Solid State Drives in 2012

Laptop Spec

Asus N55S

Intel i5 -2430M, 2.4 GHz (Overclocked to 2.79 GHz using Asus' factory software)

8 GB

Hitachi 640gb 5,400 rpm hard drive (I am concerned that this could be causing a bottleneck)

With regards the above spec, I am considering buying a SSD purely for football manager. I did run a search and saw a few threads, but they were fairly old. Would it be worth adding an SSD drive, and if so, how should I use it? install and run the game from there, or just place my saved games there? What about facepacks and logos/kits etc? I am considering a 128gb SSD as they are under £100 and I have an uneducated feeling that this would improve speed.

Secondly, and I am fairly sure the answer is yes, but can I even add the SSD to my Asus N55SF motherboard with a single HDD already installed?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

This question will get more response in the General forum so I will move it.

You could well get a SSD to speed up your laptop's general speed and responsiveness, but to get one just to speed up FM? Hmm, I would say no. The advantages doesn't add up to the cost, in my opinion.

You would have to swap your old HDD with the SSD of course, if you only have one space for a hard drive. But you could also swap your DVD drive with a bracket (a "caddy") that holds a HDD instead, and place your old HDD there - then you would have 2 places for a hard drive. If you really need a DVD drive, then get an external USB drive for that.

Yes, the OS, programs and games should be on your SSD (including FM), but everything you just "keep" for storage, can go on the old HDD. Pics, videos, music, etc.

The advantages a SSD can give FM, is; Faster loading and saving of games. As your extra graphics and pics are cached anyway, you won't get much help from a SSD in that area. It can also help to negate the slowing down that some gets after a few seasons, specially those playing with large database and many leagues in play.

The solid state drive will only allow faster read and write speeds. It won't speed up the game. The game speed is done through the processor.

You will be able to load and save the game quicker. But there really isn't any advantage to having a SSD for Football Manager.

I have over 100,000 custom images, and weekly rolling auto saves. I would have thought that with the huge database of players there is a fair amount of read write, even during non-saving actions?

If I had a 7,200 RPM HDD I might not be so bothered, but the 5,400 RPM just frustrates me a little. It's the lowest score on the windows experience index by a whole point.

If I did get the SSD, would I really need the OS on the SSD? Not Just FM and the saved game? Still for windows 7, Fm and a 3 save rolling save even 128GB should be enough? I'd just have the current HDD drive for music photos videos and work stuff.

The solid state drive will only allow faster read and write speeds. It won't speed up the game. The game speed is done through the processor.

You will be able to load and save the game quicker. But there really isn't any advantage to having a SSD for Football Manager.

Yeah spot on with this one. Not worth it.

Again, faster saving and loading times is indeed an advantage, but not a very big one. And getting a SSD and not putting your OS on it, that would be ridiculous. It's the main reason for getting a SSD, all the small writes and reads that the OS demands from the hard drive all the time and constantly.

As I said; get a SSD to speed up your lappy in general, as the regular hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in a modern computer - but not just in order to get FM faster. You won't be very satisfied with the enhancement vs what you pay for it.

I have over 100,000 custom images, and weekly rolling auto saves. I would have thought that with the huge database of players there is a fair amount of read write, even during non-saving actions?

It's loaded into memory so you will only see a small benefit through swapping. SSDs won't help your RAM (unless you have one of those fancy new caching utilities where you can use a small SSD device to give you performance between a normal HDD and SSD. You can't use that SSD device as storage, though).

If I had a 7,200 RPM HDD I might not be so bothered, but the 5,400 RPM just frustrates me a little. It's the lowest score on the windows experience index by a whole point.

If I did get the SSD, would I really need the OS on the SSD? Not Just FM and the saved game? Still for windows 7, Fm and a 3 save rolling save even 128GB should be enough? I'd just have the current HDD drive for music photos videos and work stuff.

Get a SSD and install your OS and most-used programs on it. Possibly stick your FM saves on there as well. Put everything else on a normal HDD.

The "most used" part is largely uneccessary today, when you can get fairly large SSD's for a reasonable price. I would say put all your software and games on it, and put large files like videos, music, pictures and other things that you just keep, on the HDD.

I have a 160 GB SSD, and all my software, games (including saves) and OS takes up about 50% of it. No need to talk about "most used" then, is it? My other HDD, which is 250 GB, is too small to hold everything that i just want to keep though, so I have a external 1 TB eSATA HDD as well - on there I also put my regular backups.

If you put your OS on the SSD - don't you have to turn off the paging file to prolong it's longevity. I can't remember off the top of my head, but there's a limit to the amount of read/writes a SSD can do.

Cheers for all the advice, some good points to mull over! I am in 2025 so by no means a hugs save gave... ~200mb at the moment, but the rolling weekly saves are just starting to be noticed. It seems the general consensus is yes there will be an increase in speed, but I might not notice it....

A 'flashy' cache option was mentioned. I used crucial to scan my system and it said I could use one of these cache drives to get the best of both worlds so the options I have are

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/11827975/art/corsair/accelerator-series-intern.html

or

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004W2JKZI/ref=asc_df_B004W2JKZI7969259?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B004W2JKZI

both are within budget, the cache option is cheaper and 'seems' to be less hassle, but are the results really as good as a genuine SSD?

If you put your OS on the SSD - don't you have to turn off the paging file to prolong it's longevity. I can't remember off the top of my head, but there's a limit to the amount of read/writes a SSD can do.

This is one of the fears I had, but all the articles and reviews I could find were dating back to when SDD were first becoming popular, and I didn't know if the longevity had been increased recently?

yes, there is a limit to the amount of writes you can do, not reads. Once that limit is reached, you can't write to it anymore, but you can still read from it.

But that limit is waaaaay into the future, with todays SSD's. As a normal user, your SSD will probably last far longer than a "normal" HDD will.

So turning off the page file? Nah, I wouldn't worry about it, really. But then again, you probably don't need a page file at all today, when most people have ample amounts of RAM. I myself has turned it off completely, as RAM is still faster than my SSD is. Some old-fashioned software may demand a page file though, so if you have one of those, I would manually set a page file to, let's say 250 - 500 Mb.

So turning off the Page File would actually prolong the longevity of the device - as you don't really need it anyway.

I use a paging file still. But if you have 2 hard drives, can't you use the secondary drive to page to anyway?

It would Eugene, but on the whole, not noticable You can set your page file to any drive you want - but if you have 1 SSD and 1 HDD, and want to have a page file, I would most definately put it on the SSD. It's way faster. Remember, the page file is a substitute for RAM. RAM is fast, SSD's are slower, HDD's are far slower. It's not a good idea to put the page file to your slowest alternative

Yeh that's what I thought.

I think I have got my head around this now.... my only decision is whether to get the actual solid state drive or the solid state cache drive. Any final bits of advice?

Cheers for all the advice, some good points to mull over! I am in 2025 so by no means a hugs save gave... ~200mb at the moment, but the rolling weekly saves are just starting to be noticed. It seems the general consensus is yes there will be an increase in speed, but I might not notice it....

A 'flashy' cache option was mentioned. I used crucial to scan my system and it said I could use one of these cache drives to get the best of both worlds so the options I have are

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/11827975/art/corsair/accelerator-series-intern.html

or

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004W2JKZI/ref=asc_df_B004W2JKZI7969259?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B004W2JKZI

both are within budget, the cache option is cheaper and 'seems' to be less hassle, but are the results really as good as a genuine SSD?

Both of these are genuine SSD's - but the smallest one is so small that you can only hope to have room for your OS and a few of your most used programs on it. Together with a HDD, that is why they call it a "cache" option.

The second, the Crucial M4, is actually a very good one, for the average user. If you think the space is enough, you could do worse than that one. But you can also get it in a bigger size of course. To use the Crucial as a "cache" only, is just daft. It's a proper full purpose SSD.

All I use my laptop for is music, the internet and FM, so I am pretty sure 128gb is enough for windows 7 and FM. Looks like Amazon are getting a bit more of my money!

Thanks to all for the help, once I have it up and running, I will let you know if I notice any difference.

There's a couple of other points to be aware of.

1. If you can, do a fresh, clean install of your Win 7 to your new SSD. -Or - use a proper clone software to transfer what's on your old HDD on to your new SSD. Some SSD manufacturers have such software available for free download, such as Intel's Data Migration software. If not, Acronis True Image clone software is a good one that does things right. I am sure there are others too. If you have more on your old HDD than there is room for on the SSD, remove some of it first.

2. Before you do that, check your lappy's BIOS and look for SATA mode options. You should have your hard drives set to AHCI mode, for best performance with a SSD. It may be that your lappy allready have this enabled, but also possible that it's set to IDE mode - that will give your new SSD a negative performance hit.

3. After you have done all this, there's a couple of tweaks you can do to your OS and system that will enhance SSD performance. If you want the easy way to do the most important of these tweaks, download the free SSD Tweak Utility 1.7. This should sort you out.

Thanks! Top advice. I'll certainly be doing a clean install!

The "most used" part is largely uneccessary today, when you can get fairly large SSD's for a reasonable price.

It depends on your bank account. :(

i would never suggest using an SSD as your only and primary drive.. especially on a laptop...

but if you dont need the extra storage space etc... go for it i guess...

but personally i would only ever use an SSD as a secondary drive to hold the OS and a few select programs to increase speeds

That's a definition issue Welshace, isn't it? The drive that holds the OS is the primary drive, in my view - and in most others view, I presume. Also you need it to be set as the primary drive in the BIOS in order to get it booted.

And yes, increased speeds is what the SSD is for. It's something that virtually every software will benefit from, so only putting a few select programs on it is something you may have to do as a compromise, if your SSD can't hold everything. But if it can, by all means put every bit of software you have on to it.

Games, incidentally, are perhaps the kind of software that will benefit the least from an increase in hard drive speed. In games - well. most of them - the power of the graphics card are so dominating in terms of performance, that increased loading and saving times - perhaps faster loading of big maps etc. - doesn't really matter that much.

Using a SSD as the only hard drive? Well that is perfectly plausible - it depends on your need of space, and your wallet. There's nothing wrong with it - it's just that most people's need for space and need for other things (food etc.) dictates that they are better off with a combination of a SSD and a HDD. That applies to me as well - I can't afford a 1 TB SSD. (yes, they do exist )

http://www.ab9il.net/windows-tips/windows-7-ssd-setup.html

This is what I used when I set up my ssd. My pc is really fast (haven't tried without this setup though). It takes 20-25 seconds to boot my pc, takes only a few seconds to save a +100 mb fm-save. Best investment I've ever made in a pc

I love SSD, so fast boosting.

I think if you asked people with SSD's, a majority of them wouldn't even think about using a regular spindisk as their OS/system disk ever again.

Quick update, I had to go back to square 1 after it turns out the the crucial scan was suggesting i replaced the hdd with the ssd rather than use both. So I have shopped around and come up with this solution.

http://tinyurl.com/budeqh7

It's a seagate momentus 750gb HDD with built in 8gb SSD, the reviews are brilliant, and apparently it 'learns' as you go and continues to get quicker! I managed to find someone who had uploaded results from pre and post the above drive and booting was cut from 44 seconds to 14 seconds and loading simple software was almost instant. It seems like a great compromise for laptop users but I do wonder whether it will benefit FM much?

Why do you listen to your crucial scan or whatever? This you can decide for yourself. As you have allready said, you can cope fine with for example 128 GB. And you have allready been told you have to replace your old HDD, as long as you only have place for 1 hard drive in your laptop. I have given you a workaround, and here's another; buy yourself a HDD cabinet, put your old HDD in it, and attach it to your laptop via a USB 3 port, or eSATA. Then you have 2 hard drives.

FM will not benefit much at all with this "hybrid" HDD, it will however speed up your Windows boot time. It is not a replacement for a real SSD, it is a compromise. Hybrids are good for speeding up the boot, not much else, in practical use.

For that matter, as many has repeatedly said; you won't be able to speed up FM much at all anyway, no matter if you have the fastest hard drive in the world. The only thing that will speed up FM noticably, is a very powerful processor.

SSD's will speed up your laptop in general, not very noticably for FM. It is the processing that takes most of the time in FM, not loading or saving.

The Momentus is basically another one of those solutions that sits between a normal HDD and an SSD, with a price that is somewhere in between.

So it's a budget option of sorts.

Well, yes and no. It will help speed up boot times, but is exactly the same (slow) speed as a traditional spinning disk in all matters else. So if you feel faster boot times is exactly what you need, go ahead. It has none of the SSD's capabilities of speeding up nearly everything you do on your computer. Many many have thought "aha, this is sort of halfway SSD, but cheaper, I'll go for that". Many many has been disappointed. Once your pc has booted up, it doesn't provide anything extra.

The only differences I noticed when having an SSD was the boot up speed of windows and it was much faster loading and saving an FM game. Mine went wrong and now I am using a normal HDD and I wouldn't bother with a SSD again at the price they cost.

Well, yes and no. It will help speed up boot times, but is exactly the same (slow) speed as a traditional spinning disk in all matters else. So if you feel faster boot times is exactly what you need, go ahead. It has none of the SSD's capabilities of speeding up nearly everything you do on your computer. Many many have thought "aha, this is sort of halfway SSD, but cheaper, I'll go for that". Many many has been disappointed. Once your pc has booted up, it doesn't provide anything extra.

In some cases, it might be worse than an SSD (say you regularly use 40 GB of information), although this is likely a corner case otherwise this HDD + SSD solution would be infeasible, as it would have a very likely frequent overhead and lots of cache misses.

Intel's Z68 chipset and beyond have similar technology where you can add an SSD for caching purposes: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review/2

It does show benefits as benchmarks demonstrate and could be considered if a full-on SSD solution is too expensive.

It's pretty much "you get what you pay for".

Basically, what I said then. This "predicting" a hybrid is supposed to do, working out what software you are likely to start up next, has shown itself to be rather unpredictable. In perfect circumstances, yes, it may help to speed up the startup of other of your most used programs as well. That's fine - what it can't do however, is what a SSD does so well; it helps the processor in it's work, so that it don't have to wait so often for data to be delivered from the drive, or wait for data to be written, so that it can jump to the next task waiting in line much faster. In effect this will make your whole system more responsive, your processor more instantly ready for the next task instead of putting things on hold - all this is very noticeable in virtually all that I do with the computer on a daily basis. If you don't believe this, or feel that nothing of this is worth the extra cost - well, that is fine too

It boils down to this: If you buy a new computer today, and don't get a SSD for it, you will have effectively dumbed down and slowed down your new computer, using technology that is obsolete and far too slow for the rest of your hardware and your OS.

Upgrading is another question, but I feel that in most cases - if you have the money for it - go ahead and do it.

I have had this discussion many times before, and it's hard to get people that has never experienced a fine tuned system with a SSD in it, to appreciate or really believe what I am on about - untill I let them do what they normally do on my computer, that is.

I'll say it again: The regular spinning hard drive is the slowest component in a modern computer, and the one component where an upgrade is most noticable - much more than the fastest RAM in the world, much more than a more powerful processor (albeit, not for FM, as we allready have discussed). Only the upgrade from a really slow and underpowered graphics card to a much more powerful one for gaming can be compared.

Hey all, I am thinking of getting a SSD for my new build computer, to go with a 1TB HDD storage. My only worry is with the limited write/remove on a SSD is that FM will run it down doing a save every in game month. Is this a stupid worry or legit.

I was thinking to have FM on the 1TB along with most games, then saves on the SSD, I don't mind if FM takes a few seconds longer to open, but having saves on SSD will make loading saving speeds faster if I am correct?

Test with a Intel SSD similar to mine: You can write 100 GB to the SSD every day, and it would still last 5 years +. You tell me, is it something to worry about? I'll look and see if I find the article so I can link it, but no promises.

In 5 years time, there's a good chance that you'd upgraded to newer tech anyway, isn't it? SSD's are not the end of all things, there will 99% sure be better tech available in 5 years +

Mine has been in heavy use allmost every day (including FM saves) now for 3 years; monitoring software tells me that I still have 99% of it's expected life left.

Test with a Intel SSD similar to mine: You can write 100 GB to the SSD every day, and it would still last 5 years +. You tell me, is it something to worry about? I'll look and see if I find the article so I can link it, but no promises.

In 5 years time, there's a good chance that you'd upgraded to newer tech anyway, isn't it? SSD's are not the end of all things, there will 99% sure be better tech available in 5 years +

Mine has been in heavy use allmost every day (including FM saves) now for 3 years; monitoring software tells me that I still have 99% of it's expected life left.

Thing is thats a nice Intel drive, I am looking at a Kingston 120GB V+200 SSD, has a 3k write life. I do not know how that sounds in comparison to the Intel. But it is 70quid, compared to the intels 130quid, so bit a of a difference.

Intel's are among the best, but the difference isn't all that big. Reliability however, can be. There's more of a chance that your Kingston will suffer a failure before it's expected life cycle comes to an end. I still wouldn't worry about it, but by all means; if you are, put your saves onto a HDD

Basically, what I said then. This "predicting" a hybrid is supposed to do, working out what software you are likely to start up next, has shown itself to be rather unpredictable. In perfect circumstances, yes, it may help to speed up the startup of other of your most used programs as well. That's fine - what it can't do however, is what a SSD does so well; it helps the processor in it's work, so that it don't have to wait so often for data to be delivered from the drive, or wait for data to be written, so that it can jump to the next task waiting in line much faster. In effect this will make your whole system more responsive, your processor more instantly ready for the next task instead of putting things on hold - all this is very noticeable in virtually all that I do with the computer on a daily basis. If you don't believe this, or feel that nothing of this is worth the extra cost - well, that is fine too

What you are talking about is NCQ, which isn't just restricted to SSDs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing SATA is a standard that applies to most HDDs nowadays, including SSDs.

SRT does work: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2011/05/13/what-is-the-intel-z68-chipset/6 - there's nothing "unpredictable" about it. We don't use all the data on our drives very often.

The size (8 GB) might be an issue (SRT typically uses larger SSD caches) if you use a lot of data frequently.

The Momentus is nothing more than just a cache that learns over time, and gives theoretical SSD-like performance for that 8 GB but not the rest of the hard disk.

Whether it's worth it or not is up to the user, anyway. The i7-3960X makes sense to some people, but not everyone. Not everyone gets the i7-3960X.

Intel's are among the best, but the difference isn't all that big. Reliability however, can be. There's more of a chance that your Kingston will suffer a failure before it's expected life cycle comes to an end. I still wouldn't worry about it, but by all means; if you are, put your saves onto a HDD

If i was going to put the saves on a HDD, as well as the game then there would really be no point in having an SSD to begin with. I think at 70quid its not too bad and will give a good boost to what should be when i build it in a few weeks time an almighty little system for general use. Drive also comes with 3 year warrenty so i guess this shows Kingston are expecting the life to be longer than 3 years...or they wil be facing a huge crowd of returns. I think i shall buy it, just one more question though...

How much faster is saving and loading from an SSD running on SATA III than a HDD running at 7200 rpm?

The save and load times are only thing that bug me about the fm, i get its as the files are large though.

I'll let you have the last word on this, x42 - ok? This discussion has gone out of proportions allready, I feel

"If i was going to put the saves on a HDD, as well as the game then there would really be no point in having an SSD to begin with"

Right. So stop worrying and put your saves on to the SSD.

If i was going to put the saves on a HDD, as well as the game then there would really be no point in having an SSD to begin with. I think at 70quid its not too bad and will give a good boost to what should be when i build it in a few weeks time an almighty little system for general use. Drive also comes with 3 year warrenty so i guess this shows Kingston are expecting the life to be longer than 3 years...or they wil be facing a huge crowd of returns. I think i shall buy it, just one more question though...

How much faster is saving and loading from an SSD running on SATA III than a HDD running at 7200 rpm?

The save and load times are only thing that bug me about the fm, i get its as the files are large though.

Was I just unlucky then because my SSD stopped working after 18 months. I know there are obviously other things that can go wrong with it so would you guess it was not to do with the limited life of them?

I would say that it wasn't 18 months expected life cycle for your SSD, Acid. I can't imagine they would be able to sell a single SSD if that was the case. Most probable did you experience a failure of other causes.

Might have to send it back to the manufacturer then, all the bloke in the shop told me was that the SSD was broken and they have a limited life.

Well, the bloke in the shop got his way out of that one, didn't he

Now, if you downloaded 1 TB of torrents every day for 18 months ... that's another matter.

You are not the first person to imply he was talking crap.

Read this page and the next one: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2944/9

looking at the second pages shows the kingston does terrible, does this mean it is bad for FM save games or not?

The Kingston V+ was never a very good SSD, I'm afraid - not even when it was new. It is now thoroughly obsolete.

Low random read/write means that it isn't terribly good as a system/OS disk, first and foremost. But if FM is the only thing you are concerned about, whether you should get a SSD or not - I'd say not. There are better reasons to get one.