Mohtalim

Intel's 34nm SSD Preview: Cheaper and Faster?
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... spx?i=3605

The announced 34nm TRIM support is especially key. I'm wondering when the best time is to buy, balancing actually having it versus the price (and availability). I'm guessing 2 months after it's on newegg should be about right.

Intel® X25-M 160GB 2.5” SATA SSD Solid State Drive
Part Number: SSDSA2MH160G2R5
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=450026

This seems to be the best (and in stock) deal for the above.

Thoughts:

• From the datasheet, page 2, 7 mm 2.5" variants exist. 9.5 mm seems to be the laptop standard, so I'm guessing the R5 is fine.
• I'm a curious what devices require the slimmer 7 mm thickness.
• A 2.5" to 3.5" mounting bracket may be required if simply placing it on the bottom of a case gets too annoying.

Potentially Related Links:

• Mohtalim: Links: Intel SSDs
• AnandTech: The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
• bit-tech.net: SSD performance tweaks for Vista
  only skimmed; may require a grain of salt; may even be obsoleted due to controller improvements
• Free Ramdisk for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 Server
  something I've been meaning to tinker with for windows paging file, temp directories, etc

VLSmooth wrote:

• Free Ramdisk for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 Server
  something I've been meaning to tinker with for windows paging file

That doesn't make any sense. Just disable the page file altogether so nothing can be swapped out if you have that much memory.

Just FYI, I've been watching this for a while now: Cost Central: SSDSA2MH160G2, resellerratings

Tank Guys (SSDSA2MH160G2C1,resellerratings) would be my second option, but they're been out-of-stock for a while.

I'll probably take the plunge this weekend, since my pre-order of Windows 7 should be arriving around October 22nd.

Guess I'll need to find another source...

Cost Central Processing @ 4:23 PM wrote:Thank you for your recent order, the warehouse has informed that item you have 10921621 TRAY X25M 160GB SSD G2-MLC 2.5IN SATA 7 requires a minimum purchase of 50. Please let us know how you would like your order handled.

My response:

VLSmooth wrote:Ah, if that's the case, I'll have to regrettably cancel

ps. as a suggestion, you might want to mention the minimum purchase qty on the product page:
http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/I ... /10921621/

Hell, the employee store is out of stock until like November. Retailer markup on these is just stupidly large still.

Provantage has the 160 gb G2 for $461.57, but their processing time distribution scares me:
http://www.provantage.com/intel-ssdsa2m ... TE90LK.htm

7.45 / 10 six-month rating, I have successfully ordered from them before though:
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/PR ... orporation

TankGuys Sales --- show details Oct 13 (1 day ago) wrote:The Intel X-25M G2 160Gb (OEM) Drive is back in stock at TankGuys Computer Parts.

http://www.tankguys.com/hard-drives/int ... -disk.html

Thanks!
-TankGuys Sales

$530 for the OEM version and in-stock.

Reseller Ratings: Tank Guys
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Ta ... nkguys_biz

Edit: Copied the resellerrating's link from a previous post

Status Update:
Ended up buying an SSDSA2MH160G2C1 from TankGuys for $543.94 ($13.95 for s&h) and am now running Windows 7 Professional on it. I ordered on the 20th and received it on the 24th (Saturday). Interestingly enough, it's been out-of-stock for the past few days.

Question:

Is TRIM working?

Via fsutil, I know Windows 7 is sending TRIM commands (serverfault). I also made sure to use AHCI in bios. According to Anandtech (link), the firmware was just released? I guess I'll need to update firmware and possibly reinstall? (Just FFXI took ~8 hours to install and update...)

Edit: Just FYI, I made sure to enable and use AHCI in the motherboard bios. I can now eject my boot drive while the system is running!

I don't see any reason you'd have to reinstall.

Quick and easy! (Windows 7 even has a built-in iso burner; about time!)