What drive for my general-purpose laptop?

[Illsteward]

Hello everybody and merry christmass!

I have a question regarding my planned storage swap in my laptop. So far, my current setup is a standard 500GB Seagate HDD that came with it. However, I am traveling A LOT with it (think a few hours on train and on feet in rough terrain every day) and not being exactly nice on the HDD (playing games, programming little stuff, programming games, writting a lot of documents, doing 2D/3D graphics), so it's already sometimes acting weird, with clicking noises and unreachable files. Furthermore, it's slowing down a bit, even though S.M.A.R.T. says everything is fine. I suspect it's beginning to fail, much like my PC disk did after a few movings between dormitory and my home.
I was planning on putting this one in an external enclosure and buying a new one to use as internal drive in the laptop. Because of all the traveling I do, I thought it will be wiser to go with SSD. I scanned my local shops and selected a few possible drives that I both can afford and can be delivered in short time. Those are:

OCZ AMD Radeon R7 - 240GB <- most of my components are already AMD, but I don't think they did any optimalisation for "their" drives...
Transcend SSD370 - 256GB
Crucial MX100 - 256GB <- have read a lot of good reviews for this one...
Samsung SSD 840 EVO - 250GB, Basic
Samsung SSD 850 Pro - 256GB
Kingston HyperX FURY - 240GB
Kingston SSDNow V300 - 240GB <- can also get it with the "upgrade kit" for all that it is worth
Seagate Laptop SSHD - 1TB (hybrid, so not really sure, see bellow)
WD Black² - 120GB + 1TB (dtto)

I am not sure if I will gain anything from hybrid drive, given my point is to avoid drive that will be damageable by shaking the laptop. Right now, I have just about 200GB of my HDD full and even now I think I need to delete a few things from it, so the 240GB should be enough. I also have some back-up storage with enough capacity, so the main issue is really speed + reliability + durability for this particular component.
Not sure if it will help, but rest of the laptop is:
CPU: AMD A4-5400M
GPU: AMD HD8450M
HDD: to be replaced
Southbridge: Kabini FCH (7.2) with SATA3 port


Thanks in advance for any answers!

 

[Mattios]

If you really can't help shaking the computer then an SSD will fare better because it has no moving parts.

I would suggest any of the Samsung, Crucial or Kingston SSDs that you listed - what you buy in the end depends on your price range, storage requirements etc.

If you need lots of storage space, I would go for a HDD and not throw the laptop around so much!

Remember to backup your data if your laptop goes through a challenging environment.

(Merry Christmas to you too!)

 

[Illsteward]

If you really can't help shaking the computer then an SSD will fare better because it has no moving parts.

I would suggest any of the Samsung, Crucial or Kingston SSDs that you listed - what you buy in the end depends on your price range, storage requirements etc.

If you need lots of storage space, I would go for a HDD and not throw the laptop around so much!

Remember to backup your data if your laptop goes through a challenging environment.

(Merry Christmas to you too!)

I am afraid that the shaking is mostly inavoidable. I can't afford maintaining a car at the moment and, well, public transport is public transport - it shakes whether you want it or not. Furthermore, during long trips I take from place to place, it's gonna shake heavily, because I have back defect that prevents me from balancing my walk properly.

Currently, I have 198GB of data on my HDD and even at this point, I am pondering if I really need some of it. I also frequently upload my work to other devices, be it the Cloud, or my own server (my own as in "runs in my basement"). So, I think that a quarter of TB should do just fine, since I also plan to turn my current drive into an external one, buying some chasis.
Even a few years back, when all I did was play games and experiment with HTML, I could only fill about 300GB. I am still puzzled as to how normal user, not doing video editting or 3D modeling, can fill so much on their drive.
In the store that I plan to shop, those SSDs are mostly in the same price range, all of them well affordable to me. The only exception is the WD Black, which is almost one and a half of the price.
May I ask what is your quarrel with the OCZ R7 line? It seems that people here in general distrust OCZ, but I never got to any reason why. On the other hand, I have found a couple of articles that commented how Kingston suddenly changed their product's parts, yet it is still recommended (personaly, I wouldn't go for different RAM than Kingston, but it seems that they are a bit lax when it cames to their SSDs). I wonder what's the problem.

 

[Mattios]

There was an issue last year with OCZ going into administration and people have been wary of purchasing from them in case they suddenly void all warranties or something. Their SSDs are well and good, but the other brands you mentioned are more frequently used and therefore more trusted

 

[Illsteward]

There was an issue last year with OCZ going into administration and people have been wary of purchasing from them in case they suddenly void all warranties or something. Their SSDs are well and good, but the other brands you mentioned are more frequently used and therefore more trusted

Thanks a lot! I wasn't really aware of this, which might be mostly due to my country being the backwater of civilised world where warranties are mostly a joke anyhow - I paid for "extended warranty" including random fall / misuse damage for my laptop. When it fell and chipped a bit of the plastic body, my insurance company told me that they *should* cover it, maybe, if their experts say so, and they need 90 days to check it before they will start repair. And even so, I probably would be called to pay the repair. All according to law. So, to this day, I still have the chipped plastic and hope to glue it back one day. Needles to say, I carry my laptop in extra case now and probably going to take it to some repair shop down the road one day. The warranty is now void, since when this happened, I went "screw it", opened the laptop and changed my RAM... So, really, any warranty problems come as no surprise and would hardly be mentioned around these parts.

Anyhow, I really like the idea of having as small amount of different vendor parts in my laptop as possible, and so far it's mostly AMD with Kingston DDRs, so Kingston will actually be my first choice. Would you say that there is some significant difference between HyperX and VC300 / KC300? The KC is a bit higher price range, but I can still afford it. Actually, I am considering three models:

SKC300S3B7A/240G - 240GB KC300 drive with the kit
SV300S3B7A/240G - 240GB V300 with the kit
SHFS37A/240G - 240GB HyperX without the kit

Kingston labels the KC300 as "Business class" model, and according to specifications, it should last a bit more, compared to their usual line. I have just noticed it and the difference in price is not that meaningful, really.

Thank you for your patience.

 

[Mattios]

You can use ssdboss.com to compare SSDs - I will leave this up to you.

In terms of keeping vendors in your build the same, can I ask why? I can see you wanting to for continuity but really there is no reason to and it is silly to just for a name when you can get better performance from elsewhere.

 

[Illsteward]

You can use ssdboss.com to compare SSDs - I will leave this up to you.

In terms of keeping vendors in your build the same, can I ask why? I can see you wanting to for continuity but really there is no reason to and it is silly to just for a name when you can get better performance from elsewhere.

Huh, weird... ssdboss.com claims there to be a difference only in weight between HyperX Fury and the SSDNow V300... Wouldn't call it impossible, but it's not exactly helpful. Thanks for the site, anyhow, maybe I am just not using it properly!

As for the brand keeping - it comes from bad experience. When I was buying RAM into my desktop PC a few years back, DDR2 were already at the recess, so finding a good one was hard. I tried A-Data (two different packs each failed in a matter of days, only the third remained for a few months), Apacer, Corsair, and about three or four other brands, but only Kingston memories did last me for very long and with seemingly no problem. It's actually similar as to why I prefer AMD over Intel. Whenever I got into trouble, it was using an Intel chip. I am not saying they are faulty, I am not saying they are overrated or underperforming, I am just saying that me and them don't like each other.

So, yeah, I know that this opinion is valid only until proven otherwise, but it's kind of a quirk on my part that I see no reason to change, if not needed. Sure, would there be uncomparable solutions, says, one of the drives being 20% faster, or had longer livespan, I will pick the best, but since they seem equal (even seem to be build from the same parts...), then "brand loyality" plays a factor for me.

 

[Mattios]

I see what you mean. If you want to keep to a brand, especially if performance differences between it's competitors are negligible, then by all means go for it!

Do you have any further questions?

 

[Illsteward]

I see what you mean. If you want to keep to a brand, especially if performance differences between it's competitors are negligible, then by all means go for it!

Do you have any further questions?

Actually, just one - is it worth paying a few extra for the "upgrade kit"? The HDD itself is already mounted in a frame and directly atached to SATA port on the mainboard, and I don't exactly plan on clonning the old HDD over to the SSD, so Arconis doesn't seem like much of an advantage. Not sure what is included in the kit, other than cables and the Arconis TrueImage software.

 

[Mattios]

The upgrade kit will have things like a SATA to USB adapter so you can clone things over. But as you don't need to, the drive alone will be fine.

 

[Illsteward]

Just to post a quick aftertought. Almost two months ago, I finally bought the Kingston SSD. So far, it's really good. I admire the silent run of my laptop as well as the quick boot and general fluid response times. Even tough sometimes I have found out that I didn't turn it off because of how silently it runs. Thanks a ton, Mattios!

 

[Mattios]

Not a problem! Pleased I could help. Thanks for updating!

I have a Kingston HyperX 3K SSD and love it.