What specs to look at when buying a ssd?

Looking into getting a ssd drive nothing fancy just something like 40gb what specs do i need to look at to know i am getting a good qulaity drive?

1) Does it have the trim command?

2) Is it large enough to hold what you want? Windows-7 and microsoft security essentials take about 13gb.


I have used Intel X25-V 40gb and it has worked out very well.

If you can, wait to buy a SSD in the fall when gen3 drives will be cheaper and better.

I would not put too much importance in synthetic benchmarks. They do not represent YOUR workload. That said, the OS does lots of small reads and writes so I would look at
the drive's ability to do small random I/O.

Concur with geofelt,
(1) Verify it says Trim enabled; ie bought a intel 80 Gig (Dane-elec) it was the G! not G2.
(2) Pay attention to the 4K RANDOM read/writes. This is the most important. And benchmarks are relavent. If benchmark test is low, your performance will be low.
(3) Ref jim_18472 comment on memory - Not an issue as most set the virtual memory (Swap file) to the HDD, not the SSD. Also disable hibernation, this is a hidden file that takes about 2->4 Gigs). This also reduces the writes to the SSD.
(4) On size, look at your current set-up and add about 20%. Although you can use a 40 Gig, I like to play it safe and look at the 60 -> 80 Gig SSD segment. Get the biggest (Good) one you can afford. If you only put your operating system on it, you are only improving the Boot time, not program loads.
(5) On cost, I agree that 3rd generation (SATA 6) SSD will drive down the 2nd generation SSD. I find that new generation occupies the same price range as the current ones do. That said, there should be some excellent sales for (1) back-to-school sales and (2) the after thanksgiving (Holiday) sales.

jim_l18472
On the swap file. Could be wrong, But as long as you have enough physical memory the swap file is not used very much and would have little impact on overall performance. Reason most either decrease swap file size and/or increase physical memory. Swap file activity can be checked using the resource monitor. If that is the case, I would still recommend placing on the HDD.

When looking at a 40 gig SSD - Win 7 will set the swap file to about 6 Gigs ( 15% of a 40 gig SSD)

The reason I disabled my page file is because although a program technically shouldn't use the page file unless they run out of memory, I find that programs still do store data in the page file. I believe this is data pertaining to parts of the program not frequently accessed. I've noticed that if I disable page filing, programs load faster but obviously take up more physical memory(sometimes twice as much) leading me to believe more data is being loaded into memory(instead of a swap file).

And the swap file amount is usually determined by the amount of ram, windows usually sets the page file to 1.5x your memory.

It is hard to tell if you should wait or buy it right now.
3rd generation will be better than 2nd....the 2nd will be cheaper by then... 4th Generation will be better than the 3rd...the 3rd will be cheaper by then...
and it will always continue that way....
How long will you wait?
Well...you want it you buy it!

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