Best SSDs For The Money: August 2011

[banthracis]

It's only SF that's really been having major unresolved issues.

The Intel drives are fine, and the 8mb problem has been solved, and their Marvell based drives have zero issues.

The Crucial Marvell drives had a error on release, but that was quickly fixed in a firmware update.

So in reality, it's only for SF drives that your statement may apply.

Which is the main reason why I personally wouldn't recommend ANY SF based drive. For all the marketing talk, no one has figured out the underlying issue yet, and as such, the workarounds presented aren't solutions.

 

[stingstang]

The 200 dollar ssd is worse than the 250 ssd with only 8gb more storage. Weak sauce.

-I use the revodrive 1. 500mb read/write at 128gb for $240. Wouldn't say it's that bad for a lga 775 computer. Bought it 4-5 months ago before all the prices dropped.

 

[yankeeDDL]

Maybe I'm just cheap.
Or maybe I have never actually seen the speed bump offered by SSDs.
At these price points, and these capacities, SSDs are just not attractive to me.
With $425 of the 256GB SSD, you can buy 12TB (12!!!) (6x 2TB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514) and even have some left over.

Of course there's not much in terms of speed comparison, but nearly 50X more capacity for the same price ...

 

[pinkfloydminnesota]

The Solid 3 from OCZ in the 120 GB version is $169 at newegg before a $20 rebate. Best deal out there.

 

[karma831]

we're still going to recommend the Agility 3 because of its able to fully saturate a SATA 3Gb/s controller

I think you meant ability.

 

[master9716]

OCZ Agility 3 120gb $173 shipped from Amazon. Enough said !!!!!! Everyone should buy this drive untill other catch up in price PERIOD.

 

[master9716]

[citation][nom]pinkfloydminnesota[/nom]The Solid 3 from OCZ in the 120 GB version is $169 at newegg before a $20 rebate. Best deal out there.[/citation]
My son read my comment. There is aHUGE difference between the Solid 3 and Agility 3 , but theres not much difference between Agility and Vertex 3. so buy the Agility 3 for 173bucks.

 

[Guest]

This article is about performance. Why use a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 and not a 7200 RPM one instead? Anyone serious about performance will not even consider 5400 RPM to begin with. Not sure why so many articles love to compare with 5400.

 

[flong]

[citation][nom]banthracis[/nom]It's only SF that's really been having major unresolved issues. The Intel drives are fine, and the 8mb problem has been solved, and their Marvell based drives have zero issues. The Crucial Marvell drives had a error on release, but that was quickly fixed in a firmware update. So in reality, it's only for SF drives that your statement may apply. Which is the main reason why I personally wouldn't recommend ANY SF based drive. For all the marketing talk, no one has figured out the underlying issue yet, and as such, the workarounds presented aren't solutions.[/citation]

While agree with you that Intel SSDs are probably the most reliable drives - Intel has had reliability problems also (the 8 GB bug in their 310 series). The truth is there are no reliability studies available yet that give us factual data - review Tom's Hardware's article on this subject.

The article concluded that SSDs and HDDs are fairly equal in reliability but that SSDs would overtake HDDs (no moving parts).

Concerning the comments that "they don't see much difference with an SSD" you obviously don't own one or if you do you own a very slow one. There is a huge difference in performance with an SSD running the operating system. This is why SSDs are selling like hot cakes. If there was no real improvement - they wouldn't be selling.

 

[pinkfloydminnesota]

I must remember the Google HDD study incorrectly as I thought it said there was an initial high failure rate as the bad drives failed immediately, followed by a lull in failure for a period of at least a year, followed by a return to a higher failure rate which continues to increase. I think it was described as an upside down bathtub (describing rates, not total failures overtime as in this article's graph).

The graph accompanying this article doesn't seem to show the initial 3-9 month failures described by google.

 

[MRFS]

> Guys, what do you think about idea of SSD's in RAID 0?

Because RAID 0 "stripes" data across all array members,
each member of a RAID 0 with 2 members should experience
50% of the wear over time, as compared to the same workload
on a non-RAID drive;
each member of a RAID 0 with 4 members should experience
25% of the wear over time, as compared to the same workload
on a non-RAID drive.

This should effectively prolong the useful life
of each member cf. "Media Wearout Indicator" for
an empirical way to measure this effect.

There was a very long thread on this MWI measure
and "Write Endurance" at www.xtremesystems.org e.g.:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm/page54


However, TRIM is not currently supported when
SSDs are members of a RAID array.

I've asked Intel if TRIM works when the RAID array
is created and managed by XP (aka OS software RAID),
but they never answered.

If I were building a fast RAID 0 subsystem, I would
start with a reliable x8 PCI-E 2.0 RAID controller that
supports SAS and SATA at 6G e.g. Highpoint RocketRAID 2720SGL,
and install 4 SSDs at a time in a 4-in-1 backplane enclosure
designed for 5.25" drive bays e.g. Enhance Technology's X14
is my favorite:

http://www.enhance-tech.com/products/multidrive/x14.html


MRFS

 

[Guest]

The new 0009 firmware for the M4 really give's a boost in performance. My boot time dropped from 26 secs to 19 secs.

 

[Guest]

Why are the Revo Drives not included? They seem to have some stellar performance figures.

 

[Gnug315]

I must absolutely agree with users commenting that reliability is the primary concern now. I don't care if my SSD is blindingly or blazingly fast, but I sure as hell care if there's a good chance it'll die on me!

 

[pro-gamer]

iam using 128gb OCZ VERTEX 3 and iam very very very happy with it all of my games running in maxed out setting.
Keep it up ocz great technology.thanks

 

[gimiesome]

Would I have to buy a new board so I could use SSD....I have a M3N-HT Asus

 

[gimiesome]

A little more reading answers my question.Thanks though.

 

[Guest]

Any chance of seeing OWC's offerings incorporated into your reviews?

 

[Gman450]

Good chart.

 

[Guest]

Just picked up the OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 120 GB listed in Tier 3 for $157 after instant rebate, promo (listed on page, not email), and mail-in rebate on Newegg. Featured in today's 72-hour sale email, better hurry. Check it out:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227714

I'm still a bit concerned with the BSOD reviews; hope I get a good one!