Which of these SSD's is the best choice?

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darkstar2010

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Jan 24, 2012
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18,530
ADATA XPG SX900 ASX900S3-64GM-C 2.5" MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

vs

Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD1CCA 2.5" MLC 7mm Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with Data Transfer Kit


Here is a comparison link on Newegg...I hope it works.....


http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006693%20600414916&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemList=636%7C20-148-532%5E20-148-532-12%23%2C20-211-595%5E20-211-595-TS&percm=20-148-532%3A%24%24%24%24%24%24%24%3B20-211-595%3A%24%24%24%24%24%24%24


The Adata is $10 less than the Crucial. The specs look virtually the same so I'm not sure how to make a decision. I haven't bought an SSD before so if anyone knows which one is the best choice and why, please let me know.


Thank you for any help.
 
Solution
the great randini
toms 2012 ssd benchmarks
best ssd's for the money march 2013

toms rated the Adata XPG SX900 the best drive @70$ for march
Quote "Now, there are plenty of 64 GB SSDs out there. When it comes to shopping around for a drive powered by SandForce's second-gen controller, performance between them doesn't really differ. As a result, we're recommending Adata's 64 GB XPG SX900 for its attractive price. This is actually better than the Premier Pro SP900 that we suggested back in January.

The XPG SX900 comes armed with 25 nm of synchronous NAND, whereas the Premier Pro SP900 employs slightly slower asynchronous flash. But what makes both Adata drives unique is the lack of no over-provisioning, giving you access to more user space...
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toms 2012 ssd benchmarks
best ssd's for the money march 2013

toms rated the Adata XPG SX900 the best drive @70$ for march
Quote "Now, there are plenty of 64 GB SSDs out there. When it comes to shopping around for a drive powered by SandForce's second-gen controller, performance between them doesn't really differ. As a result, we're recommending Adata's 64 GB XPG SX900 for its attractive price. This is actually better than the Premier Pro SP900 that we suggested back in January.

The XPG SX900 comes armed with 25 nm of synchronous NAND, whereas the Premier Pro SP900 employs slightly slower asynchronous flash. But what makes both Adata drives unique is the lack of no over-provisioning, giving you access to more user space. The impact on performance should be minimal, though as we demonstrated in Time To Upgrade: 10 SSDs Between 240 And 256 GB, Rounded Up, sequential write performance can suffer as you fill the drive up."
 
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Solution
Just curious, but why such a small SSD? If you plan to use it as a boot drive, it will fill up incredibly fast. Windows by itself is roughly 14GB. Modern games run anywhere from 10-30GB. Add on top of that your programs and applications - you're left with one very full drive.

SSDs function best when they have roughly 30% free space. Unless you plan to put it in a RAID array and combine it with another 64 gig drive for a 128GB volume - I'd have to recommend you get a bigger one.

The minimum I would suggest is 128GB, for a boot drive, and even that's likely cutting it close. You can always get a big 2TB HDD to put your media and documents on.

All that being said, larger SSDs are more expensive, and in the higher price range you'll also find higher quality SSDs. But as with everything, you can cut corners to save some cash.

Think about the reality of an SSDs speed compared to the necessity of it. How often do you utilize a 500MB read/write speed to its limits? Even a gigabit network comes absolutely nowhere close to that speed. Therefor, top of the line performance isn't necessarily a must when you're talking about SSDs. The slower ones are still lightening fast compared to what you really need.
 
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I'm guessing is for a OS + Program drive.
Of the two, I'd go with the Crucial M4 - Reason I prefer the marvel controller over the Sandforce controller.

1) Performance wise, you will ot see a difference in your day-2-day usage.
2) I highly recommend you go with a larger size.
... 64 Gig SSD = 60 Gigs when formated. Then or SSDs you should leave at least 20 % Free. This is to allow Wear leveling, Gargbage collector and TRIM to work there Magic to keep the performance close to Manuf spec. This brings the USABLE size down to 48 Gigs.
.. Number of posts where he User complains performance dropped off - some indicated it became slower than a HDD.
.. Have 5 systems with SSDs. Typically My OS + Programs (NO GAMES) is around 30->35 gigs. This is after doing the normal space saving tweaks such as:
..... Disabling Hibernation
..... Managing Virtual Memory (Page file) by setting Min and max to 1024 mb
..... Disabling Restore points. Instead of disabling you can set the max size to say 1 Gig. This would allow the last 3 restorepoints to be saved, each restore point requires 300 mb.

THe smallest SSD I use is 128 Gig, athough my recommended Min size for a OS + Program drive is 80 gigs.

PS There are a Number of people that use 64 gig SSD without problems, You just have to closely what that you do not over fill, never ever go above 90% used.

I have: 3 Crucial M4's, 3 Samsung 830's, 2 Samsung 840 Pros and one Agility III, Plus about 5 Older SSDs - the oldest being a 80 gig Intel G1 NOT had a single failure - KNOCK on WOOD!!
 
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ADATA and Crucial M4 in question are both very competitive. I gave the edge to Crucial M4 because it's more stable and reliable with its Marvell controller. Some will say that Sandforce wins, but I've had issues with Sandforce in the past year. And there's better things that I can spend money on other than doing QA on Sandforce drives.

64GB is a bit small for Windows OS. It's more than enough for Linux.
 
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I'm not sure how 64gb of space isn't big enough for Windows. I'm using the 64gb drive to run Windows 7 Pro + Programs and all of my large data files are going to be on a regular 7200rpm 1TB harddrive. I don't play video games... I just right clicked on my program files folder on my harddrive that I'm using now on a computer that I've used heavily everyday for about 5 years straight... 4.04gb, 40,436 files, 6049 folders. Programs aren't very big and at the moment I have a ton that I could delete because I dont use... So at the most on my new computer my programs folder will be around 2gb. So I'm not sure how 64gb isnt enough....Please let me know if Im missing something...thank you for the help!!
 
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I'm not sure how 64gb of space isn't big enough for Windows. I'm using the 64gb drive to run Windows 7 Pro + Programs

On my 128gb, in a similar config, current usage is ~58gb. Windows8, and not all of my installed applications (ex. MS Office lives elsewhere)

I'd feel very cramped with a 64gb.
 
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Indeed. 64GB is a bit less for Windows 7. Considering that Windows 7 takes up approximately 20GB of space alone, you're left with 44GB. But then, with any SSD, you should leave at least 15% free space at all times. So that leaves 35GB left.

Now counting all your programs, future Windows 7 updates, hidden cache files that your programs take up (like browser), etc. 35GB is not a lot.
 
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35gb of free space after installing Windows 7 sounds like WAY more than I'll need. As I said I've been using this computer heavily..every single day for 5 years and my program files folder has 4gb worth of files in it.
 
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Since you are not putting any games on it, you should be OK
Just make sure you do the tweaks I listed.
Two others that I do are:
.. Move "My Documents" to HDD
.. Move Internet Temp folder to HDD

As I indicated, all of my systems use 35 Gigs or less. Make sure you always have at least 20% free (old guideline was 10% free, but that has been updated to 20->25% - based on a test done over @ Anandtech.
Caution - without the tweaks the file space is hidden system files that often do NOT show up as used space.
 
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Thank you for taking the time to share all of the extra information you did with me in this thread...I'm very grateful for the guidance...Same goes for everyone else in here that took the time to help me out...I am extremely appreciative. I will follow all of the advice you guys shared with me...thanks everyone for helping me out!!!!

 
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