New SSD - Wow

[Ronan_M]

I've had a relatively high'er spec (i7 , 8Gb) Dell 17r (7720) for the last three years or so. In the first few months, when using LR and PS, it was ok but nothing to write home about it. Then it progressively got worse and worse. It didnt help when I got a new camera and started processing those 36Mp files.

It got so bad that I considered getting an Apple and see what the other side of the fence looks like. When monitoring my system before, disk usage was always @ 100% (it had a cr@ppy 5400 rpm 1Tb disk). I resorted to configuring Windows for "Performance" rather than "looks" , disabling Indexing , uninstalling software, etc all provided minor gains but nothing really seemed to help drastically. Memory and CPU were fine.

Last week I upgraded to a new 500Gb Samsung SSD. All I have to say is WOW man...that thing flies now. Boots up W8.1 in about 6 seconds, and does everything super fast. The migration was pretty straight fw with the main complexity being that Windows didnt recognize the SSD in the first place and that the Stoopid Dell BIOS doesnt let you reconfigure the disk boot order, so you have to physically move the disks from one bay to the other.

I definitely recommend getting an SSD if you havent yet. Its literally like having a new laptop

cheers

 

[StIves]

Dell sold an i7 but loaded it out with a 5400rpm disk? That's a pretty underhanded marketing move.

 

[Ronan_M]

Dell sold an i7 but loaded it out with a 5400rpm disk? That's a pretty underhanded marketing move.

Keeps costs down. Still HD is something you can replace later... The worse part is that they sell this as a higher-endish laptop and memory cant be upgraded any further (at least officially) so you're stuck with 8Gb...or get a new one.

 

[Jim Cockfield]

Last week I upgraded to a new 500Gb Samsung SSD. All I have to say is WOW man...that thing flies now. Boots up W8.1 in about 6 seconds, and does everything super fast. The migration was pretty straight fw with the main complexity being that Windows didnt recognize the SSD in the first place and that the Stoopid Dell BIOS doesnt let you reconfigure the disk boot order, so you have to physically move the disks from one bay to the other.

Make sure it's setup as a bootable device (check mark by it on the BIOS Boot Tab). Then, move it up in the boot order list (usually by using + key) so that it is before other boot devises in the boot order list.

Personally, I also setup my Dell computers so that Secure boot is disabled, and I also use a "Legacy" vs "UEFI" boot type;. There are pros and cons to any setup type.

See page 92 of this 'Me and my Dell" guide for your Dell model for instructions on changing your Boot Order in BIOS Setup (look under Boot Tab when you get into the BIOS Setup screens).

http://downloads.dell.com/manuals/common/mmd_user's guide_en-us.pdf

Other guides for it can be found by clicking on the "Manuals" link on the product support page for your Dell here:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/inspiron-17r-se-7720/manuals

It is probably a good idea to upgrade your firmware to the latest version if you have not already done so. Dell has published numerous firmware updates for your model over the past several years, including updates that enhanced how boot order features work (in both the BIOS Setup and what you get by pressing F2 at Bootup; and the boot menu you can access via F12 during bootup.

But, you do not need to install all of the firmware updates in the order in which they were released. Simply install the latest firmware version and it will include the same fixes and enhancements included in earlier updates.

You can get the latest Version A17 firmware from June 2015 here:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...ron-17r-se-7720&languageCode=en&categoryId=BI

Some of previous updates (but again, just download and install A17, and you'll get previous featurs and enhancements. too). IOW, you do not need the older releases linked to here. I am including links to them, just so you can find out abut problems and enhancements solved with firmware updates (usually at the first part of the decsription for them, you'll find some text about major fixes and changes):

A1620 Oct 2013 6:35:29 AM

A1509 Jul 2013 7:38:45 AM

A1406 May 2013 8:14:02 AM

A1318 Mar 2013 6:33:52 AM

A1214 Jan 2013 7:45:21 AM

A1109 Nov 2012 6:19:04 AM

A0822 Oct 2012 9:20:42 AM

A0317 Aug 2012 3:28:45 AM

A0127 Jun 2012 4:06:04 AM

Direct Link to download the installer for the latest A17 BiOs Firmware that you'll want (latest Version A17 BIOS for your laptop, which includes all of the features, bug fixes, and enhancements from previous versions, too) Just click on it t run it when you have a few minutes to upgrade your laptop's BIOS firmware.

http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER03028974M/1/7720A17.exe

Other updates can be found in the Drivers and Updates section on the Dell Service Page for your model (see current Operating System version first from the drop down list you'll find there) Main support page for your model:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/inspiron-17r-se-7720

--
JimC
------

 

[StIves]

Dell sold an i7 but loaded it out with a 5400rpm disk? That's a pretty underhanded marketing move.

Keeps costs down. Still HD is something you can replace later... The worse part is that they sell this as a higher-endish laptop and memory cant be upgraded any further (at least officially) so you're stuck with 8Gb...or get a new one.

 

[Ronan_M]

Dell sold an i7 but loaded it out with a 5400rpm disk? That's a pretty underhanded marketing move.

Keeps costs down. Still HD is something you can replace later... The worse part is that they sell this as a higher-endish laptop and memory cant be upgraded any further (at least officially) so you're stuck with 8Gb...or get a new one.

 

[Austinian]

Dell sold an i7 but loaded it out with a 5400rpm disk? That's a pretty underhanded marketing move.

Keeps costs down. Still HD is something you can replace later... The worse part is that they sell this as a higher-endish laptop and memory cant be upgraded any further (at least officially) so you're stuck with 8Gb...or get a new one.

 

[ernstbk]

Dell sold an i7 but loaded it out with a 5400rpm disk? That's a pretty underhanded marketing move.

Keeps costs down. Still HD is something you can replace later... The worse part is that they sell this as a higher-endish laptop and memory cant be upgraded any further (at least officially) so you're stuck with 8Gb...or get a new one.

--
https://500px.com/ronan_M

Oh, I hadn't realised it was a laptop. At 3 years old, it is suddenly understandable. 3 years ago SSD prices were much higher, and SSDs at 1TB would have been crazy expensive or nonexistent.

I agree that soldered RAM is a terrible idea.

Ram is not soldered...you can remove the DIMMs however, it has 2 slots, filled with 4Gb ram each. When you ask Dell if you can replace them with 8 Gb ones for a total of 16 Gb , they say its not supported. However, there's plenty of people that have done it and works great (not me though).

Please make sure that you listen to people with exactly the same mainboard. Not every chipset supports 16GByte with 2 x 8GB S0-DIMMS. If the model/mainboard specification specifies maximum 8GB Ram then you can not upgrade to 16GB.

Funny that Dell is really "forcing" you to upgrade when you dont really have to...

Anyway, with the new SSD the laptop just flies...no need for additional ram for now.

--
https://500px.com/ronan_M

 

[kelpdiver]

Dell sold an i7 but loaded it out with a 5400rpm disk? That's a pretty underhanded marketing move.

given the way Dell (and all of the OEMs) overprice SSD and memory parts, that's just fine. I can swap in the replacement (and now pick it), keep the other drive, and still save money.

 

[malch]

You're correct. I bought an i7 Lenovo laptop nearly 3 years ago and the out-of-the-box performance was disappointing running from the 1TB 5400rpm hard drive.

When I added a 256GB mSATA SSD the system absolutely flew and I still had the large 1TB spinner for bulk data.

I love the setup.

 

[SushiEater]

So you are saying that your laptop has two bays one for HD and one for SSD?

If you continue doing what you are doing you will have a problem with even SSD after a while because your SSD gets filled with temporary files just like your HD did. It will still boot faster but LR and PS will run just as slow.

Booting faster could have been done without SSD. Just put your laptop to sleep (disable hibernate) and it would wake up in just a few seconds. And all the software run faster after wake up anyway instead of loading all over again from the disk.

But I would have upgraded the memory first if possible to stop writing all those temporary files.

Since my laptop has only one memory slot and one HD slot I had no choice but to install 1TB SSD but I only store photo files temporary on it while on the road.

 

[Jim Cockfield]

Dell sold an i7 but loaded it out with a 5400rpm disk? That's a pretty underhanded marketing move.

Keeps costs down. Still HD is something you can replace later... The worse part is that they sell this as a higher-endish laptop and memory cant be upgraded any further (at least officially) so you're stuck with 8Gb...or get a new one.

As mentioned in my first post to this thread, it would be a good idea to update your laptop's firmware.

Chances are, 8GB SODIMMs were virtually non-existent for use with your laptop's chipset when it was first released, and the BIOS firmware may not have been updated to work with larger SODIMMs at that time. So, published specs probably show it can use 8GB total with 2x4GB DIMMS, since no 8GB modules had been tested when the laptop was released.

That's a *VERY* common issue, where specs will show what memory was compatible with it at the time it was released, even if firmware updates to the same chipset allowed larger memory modules later.

BIOS Updates will usually add compatibility with newer memory types and much more over time, and I can see that there have been many updates to it since your model was first introduced. Again, I'd suggest installing the latest A17 BIOS Firmware for your laptop, as mentioned in my earlier post to this thread. You can get that firmware update here:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...ron-17r-se-7720&languageCode=en&categoryId=BI

Then (after you upgrade your laptop's firmware) upgrade it to 16G'B (if you really need more) using 2x8GB of memory that is guaranteed to work with it (as timing differences may cause one type to be incompatible, whereas modules with different timing may work fine in it).

Crucial has guaranteed compatible memory for your laptop (and I'd suggest buying it from them, as sometimes you will see issues due to timing differences between memory modules that can cause compatibility problems. You can get a 2x8GB set (remove the old memory and install one 8GB SODIMM in each slot so you'll end up with 16GB total). You cost would only be around $72 for 16GB of guaranteed compatible memory using two 8GB SODIMMs::

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/inspiron-17r-(7720)/CT4942120

They also have guaranteed compatible SSDs using an mSATA form factor, so that you can plug one into an mSATA slot without wasting a drive bay or SATA port. See those for your laptop model near the bottom of the list here:

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Dell/inspiron-17r-(7720)#ssdResults

--
JimC
------

 

[Hosebag]

I just installed a Samsung 512gb 850 pro into my pc. The software cd that came with it had an outdated Samsung Magician and I had to go get the latest version from their website in order to be able to enable provisioning and RAPID on Windows 10. After that, all is well. Yes, the ssd is fast.

I benchmarked it with magician and got:

Sequential read (mb/s) 4620

Sequential write (mb/s) 3809

Random read 127500 iops

Random write 75620 iops

Then I benchmarked my old 2tb Hitachi 7200 rpm spin drive and the ssd makes it look sick. Numbers were only in the 100 range.

Be sure to turn off defragging and prefetch.

If you go to this link, there is a ton of good info on ssd's, they are all about ssd's on this link.

The SSD Review

The Worlds Dedicated SSD Education and Review Resource |

www.thessdreview.com

 

[Ronan_M]

Memory was the first thing I thought about upgrading, but when you look at usage, the bottleneck was on the disk, not the memory.

Memory upgrade was probably cheaper (could get the 16 Gb chips for about 120$) but it meant discarding the current 2x4 Gb chips AND doing a non-supported operation.

The 500 Gb SSD was approx 220$ but I still get to keep the 1 Tb disk for data (laptop has 2 disk bays) AND the laptop flies now.

 

[SushiEater]

Memory was the first thing I thought about upgrading, but when you look at usage, the bottleneck was on the disk, not the memory.

No, if you set LR and PS to use small amount of memory the disk becomes bottleneck. If you increase LR and PS use of memory there is no reason for those to write to the disk so all the operations are done in memory and disk is not even being touched. And memory is faster than SSD.

 

[tcg550]

I just bought a new computer myself. An i5 (I wanted an i7 but couldn't justify the extra cost for what I use it for) It came with 16GB RAM and a 2TB drive.

I swapped it out for a Samsung 250GB SSD.

I go over to my old computer and open Photoshop. Then I go over to the new computer and restart it and then open Photoshop and it's all open while my old computer is still opening Photoshop.

I tried rendering a 2 minute timelapse that was taking 45 minutes on the old computer, it took 2 minutes on the new one.

I don't know what I'm going to do with all this extra time on my hands. I'll have to pay more attention to my wife now.

 

[SushiEater]

I just bought a new computer myself. An i5 (I wanted an i7 but couldn't justify the extra cost for what I use it for) It came with 16GB RAM and a 2TB drive.

I swapped it out for a Samsung 250GB SSD.

I go over to my old computer and open Photoshop. Then I go over to the new computer and restart it and then open Photoshop and it's all open while my old computer is still opening Photoshop.

What happens on your old computer if you exit Photoshop and start it again? How long does it take?

I tried rendering a 2 minute timelapse that was taking 45 minutes on the old computer, it took 2 minutes on the new one.

You must have very slow old computer. Has nothing to do with SSD.

I don't know what I'm going to do with all this extra time on my hands. I'll have to pay more attention to my wife now.

Learn how to take some better photos.?!?! :-D

 

[tcg550]

I just bought a new computer myself. An i5 (I wanted an i7 but couldn't justify the extra cost for what I use it for) It came with 16GB RAM and a 2TB drive.

I swapped it out for a Samsung 250GB SSD.

I go over to my old computer and open Photoshop. Then I go over to the new computer and restart it and then open Photoshop and it's all open while my old computer is still opening Photoshop.

What happens on your old computer if you exit Photoshop and start it again? How long does it take?

I tried rendering a 2 minute timelapse that was taking 45 minutes on the old computer, it took 2 minutes on the new one.

You must have very slow old computer. Has nothing to do with SSD.

I don't know what I'm going to do with all this extra time on my hands. I'll have to pay more attention to my wife now.

Learn how to take some better photos.?!?! :-D

--
Photography Director for Whedonopolis.com

SSD improves booting and opening programs. I tested with the 2TB drive that came with the computer before swapping out for the SSD.

Correct, the SSD has little to do with the rendering.

It takes forever to even exit Photoshop on the old computer and it takes just as long to reopen.

The old computer was an XP dual core Pentium with 2GB ram. It was fine for day to day stuff like business books, invoicing, creating and maintaining websites but editing raw or multi layer PS files was getting painfully slow when it came time to save. Video editing was ok until it came time to render.

I'm happy now.

 

[SushiEater]

I just bought a new computer myself. An i5 (I wanted an i7 but couldn't justify the extra cost for what I use it for) It came with 16GB RAM and a 2TB drive.

I swapped it out for a Samsung 250GB SSD.

I go over to my old computer and open Photoshop. Then I go over to the new computer and restart it and then open Photoshop and it's all open while my old computer is still opening Photoshop.

What happens on your old computer if you exit Photoshop and start it again? How long does it take?

I tried rendering a 2 minute timelapse that was taking 45 minutes on the old computer, it took 2 minutes on the new one.

You must have very slow old computer. Has nothing to do with SSD.

I don't know what I'm going to do with all this extra time on my hands. I'll have to pay more attention to my wife now.

Learn how to take some better photos.?!?! :-D

 

[PhotoFactor]

As long as the rest of the people reading understand this.

The only thing SSD does is speed up boot process and loading programs for the first time.

This is not necessarily correct.

Different programs tax the system in different ways. Some programs do a lot of disk access. So you can have the fastest CPU but if your system is waiting for the disk it is going to be slow. Other programs (such as image rendering) might use the CPU much more, and in those cases the CPU speed becomes more important.

As an example, database applications are typically very disk I/O intensive.

Your overall system speed is a function of the slowest component *for the application being used*.

So buying and installing an SSD, which generally speeds disk access by a factor of 5-15, can make a huge difference not only in boot times, but in execution times, depending upon what your system is doing.