SSD for a Latitude D830

Hi,

This Corsair drive is SATA 3G, I know dont bother SATA 6G drives in SATA 3G system.

SATA 3G = SATA II = SATA300.

Regards

The drive is 2.5" -- this is a SATA 3G system, so don't bother with a SATA 6G drive.

does this drive work in a D830?  I currently have a 64bg samsung ssd, but need a larger capacity.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-128GB-Solid-State-MZ-5PA128/dp/B003Z6Q8Y8/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1317756060&sr=8-2-fkmr0

Yes, it works.

I havent changed anything at BIOS or Windows 7 config and it runs very well

If you do not disable prefetch, Superfetch, Defrag, Hibernation,  Pagefile.sys aka Virtual Memory, Indexing,  Event Logging, the drive will be written to death in a very short time.

At FAQ of this product web on Carsair site says "No settings within your operating system need to be adjusted"

www.corsair.com/.../force-series-f115-solid-state-hard-drive.html

Do you think this isnt true?

This drive has TRIM support

More recent info?

www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

SSD's have a limited number of writes.

I disagree that Windows 7 does everything automatically.

TRIM is not a panacea.

Demons, Zombies, and Dust Bunnies are in no way repelled or vanquished by TRIM. :emotion-14:

The way SSD's work with data written in blocks.
A block may be 256KB: 256 * 1000 * 8 binary bits.
To change even ONE of these bits, you must rewrite the
ENTIRE block.

Windows sees 1 bit being written, but the SSD wear is equivalent
to 256,000 bits being written.

Life is based on:

(Size of SSD) * (Endurance Cycles) = Total data written to SSD before failure

Here is the math in very basic rounded numbers.

10,000 writes aka 000001 writes per day for approx 027.37 years.  10,000 days
10,000 writes aka 000010 writes per day for approx 002.737 years.   1000 days
10,000 writes aka 000100 writes per day for approx 000.2737 years.   100 days
10,000 writes aka 001000 writes per day for approx 000.02737 years.  010 days
10,000 writes aka 010000 writes per day for approx 000.002737 years. 001 days

All of the Items mentioned in the previous post Write to the Drive with great  frequency.

Indexing, hibernation, logging,  prefetch, superfetch, ready boost, should be switched off and the scheduled defrag is also switched off .

When you get to "too many" writes you are Toast. Congratulations Drive is Dead forever.

Event ID - 51 - An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation

You can blame this on the fact that operating systems aren’t optimized for SSD technology and do not do everything automatically.

Windows 7 is "aware" of SSDs when you install the operating system on a solid state drive to begin with. However Windows 7 often fails to make numerous settings that Microsoft product discussions claim should be made. That's why it's essential to turn things off on any system, whether that system included an SSD as the system drive for a Windows 7 install, or the SSD is a replacement for an original drive (probably the system drive).

• Turn off prefetch, superfetch and ReadyBoost
• Turn off the Windows System Restore service for the SSD
• Turn off disk defragmentation for the SSD
• Turn off Hybernation  (Hiberfile.sys)
• Turn off Virtual Memory (Pagefile.sys)
• Turn off Indexing
• Turn Off Event Log (Sometimes Windows gets an error that writes to the event log every few seconds)
• Limit Maximum event log size and set to overwrite if necessary.  (The Drive can literally be filled up with errors otherwise, causing the SSD to DIE FOREVER within a few hours of an event being written every few seconds.)
• DO NOT USE Is NTFS Compression of Files and Directories .  If this is ON Temporary internet directories , mail folder directories get large number of file writes in bursts.

How to disable and re-enable hibernation on a computer that is running Windows
(Windows 7, Vista, Server 2008)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730

Delete the hibbernation file:
http://www.windows7hacker.com/index.php/2009/05/what-is-hiberfilsys-and-how-to-delete-in-windows-7-free-up-hard-drive-space/

How to Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 7
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/819-hibernate-enable-disable.html

Their Calculations Do not seem to present a 10X greater endurance.

More recent info?

www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

"2 million (write endurance) x 64G (capacity) divided by 80M bytes / sec gives the endurance limited life in seconds.

That's a meaningless number - which needs to be divided by seconds in an hour, hours in a day etc etc to give...

The end result is 51 years!"

**********************************************************************************************************************

My calculations said 27 years so the "more recent caclulations" seem to indicate 2X overall durability.

I don't think you will get a vendor to go out on a limb and say

Indexing, logging, hybernation, virtual memory, etc is ok and that they will guarantee the drive for

5 years or 10 years let alone 51 years.

Demons, Zombies, and Dust Bunnies are in no way repelled or vanquished by TRIM. 

The way SSD's work with data written in blocks.
A block may be 256KB: 256 * 1000 * 8 binary bits.
To change even ONE of these bits, you must rewrite the
ENTIRE block.

Windows sees 1 bit being written, but the SSD wear is equivalent
to 256,000 bits being written.

Life is based on:

(Size of SSD) * (Endurance Cycles) = Total data written to SSD before failure

Here is the math in very basic rounded numbers.

10,000 writes aka 000001 writes per day for approx 027.37 years.  10,000 days
10,000 writes aka 000010 writes per day for approx 002.737 years.   1000 days
10,000 writes aka 000100 writes per day for approx 000.2737 years.   100 days
10,000 writes aka 001000 writes per day for approx 000.02737 years.  010 days
10,000 writes aka 010000 writes per day for approx 000.002737 years. 001 days

Wear leveling and Extra Cells and ECC make the "life calculation" a bit more fuzzy but they do NOT PREVENT the Eventual

TOO MANY WRITES aka DEATH of the Cells.

Thanks for info, I will do this changes.

Suggest to get the Seagate 2.5" Hybrid Drive  ... let other posters know why you want to go to this expense, Do you continually drop your D830 ??? What files do you have that need to be acccessed so quickly or are that important ... contact Dell dirrect about any BIOS configuration or conflict.

Hi,

I contacted them 5 or 6 weeks ago by phone and by email, and still I am waiting for their response.

What I am looking with this change is a better performance for laptop.

While an SSD will be faster it will not compensate for how OLD the D830 is.  If you need more performance I would suggest a newer laptop.

I neednt a new laptop for the use that I do. The SSD have been the increase of performance that I was expecting from it, a change of a hard disk for a better one at same time at I format the laptop.

Despite this being a 2 year old thread I thought I'd chime in,since after all it's first google search result for "latitude D830 ssd upgrade".  Hopefully, my experience will be worthwhile for anyone pondering the merits of this in the future.

The HDD hard drive in my old (circa 2007) D830 went corrupt about a year ago followed by my own blunder while replacing the laptop's wireless card, which resulted in a dead motherboard.  I purchased a new computer, but I also opted to get the ol' D830 going again, just to see if I could.  I replaced the motherboard, upgraded to an SSD, upgraded my BIOS to the latest version through Dell's website, did a clean install with Vista, and fixed the wireless card.  The glitches in the old machine were gone, but I was still unhappy with the boot times.  I ran a few tests and it was still taking me more than a minute to get fully into windows with a clean install.  I realized I was still operating in "IDE" drivers, which hold the SSD performance back.  So, I switched to AHCI drivers by following these instructions:  http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?69682-Change-from-IDE-to-AHCI-after-Installation.  Still, I was still not getting the performance I expected.  I pretty much gave up on the computer ever performing to my expectation.

For some reason, I finally decided to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 on the old machine, and I must say that I am finally beyond extremely pleased with the results!  Windows 7 was the missing link.  I don't know if it's the combination of all of these things, or if Windows 7 alone is responsible for the dramatic increase in performance, but this is now an entirely new machine.  I had to go back and switch the drivers to AHCI again, and I wonder if I flubbed the switch to AHCI in Vista somehow.  I also modified some settings in Windows for SSD support as discussed below.  Now, almost everything in the "Windows Experience Index" under control panel shows increased performance.  I know that WEI is looked down upon by most computer people, but its very satisfying to see tangible results.  Here's how it worked out for me:

Original setup included a T9500 Core 2 Duo 2.6Ghz processor, 4GB RAM, 5400 rpm 160GB HDD (original equipment), Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit, & NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M Graphics Card (embedded in mobo - 256 MB dedicated video memory)

New setup included the same T9500 processory, 4GB RAM, OCZ Vertex 4 120GB SSD, Windows 7 Ultimate, NVS140M Graphics card

Windows Experience index scores

..............................Old   New
Processor              5.4    6.2
Memory (RAM)      5.0    6.2
Graphics                3.4    3.4
Gaming Grapics     4.4    5.2  
Primary Hard Disk  5.9    7.5

I also ran the "AS SSD" benchmarking tool, and got the following results:

............Read.................Write
Seq      248.96 MB/s     166.25 MB/s
4K        17.84 MB/s        37.55 MB/s
4K-64    442.06MB/s      115.56 MB/s 
Acc.time .195 ms            .104 ms

I have results for Vista as well, but cannot compare them directly because they were in "IDE" driver mode.  Strange because I remember changing to AHCI, and perhaps I changed back when I didn't notice a difference, or lost the change with another clean install of Vista.  I don't honestly remember.

Lastly, I can tell you that my new windows 7 boot time is a glaring improvement over the old Vista loading time.  I'm sure that both Win 7, and the SSD have something to do with this.  After the initial "Dell" BIOS boot screen, windows takes 24 seconds to completely load windows (the moment when the little wheel next to the cursor disappears).  I did time it with Vista, but never wrote the score down.  It was on the high side of 45 seconds, but it might have been more than a minute.

Now, I am absolutely not "doom and gloom" about the life expectancy of an SSD, as some others here have posted about.  I regularly backup my computers' images and can stomach the thought of an SSD being "written to death" somewhere between 3 and 30 years like all the posts above seem to indicate they will be, though I'm highly skeptical that they are so unreliable as some would have you believe.  However, I did tweak things a bit.  I did not follow this guide to the letter, but did the things I felt would not burden my use of the computer:  http://www.overclock.net/t/1133897/windows-7-ssd-tweaking-guide

I hope my experience helps someone else.  I'm unbelievably impressed with the old D830's speed and performance now.  It's definitely not comparable to new workhorses, but if I weren't doing heavy video editing on my alienware, it would more than meet my needs as a primary computer.