I’ve decided that £1 per GB is about right to break into solid state disks. These babies don’t physically spin, so there’s very little delay, they can attach to a system using SATA III (about 6Gb\s!) so the transfer rate is phenomenal, and best of all - they don’t heat up! Intel kick-started the first generation, and eventually others moved in such as Crucial, Samsung - and my choice… OCZ.

For those of you familiar with first generation SSD’s are probably aiming their rifles as we speak. But fear not - this third generation are all new and powerful, running the tried and tested SandForce controller and native TRIM support - I’m hopeful my OCZ Vortex 3 will impress. Obviously they are still a little too expensive to transfer all my data to, so I’ve cheaped out on a 60GB drive, which is just about right for my Windows 7 installation.

Running Windows off the SSD drive should dramatically improve boot time and the general day to day Windows stuff - but naturally there’s still a bottle neck when my 200GB Steam folder is accessed from conventional SATA II. Still, it’s exciting :)

	Posted December 13, 2011
	Written by John Payne