I got two of these open box drives for $79 each and they work perfectly fine. They just come in this white paper box with nothing else inside. It's either the cheapest packaging or most environmentally friendly packaging I have ever seen.
I can see why people are returning these SSDs by the truckload... They make Windows BSOD when you boot. The problem seems to be the 3.1.0 firmware it's running. I had to turn on hot plugging in the BIOS then boot into Windows7 x64, hot plug the SATA cable. After this the SSD was detected properly and Windows did not crash. After the firmware update I also see what others mentioned with the life going from 90% back to 100% and the temperature reporting much higher than normal; from 25C idle to 56C idle. I am guessing ADATA will fix this in the next release.
Another problem I ran into was the firmware update itself. The ADATA utility would not detect the drive no matter what I did: AHCI and Legacy(PATA) mode. It turns out you have to run the flashing application in Vista SP2 compatible mode. After these few hiccups I was able to flash both my drives to the newest 3.4.8 firmware provided by ADATA for the S599.
I am using 1 SSD in my HTPC (C2D E8400, 8GB, HD5450) also running Win7 X64 Ultimate and it works great. Windows Media Center loads instantly, I don't notice much difference from my 160GB X-25M. Netflix on Media Center is improved significantly. Before it would take a good 5-10 seconds to load the specific movie title details, now it's instant. The whole Media Center experience is improved drastically. In the Windows Experience Index it scores a 7.6 vs. 7.8 for the X-25M. The biggest benefit is the elimination of noise.
Now on to the PS3 Slim. I can't notice much difference from the original 320GB(Toshiba) that was included from factory. Netflix loads a little faster, but not as much as I thought it would. I don't really game much on the PS3 so I haven't tested game load speeds much. I will install Street Fighter and GT5 later when I have more time. I'll update more with game load speeds.
Link to ADATA S599 firmware 3.6.5
iPSG Microcenter 64GB SSD firmware 3.4.6
The above are direct links to the manufacturer firmware updates. I claim no responsibility or ownership of the firmware. Any changes or damages resulting from using the firmware upgrade is the user's own fault.
 |
| Microcenter 64GB SSDs |
0 comments:
Post a Comment