Considering SSD

[TheGreatSatan]

I will be upgrading my rig to Windows 7 when it comes out and want to possibly get a SSD for my primary drive and keep my BIG IDE drive for most of my data. All SSD's seem to be 2.5 inches or smaller. Would I just mount it in the floppy bay or is there a bracket available?

[OvRiDe]

There are various 2.5 to 3.5 adapter plates available. Here are some examples:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817984007
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817995009
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817984006

[TheGreatSatan]

Another thing. They are mostly SATA 2. Is that a different connection than regular SATA? They look the same. Does my board have to be SATA 2 or does it matter?

[x88x]

SATA2 drives are backwards compatible with SATA controllers (and vice versa). Though if you're gonna be dropping the money on an SSD, I would highly recommend getting a SATA2 board or controller card (PCIe, not PCI with PCI you'll be capped at 133Mbps transfer speeds).

[TheGreatSatan]

I've seen the ones that are better than 133Mbps and they are more $$$

Plus I have a Micro ATX and with my honkin' video card the PCI's are unavailable

[x88x]

Hold on a sec...I just checked your system specs, and...are you sure your MBB doesn't have a SATA2 controller? I would have thought that any MBB that could adequately drive a QX6850 would be new enough that it would have a SATA2 controller. :?

[TheGreatSatan]

Oh, I sold that system. I'm using my Athlon X2 6000+ system

[Airbozo]

You will be fine with your current setup.

In the tests we did here at work, using a sata2 capable mobo only slightly increased the data transfer rate over a sata1 board even though sata2 is supposed to be twice as fast (1.5 vs 3.0). Unless you are doing sustained data transfers over a long period of time, or running benchmarks, you will not notice the difference.

Do your research before plunking down your cash. In the SSD realm, you definitely get what you pay for. This is due to the fact consumer SSD's are fairly new technology and there are some real turds out there right now.

[x88x]

Yeah, Airbozo makes a good point. The fastest MLC SSDs I've seen are only hitting about 200MBps or so (so, ~1600Mbps, or about SATA1 max speeds) read speeds, and slower than that for write. As for picking an SSD, I have two of OCZ's Vertex SSDs, and I'm very happy with them.

[TheGreatSatan]

So basically stick with what my board supports in speed

[x88x]

Well, any newer SSDs will most likely me SATA2, so what you get will probably end up being SATA2, but it'll work just fine.

[TheGreatSatan]

I'm going to buy a Velociraptor instead