you should install the latest firmware immediately on receipt of the drive. That will solve most complaints.

The performance numbers are quite real, but assume a 3gb/sec SATA interface. Otherwise they max out at 128 M-Bytes/sec R/W.

Cheers

Note: The Agility-II series are *excellent* drives, and probably cheaper/larger. I would go for those if spending my own cash now.

Cheers

Like this one?

tanstaafl.

Edit: How important is the TRIM function? This drive (and all OCZ drives, if I understand correctly) support TRIM, but Vista does not. Is the Garbage Collection feature enough to keep the drive happy? I was going to say that my C:> drive doesn't get written to very much, but on reflection that is incorrect. All the temp files, email, internet browsing, downloads, word processing, paint programs... myriads of small files that come and go are going to clutter up whatever the equivalent of the file allocation table is. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy the drive and put Windows 7 64-bit on it to begin with.

db

Yeah, that's the model I'd buy today, were I buying.

TRIM is primarily for helping with file deletions, not overwrites. It's nice, and can prevent a 10-15 percent degradation that might build up over a long period.

But.. that's 10-15% of a very very fast drive, and you'd be unlikely to ever notice it.

And.. the built-in garbage-collection (GC) will probably handle it anyway, giving back 8-12% of that 10-15%.

Cheers

One caveat: whilst running a slightly older firmware release on my 120GB Vertex drive, earlier this summer some kind of bug hit hard, and wiped the drive.

No problem, I just restored from the previous night's backup, after first upgrading it to the latest firmware (two revisions newer than what crashed).

Stuff can happen. That's the first catastrophic failure I've ever had from any drive. In theory, that bug got fixed in the newer firmware. In practice, one never knows.

Do note that I'm still using the (upgraded) drive as my main "everything" drive again now, despite having a choice of others.

Cheers

In the last 7 years, I've been keeping my files on a mirrored volume, and I back it up every night, and I keep weekly and monthly backups as well.

Still, these things just scare me.

Surprisingly, it would be easier to deal with the loss of my system drive than any of my data drives. I just took a quick look through it, and there really isn't anything on it I couldn't either do without or easily replace from backups. The big annoyance would be having to reinstall all my software. Since I have original media, passwords, etc. for every piece of software in my computer and the downloaded software source material is all stored, organized, and cataloged on my primary data disk, also on that data disk's backup, and finally on the data disk backup's backup, losing my system drive would not be a catastrophe, just time consuming.

tanstaafl.

Well, my backups are boot-able mirrors of the actual drive. So a system restore consists of:

cat /dev/sdb > /dev/sda
(after booting from a USB stick)

..eventually followed by a "trim" of the unused space:

wiper.sh --commit /dev/sda1

-ml

Heh.. along the same lines, note that a *full* image clone of a 120GB system drive might take only a few minutes, if both drives are modern SSDs on SATA-II interfaces.. over 200MBytes/second.

Unfortunately, my main (notebook) machine only has SATA-I, so it takes about 15 minutes for a full system clone.. aw..