What Solid State Drive should I consider purchasing?

[pwnrmasta]

Hello people of Tom's Hardware

I am stumped on what kind of SSD I should purchase for my HP Pavilion G6 laptop (There are so many options) I am curious to see what kind of opinions and feedback all of you have to offer!

What I use my computer for (on a scale of 1-10):
- [6/10] Some Video editing (Video converting / DVD burning)
- [5/10] Some Photoshop (Photo viewing and editing)
- [7/10] Multimedia (Music, Movies, Picture viewing)
- [8/10] Lots of Microsoft Office
- [9/10] Heavy internet use
- [1/10] Minimal to zero (PC gaming)

*My budget: Around $220 or less depending on Read/Write Speed vs. Amount of GB's

Below I have attached links to various specifications of my laptop:

- Hardware Specs: http://tinyurl.com/co5xwwe
- OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

I have also confirmed through "PC Wizard 2012", that my motherboard supports a SATA III (6 Gbp/s) interface.

Extra questions/information:
- Will I be sufficient with an SSD with 120-128 GB's of storage paired with either an extra HDD and/or External USB drive greater than 500 GB's?
- Should I shoot for 180 - 256 GB's range?
- What's the most important numerical statistic when it comes to SSD performance? IOPS? Read/Write Speeds? Reliability?

If you have taken the time to read my post, I thank you! Everyone's feedback is greatly appreciated!

*I will update this post or respond to your comments if you require more information

 

[AZCompTech]

The first thing you need to nail down is your budget. If you have an unlimited budget, just buy the most expensive one, lol.

If you have a budge of say, under $150, I would find a 120-128 GB SSD. The best on the market IMO is http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147188&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-Internal+SSD-_-N82E16820147188&gclid=CLLG5tO3vbYCFcJ7QgoddBsAEQ

If you do a lot of photo editing and you have a bigger budget, I would get a bigger drive and store the programs and photos you edit on the SSD. You will see a huge performance boost when editing large photos from an SSD.

 

[pwnrmasta]

The first thing you need to nail down is your budget. If you have an unlimited budget, just buy the most expensive one, lol.

If you have a budge of say, under $150, I would find a 120-128 GB SSD. The best on the market IMO is http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147188&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-Internal+SSD-_-N82E16820147188&gclid=CLLG5tO3vbYCFcJ7QgoddBsAEQ

If you do a lot of photo editing and you have a bigger budget, I would get a bigger drive and store the programs and photos you edit on the SSD. You will see a huge performance boost when editing large photos from an SSD.

Yeah! My budget is around the $220 or less area. I've heard a lot about the 840 series from Samsung (Due to their reliability) I'll keep your post in mind! Also, would there be a significant version going to the 840 pro series 128 GB?

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I normally recommend Samsung - excellent track record. Crucial, Intel, and Plextor are also worth considering.

I maintain the ssd database listed in the sticky at the very top of this forum section. Here is the link:

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

Scroll down to the brands and models you are interested in and follow the links to the technical reviews.

 

[pwnrmasta]

I normally recommend Samsung - excellent track record. Crucial, Intel, and Plextor are also worth considering.

I maintain the ssd database listed in the sticky at the very top of this forum section. Here is the link:

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

Scroll down to the brands and models you are interested in and follow the links to the technical reviews.

Thanks for the link! I can now see almost every SSD out in the market!

 

[Zurar]

I can vouch for both Plextor and Kingston, though my Plextors have seen much more use. I have a pair of Plextor PX-128M3 drives in a Raid 0 configuration and they're insanely quick! I can load Photoshop in about 3 seconds and 3DS Max 2010 in about 15-20 seconds. I haven't used Samsung's SSDs yet, but I do have a Samsung HDD and it's the longest running HDD I've had; all others that have seen similar usage have long-since died, so that should say something about their quality if nothing else.

In all honesty, though, pretty much any SSD you get will perform considerably better than almost any HDD out there. More than anything, look for reliability/longevity first, speed second.

Also be sure to read up on ways to increase drive life once you decide on one; especially if you plan to use this as an Operating System drive. You don't want to burn it out prematurely by having it do things that a normal HDD can do just as well (Windows and some other programs often times have a lot of stuff that reads/writes to the drive a lot that CAN be moved to a slower HDD without a noticeable performance hit, such as paging files**). Try googling something like "How to extend the life of your SSD" or something along those lines for some tips on keeping your SSD running smoothly for a long time!

Edit: Looking closer at your usage; I wouldn't recommend fully disabling the page file, but definitely move it to the HDD. Also, while multimedia files may open quicker on an SSD, the difference is small enough I would say you'd be better off storing those on your HDD. You'll want to use your SSD more for large, slow-loading programs and the OS rather than individual files.

I see you mention playing games, but not very much, so loading the game(s) on it is up to you, though they will likely open quicker than on an HDD; this is, of course, assuming these games are the kind you have to install and take upwards of 1GB+ to store; smaller ones usually won't see any performance increase.

Photoshop would be great on your SSD, but be sure to move your scratch disk to the secondary* in the performance preferences and increase the memory allowance if you can (just don't max it out). Installing office to the SSD should be fine, but try to store your files created in office on the secondary... they're not big enough to really need the SSD's performance, and opening office itself takes longer than the files it creates/edits take.

The only time I would suggest loading files not related to a program itself (rather files created/edited by a program) onto an SSD is if you need to open them a lot and they're of considerable size, such as high-res textures that you may batch process in Photoshop and simply need to open them quickly. Anyway, there are all kinds of tips I can give you, but google what I mentioned before and you should find the more important ones pretty easily.

*This is, of course, if your laptop supports 2 internal drives; otherwise you'll be forced to keep these files on your primary.
**The page file can be disabled entirely with sufficient system memory, but since you run Photoshop and office and only have 6GB, it's kind of iffy, so I don't recommend disabling it all together. Move it to a secondary drive* if you can.

Edit2: Sorry, skimmed the post and specs and didn't realize it was a laptop at first, so added the ** section.

 

[pwnrmasta]

*This is, of course, if your laptop supports 2 internal drives; otherwise you'll be forced to keep these files on your primary.
**The page file can be disabled entirely with sufficient system memory, but since you run Photoshop and office and only have 6GB, it's kind of iffy, so I don't recommend disabling it all together. Move it to a secondary drive* if you can.

Edit2: Sorry, skimmed the post and specs and didn't realize it was a laptop at first, so added the ** section.

Yeah! I'll keep that in mind! I'm starting to lean more towards storage space for the SSD, although 120-128 GB's is most likely enough, I'll have more peace of mind by using a 240-256 GB's of space!