Change to the SSD Disk

[boncoe]

Hello everyone, my question is that you advise me whether to make an image of my current mechanical hard drive and then dump it to the new SDD, or install Windows 7 from scratch directly on the SDD?.
Regarding the brand and model of SDD I have been looking at PC Components and I am quite convinced by the performance and especially the positive opinions of those who have bought the CRUCIAL M4 model of 120 Gb. I was thinking of the 256 Gb capacity but it costs me 69 € more so it will be for installing the operating system with updates, antivirus, three games at most and some other programs but lighter.
What opinion do you give me about the model and the capacity of 128 Gb for my needs?.
Thanks in advance

[Bm4n]

Well, the ideal thing would be for you to look at how much space you occupy in the system partition, in my case I don't have less than 128GB but everyone... The M4 is already a drive that has been on the market for a while, the best thing is the price that has been going down and the reliability, the downside is that the performance is inferior to the new models. It's always better to avoid the sandforce that have been giving many reliability problems.

In this section you have several opinions of different models and websites where to look at reviews and comparisons, read a little to see. Of all of them in my opinion you still need 150-200€ to be able to find a drive that compensates for performance/price, although it also depends on what it is going to replace, it's not the same to go from a RAID0 of fast hard drives that from a single old and slow drive to an SSD, the difference although it is not the fastest SSD on the market it will be noticed a lot.

[Sylver]

I recommend that you install windows from scratch, because it will be cleaner and will work much better. I know it is a lot of work, especially if you have many programs to reinstall and so on, but it is worth it, you will be happy to have done it.
I have, for example, the experience of dumping an image of an IDE disk to a SATA one for an upgrade, and the result is that it went worse, slower and with problems, so there is nothing like a clean installation, you will get a round investment in the SSD.

Greetings

[boncoe]

Well, currently I have two hard drives:

• WESTER DIGITAL CAVIAR BLUE 500Gb/7.200 Rev.
  Field Value
  Device Properties ATA
  Model ID ST3500410AS
  Serial Number 5VM067QY
  Revision CC31
  World Wide Name 5-000C50-012416AE4
  Device Type SATA-II
  Parameters 969019 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector
  LBA Sectors 976771055
  Buffer 16 MB
  Multiple Sectors 16
  ECC Bytes 4
  Transfer Mode PIO Max PIO 4
  Transfer Mode MWDMA Max MWDMA 2
  Transfer Mode UDMA Max UDMA 6
  Transfer Mode UDMA Active UDMA 5
  Unformatted Capacity 476939 MB
  ATA Standard ATA8-ACS

ATA Device Features
48-bit LBA Supported
Advanced Power Management Not Supported
Automatic Acoustic Management Supported, Enabled
Device Configuration Overlay Supported
DMA Setup Auto-Activate Not Supported
General Purpose Logging Supported
Host Protected Area Supported, Enabled
In-Order Data Delivery Not Supported
Native Command Queuing Supported
Phy Event Counters Supported
Power Management Supported, Enabled
Power-Up In Standby Supported, Disabled
Read Look-Ahead Supported, Enabled
Release Interrupt Not Supported
Security Mode Supported, Disabled
SMART Supported, Enabled
SMART Error Logging Supported
SMART Self-Test Supported
Software Settings Preservation Supported, Enabled
Streaming Not Supported
Tagged Command Queuing Not Supported
Write Cache Supported, Enabled

SSD Features
Data Set Management Not Supported
Deterministic Read After TRIM Not Supported
Trim Command Not Supported

ATA Device Physical Information
Manufacturer Seagate
Hard Drive Name Barracuda 7200.12 500410
Form Factor 3.5"
Formatted Capacity 500 GB
Disks 1
Recording Surfaces 2
Physical Dimensions 146.99 x 101.6 x 19.98 mm
Max Weight 415 g
Average Rotational Latency 4.16 ms
Rotation Speed 7200 RPM
Max Internal Data Rate 1695 Mbit/s
Average Seek Time 8.5 ms
Track-to-Track Seek 1 ms
Interface SATA-II
Buffer Rate to Host 300 MB/s
Buffer Size 16 MB
Spin-Up Time 8.5 sec

• SEAGATE BARRACUDA 500Gb/7.200 Rev.
  Field Value
  Device Properties ATA
  Model ID WDC WD5000AAKS-00YGA0
  Serial Number WD-WCAS80520955
  Revision 12.01C02
  World Wide Name 5-0014EE-2AB2F5E2D
  Device Type SATA-II
  Parameters 969021 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector
  LBA Sectors 976773168
  Buffer 16 MB
  Multiple Sectors 16
  ECC Bytes 50
  Transfer Mode PIO Max PIO 4
  Transfer Mode MWDMA Max MWDMA 2
  Transfer Mode UDMA Max UDMA 6
  Transfer Mode UDMA Active UDMA 5
  Unformatted Capacity 476940 MB
  ATA Standard ATA8-ACS

ATA Device Features
48-bit LBA Supported
Advanced Power Management Not Supported
Automatic Acoustic Management Supported, Enabled
Device Configuration Overlay Supported
DMA Setup Auto-Activate Supported, Disabled
General Purpose Logging Supported
Host Protected Area Supported, Enabled
In-Order Data Delivery Not Supported
Native Command Queuing Supported
Phy Event Counters Supported
Power Management Supported, Enabled
Power-Up In Standby Supported, Disabled
Read Look-Ahead Supported, Enabled
Release Interrupt Not Supported
Security Mode Supported, Disabled
SMART Supported, Enabled
SMART Error Logging Supported
SMART Self-Test Supported
Software Settings Preservation Supported, Enabled
Streaming Not Supported
Tagged Command Queuing Not Supported
Write Cache Supported, Enabled

SSD Features
Data Set Management Not Supported
Deterministic Read After TRIM Not Supported
Trim Command Not Supported

ATA Device Physical Information
Manufacturer Western Digital
Hard Drive Family Caviar Blue
Form Factor 3.5"
Formatted Capacity 500 GB
Physical Dimensions 147 x 101.6 x 25.4 mm
Max Weight 630 g
Average Rotational Latency 4.2 ms
Rotation Speed 7200 RPM
Max Internal Data Rate 1008 Mbit/s
Average Seek Time 8.9 ms
Track-to-Track Seek 2 ms
Full Seek 21 ms
Interface SATA-II
Buffer Rate to Host 300 MB/s
Buffer Size 16 MB

Both are a few years old and I think the Seagate is from 2005, to be honest I'm a bit confused. My intention is an SSD but of course I've calculated the capacity I would need and currently with my operating system, programs, and a couple of games installed (Battlefield 3 and STCC) it takes up about 100Gb, so I would need a 256Gb SSD which would be quite expensive.
Another option that I'm not sure if I'll notice a difference since I want it for the operating system and games is from Pc Componentes:

• WD Caviar Black 500GB SATA3 7200rpm WD5003AZEX Hard Drive.
• WD Caviar Black 1TB SATA3 64MB WD1002FAEX Hard Drive

I've specified in detail my two hard drives to see if you think I'll notice a difference by buying the Caviar Black, either 500 or 1Tb.

[Sylver]

Black is better in every way than blue, of course, the only thing is that it sounds a little bit more. What I don't know is to what extent the investment compensates you, because the difference in performance exists but it is not as decisive as with the change to an SSD.
If you can, I would recommend getting into a 128Gb SSD for the system, games and applications that require speed and leave these two disks for storage and for other programs that require less performance from the disk. Apart from that, keeping the disks clean always helps, like uninstalling finished games, cleaning downloads, managing installations well, etc.

Greetings

[boncoe]

@Sylver:

Black is better in every way than blue, of course, the only thing is that it sounds a little bit more. What I don't know is to what extent the investment compensates you, because the difference in performance exists but it's not as overwhelming as with the change to an SSD.
If you can, I would recommend getting an 128Gb SSD for the system, games and applications that require speed and leave these two drives for storage and for other programs that require less performance from the drive. Besides, keeping the drives clean always helps, like uninstalling finished games, cleaning downloads, managing installations well, etc.

Regards

Well, Silver, I was thinking of getting an SSD for the system and some games and programs, but I think a 128 will be just right for me and of course the 256 is a bit out of my price range. In the case of deciding on an SSD, I'm not sure if I should choose the Crucial one that they've said works very well but has been on the market for a while and of course there are other brands with more efficient firmware. The Vertex 128 is said to work very well but I don't know, I think it will be just right for me. The Crucial M4 256 has a contained price within what is possible but of course I don't know if it's a bit discontinued or about to be. What do you think?

[Franziskaner]

that an SSD is an option but a RAID 0 is also not a bad option and cheaper ;D it does not perform as much as an SSD but …
regards

[Sylver]

What Franziskaner is telling you is not a bad idea, a RAID can be very useful and saves you some money. For raw space, the truth is that the Crucial M4 256 is a good bet, and within what is possible, we are not talking about a disk that is so old compared to the most current ones, think that the performance differences are quite small within the SSD field between the most current ones and those that are somewhat older. The change is noticeable compared to mechanical ones, that is where the significant improvement lies.

Greetings

[boncoe]

Thanks for the idea, raid 0 isn't bad but I'm not convinced about splitting the loads between two. Mostly because of the data loss issue, don't you think that a WD CAVIAR BLACK 500Gb for 69€ doesn't compensate price-capacity, or better yet the same one but 1Tb for 81€?
Another thing is that I don't understand if a WD CAVIAR BLACK 500GB AT 7,200 RPM 64MB doesn't have the same performance as a WD CAVIAR GREEN 500GB AT 7,200 RPM. Practically they have the same specifications but different prices. What do you think?, isn't it the same dog but with a different collar? or just a pure marketing way that Wester Digital establishes?

[Sylver]

The Green doesn't go to 7200 rpm, but to 5400, I'm telling you this because I have one. They are low energy consumption disks and mostly intended for storage.
The black ones, being faster, sound a little more but the speed is noticeable. Although none of this is comparable to an SSD and for system and programs it is what is currently leading. Already within the options you have you can do what you prefer or what best fits your economy.

Greetings

[Franziskaner]

I have had a RAID 0 of three disks for quite a few years now and without problems (touch wood)
although it is also true that every year or so I would format the PC
regards