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Drew1
07-17-2013, 11:46 PM
I have an Asus U45JC-A1 Laptop and had it for a few years already.


Amazon.com: ASUS U45JC-A1 14-Inch Thin and Light Laptop - Up to 10 Hours of Battery Life: Computers & Accessories (http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-U45JC-A1-14-Inch-Light-Laptop/dp/B003WIYMA6)


Its specs are

Windows 7 64 Bit
I3 M370 Processor @ 2400ghz
4gb ram
5400rpm


It seems to have 298gb total on my hard drive when i check my computer but i almost never have more than 50gb used up so i always have over 200 gb that is free. I don't have much stuff on the laptop. The last year or so, the laptop has gotten extremely slow. It would also freeze a lot and i would need to press control, alt, delete to unfreeze it and even when I do this, the laptop freezes a good bit. I read how getting an SSD would make your laptop much much faster.


I plan to be using it for pokerstars 24 tabling along with HEM and Tableninja. I used to play on laptop very sparingly back then but with HEM/TN on because i would usually play on my faster desktop. At that time, i rarely play that many tables. Can someone recommend me what SSD to get? I remembered a few years from looking at the HEM forums that if you want to use HEM and Tableninja and not have much lag, 7200 rpm or SSD was essential. Even on my desktop, HEM would lag when i look at the reports. My laptop is of course a 5400rpm. I also recalled back then that ssds were so expensive where very few ppl got bigger than a 64gb ssd correct? But since prices of these went down, so many ppl have 250gb and 512 gb ssds?


Can someone recommend me an SSD drive for this laptop through amazon? Would i need 120gb or 250 ssd drive? I plan to be 24 tabling stars and running HEM and Tableninja and will be playing tons of hands and don't want any lag. But besides that, i want my laptop to also stop freezing so much. I think for someone like me that doesn't keep much stuff on the laptop as i have only 40gb used up out of 300gb on my laptop, that something like a 120gb would be more than enough for it? But f i want something for long term, its probably best to get the 250gb just to have extra storage? I dont want any external drive etc just want everything on the laptop. I also don't want a situation where if my computer is full in the future, then i have to get another ssd to replace the 120gb one. So i think 250gb should be the perfect one?


This is what im looking at.



Amazon.com: Samsung MZ-7TD250BW 840 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) 250 GB Sata 2.5-Inch: Computers & Accessories (http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MZ-7TD250BW-Series-Solid-2-5-Inch/dp/B009NHAEXE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374090592&sr=8-1&keywords=ssd+256)



Also is there a big difference between this samsung 840 vs the 840 pro? I assume me just doing my 24 tabling on stars with HEM and TN on and music played with the 840 would be perfectly fine and the 840 pro wouldn't really make that big of a difference for the HEM?


And does anyone know if this ssd will be compatible with my laptop?

Drew1
07-17-2013, 11:47 PM
Also i like to add that I always used HEM version 1 and liked it. I don't recall if i ever tried HEM version 2 free trial or not but I loved HEM version 1 and don't plan to upgrade because i was very comfortable with version 1. The same with tableninja.

Drew1
07-18-2013, 12:07 AM
I also like to add that I don't play any games at all. Meaning I don't play starcraft or any of those games where you need to install it.


So based on this, 120gb probably would be good enough? But then again if i ever want to upgrade to bigger one, wouldn't just getting the 250gb ssd make the most sense?


What i also hear a lot is how ppl mention their original hard drive is like 500gb and they used that as an external drive. Well i dont want to connect any external drive to my laptop or do anything like that. I basically just want my laptop the way it is without needing to connect any external hard drive to it etc. I also dont want to have to copy any HEM data as well in the future. So that means just 250gb ssd would be best? Im thinking 120gb would be more than enough but if use it for 5 plus years with HEM, probably just be safer and take the 250gb?


Some ppl on another forum mention based on what i mention, 120gb would be more than enough. But I want to never have to upgrade my laptop which is why im thinking 250gb is better. Thoughts?

udbrky
07-18-2013, 04:58 PM
Tom's Hardware's SSD Hierarchy Chart - Best SSDs For The Money: March 2013 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269-6.html)

Samsung really dominates the top of their list. B-Money and I have a Crucial M4. I have one in my laptop and desktop.

Fozzy has an Intel.

I had bad experiences with some Corsairs.

OCZ had a lot of reports of being dead on arrival a year and a half ago when I was shopping for mine.

For size, you want to think about how large your database will be in the future. I use a secondary disk to store data, like HH's, media, etc. You won't need the access speeds for those kinds of files.

I have a 512 in my desktop and 256 in my laptop. I wouldn't go below 128. I think you'll hit the point too soon where you have outgrown it.

Out of HM1, HM2, PT3, HM2 has by far the smallest DB's.

Some SSD's now use compression automatically. The Truth About SSDs and Compression (http://rscott.org/ssd/SSDs_and_compression.htm)

You can also use NTFS compression on the DB folder in roaming and the postgres\data\base folder to make it smaller:

Best practices for NTFS compression in Windows (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/251186)

You can put your postgres data folder and the HM2 database parent folder on a different drive.

In HM1 there are a lot of tables that deal with a specific hand played by a specific player. In HM2 we don't have these tables, instead, for player related hand data, we use a flat file approach. Each player has his own folder and each file represents a single day. Each line within the file is a tokenized version of a single hand with incredible amounts of detail. Your overall HM2 spaced used (DB + Files) is about 2/3 of HM1 and we store probably 2-3 times as much info plus it can be accessed many, many times faster and allows us to do some things that wouldn't be possible otherwise, many of which are yet to come. If you don't want the space in your Roaming folder due to C: file space or something like that, we do give you the option of storing this data anywhere

General rule is 1 million hands = 10 GB.

In reality it's: 1 million hands
HM1: 6.8 GB
HM2: 4.3 GB
PT4: 13.6 GB

So with a 10 million hand database you need as SSD of at least 60 GB (Windows) + 100 GB = 160 GB.
We use 1 million = 10 GB (instead of 6.8) because when you want to perform a vacuum/analyse or backup/restore a database it will require a LOT of disk space to perform such a task.

You can also run tree size free to locate wastes of space:

TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs (http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/)

Please see this guide to optimize your SSD:

Can You Get More Space Or Speed From Your SSD? - Optimizing Precious Solid-State Storage (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-tweak,2911.html)

Here is another guide:

Super-Fast SSDs: Four Rules for How To Treat Them Right « IT Expert Voice (http://itexpertvoice.com/home/super-fast-ssds-four-rules-for-how-to-treat-them-right/)