Looking for the current fastest SSD on the market and best RAID card.

[dirtyblacksocks]

Just looking for the current top of the line SSD on the market and best RAID card available - also looking for what is widely considered the best SSD around right now with regards to getting your money's worth for speed.

Is there any sense to buying a PCI based SSD card like the ASUS RAIDR card if you're running a UEFI Bios, or is that strictly a Legacy Bios solution?

Thanks much.

 

[whitecat]

Samsung 840 EVO is fast enough

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2013/Desktop-Performance,2824.html

 

[johnnyb105]

+!

 

[Au_equus]

Samsung Pro and OCZ vertex

 

[johnnyb105]

Im sorry I cant promote the OCZ line I know many people have had luck with them but My very first and only vertex 3 was awesome till 2 months later non system disk error found for 8 months it was like this reinstall everything went well then out of the blue same thing... Samsung 840 evo is better even Kingston crucial or mushkin. Not ocz

 

[dirtyblacksocks]

I own 3 OCZ's currently. An Agility 1 from a long time ago when they were brand new that has yet to fail on me, a Vertex 3 that was a free replacement due to an Agility II crapping out on me after about 4 months of use (I guess they were notorious for failure) and a Vertex 4 that has yet to give me any problems.

Seeing as the one that did crap out on me was a Factory Refurbish to begin with, I can't say I have any issues with the company - I do know they had some questionable releases in some of their lineup, but it would seem since the Vertex 4 line and onward they have been resolved. It is a shame that they did make some poor QA decisions somewhere along the lines, though, because they do hold some pretty wicked patents for top end speeds.

 

[johnnyb105]

Yes every company makes a lemon now and then guess I got one from them but as far as My other drives 840 Sammy 300 v Kingston 240 ssd mushkin they have all served me well my OCZ was my first ever drive I didn't see the need to install all my files every other month and did not want a refurbished model for when I paid for new not knocking them just explaining my deal.. But as long as I don't run it as a boot drive it holds files fine and never fails but that wasn't the intended purpose of this drive was for.

 

[dirtyblacksocks]

Trust me, I get it - when my Agility II drive burned out on me it was the boot disk - and it gave me such a weird error that I took my system into a computer repair place - where the guy who had 20 years of computer repair experience couldn't figure it out and ultimately decided the motherboard was bad.

A bad SSD wouldn't even let my BIOS post, and ultimately lead to me buying an entirely new motherboard while I RMA'd what was likely a perfectly good motherboard - and in turn got a motherboard returned to me from the RMA with bent pins on the power adapter area - and they wouldn't RMA another board.

If OCZ didn't make some of the fastest stuff out there I would turn my back on them - but seeing as they gave me an SSD that was twice the size as the one that burnt out, and a Generation of technology newer, I guess I can't be too sore at them. SSD's break, it's kind of a universal knowledge you accept in exchange for the speed - sooner or later it's going to burn out.

After that incident I went and purchased Storage Craft's Shadow Protect and consistently back my entire file system up to an external hard drive - every two hours of the day, with a full backup once a week. It's well worth the $70's a year to me to have peace of mind that I won't have a virtual nightmare on my hands if an SSD burns out on me again.

 

[Au_equus]

Ahhh.... sorry. I meant the OCZ Vector series! The previous generations SF based ssds weren't the best in terms of reliability.

 

[4DGeorge]

For best bang and performance for the buck: I still have to +1 for OCZ. When you compare the read/write speeds, they're still at the top.

I have been deploying the 128 gig OCZ units since their invention and have only had eight (out of close to 150) units that had issues. Of those, three were repairable via firmware upgrades. The lesson: Stay on top of firmware updates!

I've also deployed five of the 128 gig OCZ PCIe SSD cards with good success. Same lesson for them: Stay on top of the firmware updates.
Be aware that the experienced write speeds are impacted by their compatibility with the motherboards. On some models, like my Sabertooth 990FX R2, I could only get 150 MB/s write speeds with my RevoDrive2. And it's entirely possible there are certain BIOS settings that needed to be in place for the full speeds to be available. But on other systems, like the Dell Professional Workstation T5400, I would get the full throughput.
I consistently get North of 400 MB/s write speeds with my OCZ Vectors!
When comparing other SSDs, I would start with this as the performance baseline: http://ocz.com/consumer/ssd-guide/ssd-comparison

I'll also toss out +1 for Crucial's M4; deployed eight of those, zero issues, they're just not quite as fast as the OCZ's.
One time I bought five Corsair FORCE 128 gig SSDs. Four were DOA. The BIOS on three systems didn't even detect them. Been leery of them ever since.

I've repeatedly read good things about the Samsung models, especially the 840. But, even their own spec sheets lists the write speeds maxing out at 390 MB/s for the 128 gig models.

As for the best RAID cards out there, I can't speak to those. However, given the 12Gbit models are now available for decent prices, I'd recommend going for one of those.

And if you seriously want to max the performance of some of your apps, use a RAMDisk. It's free:
http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

SSD's can't even compete with a RAMDisk! The only major downside is waiting the very long time it takes to write the RAMDisk to a file upon computer shutdown.