Best SSDs For The Money: October 2011

[thebski]

Others have brought it up, but I'd really like to see more about reliability on these drives. This is basically just a performance review, and while I'd like to get into the highest performance tier that I can, I don't really want to do it if it's going to mean BSOD'ing all the time. Nothing pisses me off more than spending 3500-4000 on a brand new machine to have it crash all the time.

I'd really like the performance of the Wildfire from Patriot, but it sounds like almost 1/3 of the buyers experience BSOD issues, and I'm not taking that chance since I'll be buying two of whatever I choose. I'm probably going to end up waiting for the Intel 520's. Hopefully they'll be a combination of Intel's reliability with the performance of the Patriot/OCZ drives.

 

[gm0n3y]

[citation][nom]radium69[/nom]Crucial M4 hands down Reliability is #1 priorityDon't forget that!Can we see some failure and RMA rates please![/citation]
After reading many, many cases of Sandforce BSOD issues I have to agree with you. I plan on buying an M4 once I find a good sale.

 

[Scotty99]

I will not buy an SSD until prices come down drastically, which they will. I have a simple 7200 RPM seagate and from pressing the power button to hearing the windows 7 jingle its under 30 seconds, i can live with that. One thing i would like to try down the road is using fraps, where i record to a seperate hard drive than what the program is running off of, i heard that makes fraps run a lot better.

 

[Gnug315]

I totally agree that reliability is by far the primary concern. I'd rather have a super slow HD than the fastest on the planet with a 10% chance of critical failure within a short time frame.

That being said, bear in mind that the newegg reviews are skewed by the fact that disgruntled users are approximately thirteen times as likely to post their review! Actual figures are more likely that 5% of users are having to RMA the worst drives.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/810-6/taux-pannes-composants.html

- Intel 0,59%
- Corsair 2,17%
- Crucial 2,25%
- Kingston 2,39%
- OCZ 2,93%

 

[Guest]

No listed random reads/writes = article fail...

 

[cadder]

I will not buy an SSD until prices come down drastically, which they will. I have a simple 7200 RPM seagate and from pressing the power button to hearing the windows 7 jingle its under 30 seconds, i can live with that. One thing i would like to try down the road is using fraps, where i record to a seperate hard drive than what the program is running off of, i heard that makes fraps run a lot better.

Everybody's experience will differ. My home machine has a Q9400 at 3.4GHz, a WD 750 black and Win7. It seems to boot in 30 sec. or less. Its boot speed really doesn't matter that much to me anyway, and it is very responsive in loading programs. My work laptop has a 7200RPM drive, relatively fast processor, and Vista. It takes a LONG time to boot. The SSD that I just ordered will go into it. My CAD workstation has an E8500 at 3.8GH, WD Velociraptor, and WinXP. It is fast enough for most uses but my CAD apps seem to hit the hard drive a lot, and this is a big slowdown that bugs me to no end. My next workstation will have a lot more ram and 64bit OS, and a fast SSD for its system drive.

 

[joaompp]

[citation][nom]ViciousDelicious[/nom]Just bought Samsung 470 128GB on Newegg for $179.99.Great deal, if you ask me. And the speeds are absolutely amazing!Lucky me, sale ended day after I ordered mine. $229.99 at the moment.Seq read 200 MB/sSeq write 245 MB/sRand read 28000 IOPSRand write 15000 IOPS[/citation]
you would've done better to buy an ocz agility 3 120gb, $175 - $20 rebate for a total of $155, more performance and it would've saved you $20

 

[cadder]

[citation][nom]joaompp[/nom]you would've done better to buy an ocz agility 3 120gb, $175 - $20 rebate for a total of $155, more performance and it would've saved you $20[/citation]

That might turn out to be a lot of dollars per day, because on the average the OCZ drives seem to fail pretty fast. I bought the Samsung 470 also, and I wasn't real excited about its speed but I was reading some old reviews and comparison tests of it against various other drives and it held its own very well. I'm not convinced that the user really sees the benefit of a very fast SSD over a fast SSD, and it really doesn't matter how fast a given SSD is if it fails. At least with the Samsung I'm not overly worried about its reliability. Check the user reviews on newegg for the OCZ drives and then decide if you want to spend your money on one. I decided that's too much risk for me.

 

[The Halo Don]

I want an SSD so bad, money is tight though

 

[Guest]

I have worked with computers for over 30 years, everything from building them to programming to running I.T. departments and even selling them, and in all those 30+ years I have never seen a single component that has increased performance more than the replacement of a spindle hard drive with an SSD, and that includes memory, CPUs, GPUs, anything. I have two Intel drives and a Crucial C300 256GB (along with a Sony Vaio Z with built-in RAID SSD chips)... I got the Intel drives when they first came out three years ago and have never had an issue nor have I with the Crucial unit. Like anything else, they fail but in my experience both as a high-end user and selling to many global companies, they fail considerably less often than spindle drives... which makes sense considering they have no moving parts (and don't forget the noise!). I have sold thousands of SSD drives and still have yet to have one fail... perhaps I am lucky but during that same period I have had many spindle drives come back as returns. Thank you Toms for continuing to review this very important computer component in a timely manner.

 

[Guest]

damn i just bought and Adata 120 but i got the S510 not the S511.... whats the big diff? it seems like the reviews on new egg like the S510 better then the S511. And it was cheaper. All the other stats seem to be the same.

 

[cadder]

[citation][nom]AmtrakQuebec[/nom]in all those 30+ years I have never seen a single component that has increased performance more than the replacement of a spindle hard drive with an SSD[/citation]

Please don't say that. My family has 6 computers, so I will probably have to buy 6 SSD's. That means 1 down, 5 to go.

 

[Guest]

Why haven't they benched the M4 with the most recent firmware update. It's been 3 months since it's release and it improves performance greatly.

 

[flong]

[citation][nom]thrawn1799[/nom]Why is Samsung left off this list? Yes, I read about the reason they left off the 830 series but that still doesn't explain why the 470 is excluded.[/citation]

Because it is second generation and slow.

 

[flong]

[citation][nom]cadder[/nom]Once again I shall step in as the SSD watchdog.I started at the bottom and looked up the user feedback on newegg for the recommended models. The BEST of these had at least 34% of the users that were extremely dissatisfied, the WORST had 66%, that's a full 2/3 of buyers, that were extremely dissatisfied with their purchases. I cannot understand how toms can recommend a product that 1/3 to 2/3 of buyers will be dissatisfied with. Intel, Crucial, Plextor and Samsung seem to have the best reliability, OCZ the worst.Research for yourself and think carefully before buying.OCZ Vertex Plus 60gbhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 682022773866% dissatisfiedOCZ Agility 3 60gbhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 682022772540% dissatisfiedOCZ Agility 3 120GBhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 682022772634% dissatisfiedAdata S511 120gbhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 682021155144% dissatisfiedPatriot Wildfirehttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 682022059934% dissatisfied[/citation]

Dude, these are Newegg reviews not professional studies. Half of the dissatisfied reviews for most of these drives are from people too stupid to know how to set up their SSD properly.

I agree with you that they are one source of information and they should not be completely discounted, but they are hardly a solid source of a reliability study.

You are basing all your decisions on a cross-group of people that may have a large percentage of people who may not even know how to properly use an SSD. On top of this, you are ignoring the fact that there are no professional reliability studies for ANY of these SSDs.

I read all of the Newegg reviews with a grain of salt because many of the disgruntled reviews are from people that nobody can make happy and they are not the brightest bulbs on the tree. This type of people tends to complain a lot.

Many successful SSD users will probably not even post a review - I know that i have never posted a review on the Corsair GT that I own and I have never had a moment's problem with it.

 

[Guest]

I'd like to see more about the BSOD issues that some SandForce drives are facing, this is not some rare out of the blue problem, its consistent and many complaints in retailers nowadays. For $200+ drives, this is unacceptable, look into this please Tom. Otherwise this article is more marketing than fact.

 

[cadder]

[citation][nom]flong[/nom]Dude, these are Newegg reviews not professional studies. Half of the dissatisfied reviews for most of these drives are from people too stupid to know how to set up their SSD properly.[/citation]

Yes but until someone comes up with better studies this is all that we have to go by.


[citation][nom]flong[/nom]You are basing all your decisions on a cross-group of people that may have a large percentage of people who may not even know how to properly use an SSD. On top of this, you are ignoring the fact that there are no professional reliability studies for ANY of these SSDs.[/citation]

But the same people are buying OCZ drives as are buying Intel and Crucial drives. So if they don't know how to set up an OCZ and make it work, how do they manage to have much better success getting Intel and Crucial drives to work? I'm just saying that the very large difference in feedback for Intel/Crucial drives vs. OCZ drives has to mean something significant in terms or reliability or function.

 

[flong]

OK, To address both the Crucial M4 (being most reliable) and using Newegg reviews at the same time let me say this.

I do agree that Newegg reviews are a valuable source of feedback and should be considered. However, with complicated products like an SSD that must be installed correctly for it to work properly, the value of the Newegg reviews goes down quite a bit because there are so many brain-dead people NOT installing and setting up their SSDs correctly.

For example, when you look at the Newegg reviews on blu-ray burners they are filled with dummies who cannot comprehend that you have to have the right software in order to play blu-rays. They also think the limited bundled software should be all inclusive when it never is. They also think that for a bare burner with NO software that the software STILL should have been included. I am sorry, but these people are just ignorant.

When you talk with IT professionals with a lot of first-hand experience with SSDs they almost to a man (or woman) will say that SSDs are FAR more reliable than HDDs. BUT, they take someone with a reasonable amount of intelligence to install them because they have special requirements. I am willing to bet that a lot of the problems we hear about are from people who just don't know what they are doing and then install the SSD like and HDD which will not work.

SSDs have no moving parts and so they are intrinsically more reliable. The problems they have experienced have been in the controllers and in wear leveling. With the newest SSDs, these problems have largely been eliminated.

With the exception of possibly Intel, there is no reliable data that would differentiate the reliability of one SSD from another. Unless we start seeing a huge percentage of Newegg reviews going negative then those reviews are not the best source of feedback (though I agree it is about all we have right now).

For example, the Corsair Force 3 (non-GT) had a problem earlier and about 85% of the Newegg reviews went negative. Now that is much more reliable data than a lot of the sheer gossip and old-wives tales we keep hearing about various SSDs. I bought the Force 3 on sale and I was concerned. I called up Corsair and they agreed to trade out the Force 3 for the Force 3 GT AT NO ADDITIONAL COST. Corsair is indeed and amazing company.

SSDs are selling like hotcakes and most of the satisfied customers are not being heard from. I believe right now that SSDs are far more reliable than HDDs, they just are not as user friendly and simple to use.

It is your choice whether you want to take a chance and use an SSD and get a 500% increase in performance. Most computer professional are doing it right now in droves and they know better than anyone the risks involved. If you don't need the extra speed, stick with an HDD but don't think that you are any safer from drive failure than with and SSD, There is not proof of this at all and it is very likely you are MORE likely to have catastrophic failure with an HDD than an SSD based on what I have heard from the pros.

 

[balister]

You need to change the listing for the Crucial M4s, pretty much any you buy now will have Fireware 0002 or 0009 now and no longer at 0001. What does this mean? The read speed is around 500 MB/s instead of the 420 MB/s listed in the article. The 0002 firmware upped the read and write speeds by about 20% each.

 

[jacobdrj]

What tier do the Samsung drives fall under?

 

[jabliese]

Typo on the ~$70 section, chart says 60GB, rest of the section talks about 30GB. You guys had me for a second, thought I had a great replacement for an older 30GB notebook drive. Might pull the trigger anyway, but now gotta think about it.

 

[Guest]

the sandforce bsod has been solved. firmware update out now.
release notes: http://www.ocztechnology.com/files/ssd_tools/OCZ_SSD_v215_Firmware_Release_Notes.pdf

 

[wardler]

If you are very budget limited just give it a few years and you'll be rocking and rolling. Just look at HDD storage, memory, CPUs, and graphics cards now! SSDs will be cheap tomorrow.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Interesting article. Good to see the cautionary statements.

 

[cadder]

If anybody is still reading this thread- since several people mentioned buying the Samsung drive while it was on sale I will give my experience. I bought the drive too, and it came with Norton Ghost cloning software. I also bought an external USB enclosure. I put the SSD in the enclosure, installed Ghost, and copied the C: drive to the SSD, making sure that Norton was told to copy the MBR and make the new drive bootable. I put the SSD in the laptop waiting to be wowed but it hangs up at "preparing your desktop". I figure there is a problem with Norton's cloning so I take the SSD back out, put my original hard drive back in. I'm thinking I will have to get another cloning program and try again some other time. Well now my original hard drive won't boot. It does the same thing, hangs up on "preparing your desktop". After a long time it finally gets to a crude desktop with part of my icons showing and I also get error messages that various DLL's are missing. I tried to uninstall Norton and that part of control panel will not load. It is almost like Ghost is really a virus. So if anybody else out there bought the Samsung drive with ghost, throw the Ghost CD away before you are tempted to let it destroy your Windows install.