SSD drive (a more specific question)

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Usc_trojan949
I know there has been write-ups here on the SSD. My specific question is am I looking for the fastest write or read speed, or both? And I really only play GT5 so is 20 to 30 gig going to be good enough? Basically I am looking for the fastest drive under 200$ if possible size isnt as important as speed as long as it's big enough for GT5.

Also I searched for the writeup about it but can't find it. If you have that link it would help but I don't recall it answering the specific questions above.

Thank you
 
Uscbryan
size isnt as important as speed as long as it's big enough
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Heh...

Sorry, I had to take that entirely out of context.

Also sorry that I really have nothing to add to any of this. 30gigs ought to be fine for just one game though.

And you'll probably be looking for fastest read speed. Once it's installed, you won't have to worry about write speed as much.
 
Uscbryan
I know there has been write-ups here on the SSD. My specific question is am I looking for the fastest write or read speed, or both? And I really only play GT5 so is 20 to 30 gig going to be good enough? Basically I am looking for the fastest drive under 200$ if possible size isnt as important as speed as long as it's big enough for GT5.

Also I searched for the writeup about it but can't find it. If you have that link it would help but I don't recall it answering the specific questions above.

Thank you
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I would not go with a 20 or 30GB drive, when you install it in the PS3 you will be lucky to even have 20GB. I just bought my 320GB slim and I only had 260GB usable. It has something to do with the file structure in a PS3, it takes a certain percentage of the total space of any drive you install. I installed a 500GB in my launch 60GB fatty about 2yrs ago and only ended up with about 360GB usable. If you have about 18GB on install lets say and then you install the game which is 8GB then you only have about 10GB left of usable space. The last update 1.05 was 608MB (over half a Gigabyte) which leaves you with 9.6GB. I haven't factored in any DLC that will be coming out for GT5. You will run out of space very quickly! I wouldn't do any SSD under 160GB.

I believe this is the Write Up you are looking for?
 
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I have had great luck with the Oz Vertex turbo...they now have the vertex 2 which is supposed to be even better.

If you are looking to do it right away, best buy actually has the intel x-25 120gb cheaper than newegg.com, it was 199.00 when I went in today.

I agree with the above, I would not get a 30g, I would get at least an 80,
 
I have a Vertex2 in my PC and I love it, but last I checked, the PS3 did not support TRIM. Without TRIM, my understanding is that the drive would eventually lose its performance advantage over a spindle based drive. Does anyone know if the PS3 can support TRIM yet,...or maybe if it's no longer required?

Some newer, non-ssd drives have gotten to be pretty fast though...and, can be significantly cheaper.
 
I have two 80gig Intel SSDs in my PC and just love them. Someday I'll upgrade the PS3 to them as well.
 
Thanks for the quick replies. I found this one on Amazon for 129. Not sure of the difference between this (agility) and the vertex. This one was 10$ more for the same gig amt Looks to have the same speeds as well. Any idea the difference between the two?

OCZ Technology 60 GB Agility 2 Series SATA II 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G

BTW is there a way to check the free space on my PS3? The only games I have ever played on it are tiger woods, gt5p and gt5. I'm curious how much of the drive I am actually using.
 
Uscbryan
BTW is there a way to check the free space on my PS3? The only games I have ever played on it are tiger woods, gt5p and gt5. I'm curious how much of the drive I am actually using.
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On the XMB, go over to Settings, then down to system settings and then to system info.
 
ShY5TR
I have a Vertex2 in my PC and I love it, but last I checked, the PS3 did not support TRIM. Without TRIM, my understanding is that the drive would eventually lose its performance advantage over a spindle based drive. Does anyone know if the PS3 can support TRIM yet,...or maybe if it's no longer required?

Some newer, non-ssd drives have gotten to be pretty fast though...and, can be significantly cheaper.
Click to expand...

The OCZ drives (as do drives from some other manufacturers) have whats called "garbage collection" that performs essentially the same task as the TRIM command, the difference being that it is performed by the drive controller independent of the operating system and file system being used and happens during periods of drive inactivity. In theory this should prevent the performance degradation resultant from using a SSD in an environment lacking TRIM support.
 
Thanks everybody for the advice. Ended up with the OCZ 60g vertex2. Very easy to change. I can tell a diffrenence so I am happy. As much as I play it was well worth the 130$ for th drive ( including overnight shipping, lol) amazing how much you notice the stock drive noise when it is gone, if that makes sense. All I can hear is the fan now.
 
ShY5TR
I have a Vertex2 in my PC and I love it, but last I checked, the PS3 did not support TRIM. Without TRIM, my understanding is that the drive would eventually lose its performance advantage over a spindle based drive. Does anyone know if the PS3 can support TRIM yet,...or maybe if it's no longer required?

Some newer, non-ssd drives have gotten to be pretty fast though...and, can be significantly cheaper.
Click to expand...

PS3 will never support TRIM unfortunately. Sandforce based drives see little performance degradition without TRIM though, and since they are the best performers on the market right now - the choice is easy. Go for a sandforce based drive and you should be very happy.
 
If that should happen will reformatting the drive get it back to new?
 
I read there was no performance increase from a SSD and the best way to go was a HDD which spins at 7,200 rpm or higher ... I'd personally stick with a bog std. HDD that ran at at least 7200 rpm.

The amount you are going to pay for an SSD though compared to the increase in performance you will get wont really be worth spending any money on at all.
 
Hmmm well I did it and I think it was worth it. I paid 130 for the drive and I consider that CHEAP.

Btw I am talking about GT5 here. The only game I really play. What you may have read might have been about SSD drive in general. I would guess the more of the game that is on the SSD drive the more you will notice the speed difference. Changing the drive won't speed up the system accessing the BD. Now that I can't hear the Hard drive at all I can tell when the system is accessing the bluray disk and on GT5 it doesn't access it that much so most of the game must be on the SSD drive.
 
For future reference to others, as of now, SDD run at about 2 bucks per gb. If you don't want to spend that type of money, the next fastest way is to buy a Western Digital Velociraptor harddrive. If I recall correctly, it is pretty much 2 harddrives smashed into one running on "RAID 0". Pretty much, that splits up the data into 2 drives so things downloaded twice as fast (hypothetically).
A 600gb one on newegg.com will run you about 300 bucks. The thing is that I'm not sure if the heatsinks on the Velociraptors will fit in the drive bay of a PS3. I believe there are versions without heatsinks though.
600gb Velociraptor - 300 USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...554&cm_re=velociraptor-_-22-136-554-_-Product

600gb Velociraptor without heatsink - 270 USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...555&cm_re=velociraptor-_-22-136-555-_-Product


And if that is still higher than you would like to spend, try the Western Digital Caviar Black series harddrives. But make sure you choose the one with 64mb of "Cache". To put it in simpler terms for those who are not big computer geeks, the more cache you have, the faster things are.
To keep with similar sizes,
here is a 640gb Caviar Black 64mb drive for 70 USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...544&cm_re=caviar_black-_-22-136-544-_-Product

But to show how much cheaper these drives are, here is a 2tb (2000 gb) 64mb harddrive for just over half the price of a velocraptor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...456&cm_re=caviar_black-_-22-136-456-_-Product

That is an extreme especially for a PS3, but it just shows the price difference. The speed difference between a velociraptor and a caviar black 64mb is small, so if you cannot decide on which to get of these two, I suggest the caviar series.

Solid state drives are still too expensive at this point and time and you are really wasting your money right now (in my opinion). If you are interested in a SSD, I would wait until Q3 or even Q4 of this year. I predict they may be dropping to about half their price by the end of the year
 
In my case it would be a waste of GB to get a large drive since I pretty much play GT5 only. By the time I outgrow this drive GT6 and PS4 will be out. Plus I just like new technology. Lol. I always by stuff when it's newer. If I told you how much I paid for my first digital Nikon camera you would cry. Lol
 
Hig-GT
I read there was no performance increase from a SSD and the best way to go was a HDD which spins at 7,200 rpm or higher ... I'd personally stick with a bog std. HDD that ran at at least 7200 rpm.

The amount you are going to pay for an SSD though compared to the increase in performance you will get wont really be worth spending any money on at all.
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I do not know where you would have read that there was no performance increase but I find it odd that anyone would say this. The fact is that an SSD is about the same speed where it comes to sequencial reads and writes as a 7200 rpm HD. On random access reads and writes the SSD is about 10 times faster than the same 7200 rpm HD. I am sure that some of the HD access in GT5 is random access and quite likely uses it heavily and will show a large improvement.

On top of this the SSD uses less power and generates less heat as well as virtually lasting forever without a failure.
 
well if someone could do a test comparing the two types and report back then we'll see. i remain to be convinced until tests are done & results are posted by fellow members.
 
They were done some time ago. There is actually a very detailed report on the difference between an SSD and HDD on GT5 somewhere on these forums. If I remember correctly the SSD had load times about 80% of the HDD times. Some speed increase, but not dramatic.
 
Thats not really worth spending £100+ on a drive then really for that amount.
 
Hig-GT
well if someone could do a test comparing the two types and report back then we'll see. i remain to be convinced until tests are done & results are posted by fellow members.
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I can tell a difference and I'm not a salesman for Ssd's. Some screens the time savings is a few seconds, others cut in half. Any savings is worth it to me. I hate waiting. Plus as others have said it runs cooler and fails less. But there is a very nice comparison on this site.
 
ericeng91
For future reference to others, as of now, SDD run at about 2 bucks per gb. If you don't want to spend that type of money, the next fastest way is to buy a Western Digital Velociraptor harddrive. If I recall correctly, it is pretty much 2 harddrives smashed into one running on "RAID 0". Pretty much, that splits up the data into 2 drives so things downloaded twice as fast (hypothetically).
A 600gb one on newegg.com will run you about 300 bucks. The thing is that I'm not sure if the heatsinks on the Velociraptors will fit in the drive bay of a PS3. I believe there are versions without heatsinks though.
600gb Velociraptor - 300 USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...554&cm_re=velociraptor-_-22-136-554-_-Product

600gb Velociraptor without heatsink - 270 USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...555&cm_re=velociraptor-_-22-136-555-_-Product


And if that is still higher than you would like to spend, try the Western Digital Caviar Black series harddrives. But make sure you choose the one with 64mb of "Cache". To put it in simpler terms for those who are not big computer geeks, the more cache you have, the faster things are.
To keep with similar sizes,
here is a 640gb Caviar Black 64mb drive for 70 USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...544&cm_re=caviar_black-_-22-136-544-_-Product

But to show how much cheaper these drives are, here is a 2tb (2000 gb) 64mb harddrive for just over half the price of a velocraptor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...456&cm_re=caviar_black-_-22-136-456-_-Product

That is an extreme especially for a PS3, but it just shows the price difference. The speed difference between a velociraptor and a caviar black 64mb is small, so if you cannot decide on which to get of these two, I suggest the caviar series.

Solid state drives are still too expensive at this point and time and you are really wasting your money right now (in my opinion). If you are interested in a SSD, I would wait until Q3 or even Q4 of this year. I predict they may be dropping to about half their price by the end of the year
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I would recommend against buying a velociraptor for your PS3. Although they are 2.5" hard drives, most of them come mounted to a heat sink to make them fit a standard 3.5" bay which is too big for the PS3. It would definitely be a poor idea to seperate them from the heat sink as they run really hot. The main reason they are faster is they spin at 10k rpm compared to 7200 rpm for a standard high end drive or the 5400 rpm that your average laptop (and the PS3) have. the other reason is they support a 6Gb/s sata interface which the PS3 doesn't have so you will lose that benefit (albeit marginal for most workloads).

If you want a moderate performance boost with good storage go with a 7200 rpm drive as it will be the most economical. If you want the most speed then definitely go with an SSD as it will blow either a 7200 rpm drive or a velociraptor out of the water.
 
Hig-GT
well if someone could do a test comparing the two types and report back then we'll see. i remain to be convinced until tests are done & results are posted by fellow members.
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I have tested them on my PC and the results are clear.

Sequential read and write almost identical to my fastest 7,200 rpm HD
Random read and write 10x faster using the SSD than my fastest HD.

Windows XP boots about 3x faster when installed on the SSD compared to the standard HD.

So believe what you will but the SSD is the real deal and as I said they are durable and use less power which keeps your power supply cooler and they give off very little heat so they help keep the system cooler and your data is much safer on the SSD as they will typically last longer than you will.


As for the WD hard drives. I had not had much luck with these. Most of the WD drives I have had were noisy and most failed within 2 years of purchase. I do have one which lasted for 5 years before I replaced it and was still working but I have had at least 5 fail and will no longer purchase a WD drive.
 
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