Best SSDs For The Money: October 2011

[nikorr]

Good job Crucial m4

 

[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!

 

[cadder]

I feel compelled to post a follow-up to my report on using Ghost with the Samsung drive. I spent a LOT of time reading on the Norton Community forums and discovered that there are a lot of pitfalls to using Ghost to clone a drive, depending on how many partitions you have and so forth. Plus the Ghost user manual does not do a good job of explaining how to clone. After a lot of reading and some help from other users I was able to clone my drive a second time and get it to work. So anybody that got Ghost, you can use it but study up on how to use it first.

 

[hbottjer]

I have been having problems with the OCZ Vertex 60gb Vertex Plus. A new build, Win7 64bit, after a few reboots CHKDSK insists to run. Twice, after clean installs. I contact OCZ and will post their reply. I have a 120gb OCZ I have not tried yet but am worried.

 

[g-unit1111]

[citation][nom]amk-aka-phantom[/nom]This is EXACTLY the article I wanted, since I want to get an SSD soon! Great review, though a bit short... maybe could do boot time comparison?This 60GB OCZ Agility 3 seems like a great option and costs only $100... well, $156 'round here Still, it has the best read/write speeds for the price; anyone having issues with that drive? Don't want to run into some BS for that much money... Any other good drive for that money? The hierarchy chart has many models listed, but very few made it in the "Best" categories.[/citation]

Go for the Crucial M4. Intel, Samsung, and Plextor are also good brands I've heard incredibly mixed things about OCZ and they don't seem to be the most reliable company for RMAs from what I've heard.

 

[g-unit1111]

[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]

Totally agree. When I got my Intel 320 I did a ton of research on Newegg and similar sites like Tom's, and you know what I found with the negative reviews on OCZ drives? Nearly 2/3 of the negative reviews were either from people who were complaining about formatted capacity (and if you're complaining about formatted capacity - you shouldn't be using Newegg), people complaining about not being able to obtain a proper refund, or people complaining about shipping problems. And the people complaining about actual drive problems got RMAs immediately. I maybe saw 10 positive reviews for the drives.

 

[hbottjer]

g-unit1111 I am attemptin an install of the 60gb OCZ Vertex Plus SSD. I have installed Win7 twice, and after a couple of days received message that CHKDSK must run. As of now it seems to be okay, but I have seen on other boards OCZ is not the most reliable. I will make frequent backups, and all user data on separate drive (Microsoft does not recommend relocating "MY Document" etc. but although they are lame it is possible.)

 

[B-Raz]

Cadder, I highly recommend Acronis True Image for cloning drives. A copy came with the 128GB Kingston HyperX I bought and it flawlessly cloned my laptops HDD over to my new SSD.

 

[flong]

OCZ probably sells more SSDs than any other manufacturer and so they probably have a higher failure rate accordingly.

It bothers me that Samsung and Crucial M4 are considered "more reliable" than other manufacturers when they have had problems and they don't sell as many drives as OCZ. I don't own and OCZ and you are right that there have been a lot of complaints on Newegg against them, however a lot of people are very happy with them.

Apart from Intel, I don't think that any of these SSD manufacturers are more reliable than the other and even Intel has had their problems. I think the main thing to look for is how well the manufacturer backs their product. Corsair is number one IMO in this department as I had to return an SSD to them and they immediately took care of me.

We may not know which SSD is the most reliable but we can find out how good the customer service is for these companies. That is what really counts right now until we do have some solid reliability studies.

 

[jbo5112]

Am I the only one who thinks the entire article would be incredibly better as a well designed table or spreadsheet? With the headers, 7 or so footers, sidebars, comments, and advertising, the article looks like a whole lot of nothing.

 

[juncture]

[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]
So Enterprise SSD's ftw?

 

[danwat1234]

For people that still have a SATA 2 motherboard, an Intel X25-m G2 SSD is a great value. The random read performance of the drive is terrific and it nearly saturates the SATA II interface with sequential read operations. It is a perfect Operating System/software drive. The only thing lacking is the sequential write performance of ~70MB/s of the 80GB version and ~100MB/s of the 160GB version. However, the random write speed is good. Reliability is proven.

I have been looking at the charts on Anandtech, at SATA 2 connections and their aren't any drives that really pwn an Intel G2 when it comes to random read performance, which is most important in an OS/software drive. Even a Vertex 3 max iops doesn't do that much better, maybe 33% better tops.

You can get them at good prices on Ebay!

 

[bigcyco1]

Crucial M4 ftw!