which SSD should i get?

[goontron]

i have had a SSD before, it was an OCZ something or another and it died within the first week. now im back trying SSD's again. so which one of these should i go with?

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...ate_Drive_(SSD)
http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...grade_Kit_(SSD)
http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...187_Controller
http://www.microcenter.com/product/3...281_Controller
http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...ate_Drive_(SSD)

[mariushm]

Re: which SSD should i get?

Samsung 840 evo or Crucial m500

Samsung 840 evo review:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/s...-models-tested

Crucial M500 review:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6884/c...gb-240gb-120gb

"battle" between the two

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-ssd,3551.html

short story
samsung has slightly faster reads, much faster writes (but you don't write tons of data daily on a 120 gb ssd)
crucial has in theory better memory chips (intel/micron mlc, estimated 3000 writes) vs samsung's 3 bit per cell and 1000-3000 writes ... but in the end it all comes down to how good the firmware is at arranging data in the memory chips to spread those writes between chips.
Samsung is weaker at data protection at power loss, crucial can manage to write data safely to ssd more often if power fails. also has some encryption and cross-die redundancy which samsung doesn't have.

Kingston and Sandisk are both using Sandforce controllers - i wouldn't trust my data with it.
The intel is OK, and has 5y warranty but I believe it's end of life or something like that. Again uses Sandforce controller, it's not intel's controller - intel used sandforce as it was cheaper than their own controllers so that says something.

[goontron]

Re: which SSD should i get?

its not common for my system to lock up at all and this will be the first time its shutdown or rebooted in 2 years! i have a UPS so thats all good and this will be the root drive with all my data on a 1tb spinner, so i think the sammy is what i need.

thanks for the guidance, i didn't want to jump and get burned like i did with the OCZ.

[dood]

Re: which SSD should i get?

We've been running the Samsung 840 series at work... probably have 15 of them deployed so far. And , I'm rebuilding my dad's PC on one as we speak. Great budget SSD, IMO http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147247

[ratdude747]

Re: which SSD should i get?

My personal suggestion is the intel 520... No complaints (and no FW issues like the 530). Fast too. However, you listed the 530, and if the firmware issues have been fixed, it would be my suggestion from the list you gave.

[Per Hansson]

Re: which SSD should i get?

I would stay away from anything Sandforce based, including the ones by Intel.

The Samsung 840 EVO or Crucial M500 are great choices.
I actually bought a 240GB Crucial M500 today, it was going for a great price at a Swedish retailer...

[ratdude747]

Re: which SSD should i get?

I would stay away from anything Sandforce based, including the ones by Intel.

The Samsung 840 EVO or Crucial M500 are great choices.
I actually bought a 240GB Crucial M500 today, it was going for a great price at a Swedish retailer...

I'd beg to differ. I'd steer clear of anything Samsung. Why? See this post from my SSD thread by y_not:

Not that I'm 100% an Intel fanboy, or anything close. In fact, I try NOT to be a "fanboy" at all, it tends to instill blindness to the point that you can't see the forest for the trees after a while. IE. The company you're a fanboy/fangirl for, at some point, becomes such in your mind that they can do no wrong!

Not a place I ever want to be, so I always keep my options open when it comes to the tech world and most of my nerdly interests.

With that said, I'd like to add that I feel Intel's SSDs are simply incredible!! They may not be the fastest on the planet, all the time, but they always finish the race.. no matter what! They're just plain RELIABLE & I have had ZERO failures with them so far. Not to say it's impossible, as we all know that anything can fail. All you can do is give it a head start by buying the best & hope yours isn't one of them.
Yeah, Samsung beats them at X benchmark, running X amount of uncompressed data with a certain queue depth. But really, who cares? They're synthetic benchmarks and most data on a computer is already quite compressed. Yes, synthetics can serve a purpose and they do at times give much insight into things. IIRC the Sammy even beats the Intel at certain real world tasks like Adobe Premier video writes/saves and such.

I'll admit, I'd probably buy a Sammy, if it weren't for 2 things.
1. They don't stay fast, not for long, due to a lack of overprovisioning with a swap/spare area on each channel.
*This is a problem for how the SSD handles the read/write/block allocate cycles in the memory cells, as well as the inevitable, or at least possible cell failure(s) that will happen. Thus needing spares on each channel, lest it cripple the speed when it has to failover to a new cell/chip.
2. Even if you manually overprovision it, it is recommended to do about 25%, this suddenly makes them more expensive than Intel's SSDs.
So what's the point? This should have been handled at the factory.

At current SSD prices on the Egg, that makes Sammy's 256GB 840 Pro $1.11/GB (rounded up) & Intel's 240GB, pre provisioned drive, $0.88c/GB.

Plenty of people in forums with Samsung SSDs are reporting slowness, periodic bottleneck issues, etc..
Sure, I know, take everything you read on the web with a grain of salt. That's what I do, I throw out about 80% of it and then keep gathering data, chucking a large chunk of it each time. If I see a consistent pattern, I put it all together and sift out the stuff that seems like someone doesn't know what they're reporting and could have prevented, leaving the good data. Then just analyzing that. When I see some big anomaly, like this AnandTech article, which backs up with real tech data & testing, what so many keep reporting about the Sammys, but the rest of the community rebukes, CRYING FOUL!!
I tend to really weigh in on an article like this and give it some serious consideration.

E.v.e.r.y s.i.n.g.l.e review site that you read, will sing nothing but praises for the Samsung SSDs without addressing these 2 key issues.
I don't see how it matters whether it's the fastest horse in the race, if it can't make it to the finish line!!
This site doesn't sugar coat it. But WOW!! Is it a read, but it's worth it!
Sorry to give you so much stuff to read here RatDude, but I know it'll answer & back up my claims. Not to mention you have been INCREDIBLY helpful to me in the past, so I want to return the favor.
Plus, It took me the better part of most of the day, over the course of a weekend early this year, to track down the following articles that got down to the brass tacks of it all. Figuring out if Samsung SSDs were alll they're cracked up to be, along with other brands and their reliability (speed wise mostly) compared to Intel.
Then I had to read them! HAHA That's always fun!

Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs - AnandTech
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6489/playing-with-op

Note: This article uses the Intel server/data center drive, the DC S3700 as the Intel comparison, but somewhere else I saw a similar article that compared the Sammy to Intel's consumer drives and got the same results, indicating that Intel does this on their whole line of SSDs. The only differences are the cell types & firmware optimizations for servers and such.

Samsung's 840 Pro SSD (Proof of no Parity Data or NAND redundancy) - The Tech Report
http://techreport.com/review/23990/s...s-ssd-reviewed

The above article proves that Sammy's don't have data parity or nand cell redundancy. That's a HUGE problem if you value your data and system up time. I suppose if you're just a gamer or something and don't care if you have to spend the weekend redoing your system & getting it just the way you want it, then it's not as big of a deal. But I think it is!! Even mechanical HDDs have parity, lazy write buffers, sector reallocation technology /w spares and on and on.

Lastly...
AnandTech - Info on SandForce's NAND redundancy & Data Parity
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4256/t...review-120gb/2

This review/article covers an OCZ drive @ 1st glance, which it does, but it goes on to discuss in great detail how this all works & why it's so important.


On a side note, I wouldn't touch OCZ /w a 10ft pole, they seem to be a hemorrhaging company /w very high SSD failures, among many things.

And just to be fair here, according to one NewEgg reviewer, Intel apparently has a firmware problem with their newest SSD series, the 530, that causes them not be detected at POST on a reboot in some laptops, but does work fine on cold boots/warm boots. IE. Where you actually manually power cycle the machine and turn it back on from an off state, be it cold, or warm.
There's supposed to be a thread on it @ Intel's site. I haven't looked into it yet, but worth checking out.
I wouldn't let it scare me though, just buy it if that's what you decide to go with and if it has the problem, then swap it out for a 520 series, or go /w something else. I'm going to be using their 530 series very soon, so I'll report if it trips out in these cases, or not. I'm sure it'll be fine & is a VERY LIMITED number of older-ish laptops.

See, not a fanboy, otherwise I wouldn't have said those last few paragraphs. I would have buried my head in the sand, hummed and ignored them. :P

I've never heard of issues with the Intel 520 (like I have), and it's sandforce. It's also been around for a few years, so it's a tried and trued design. Yet it's still plenty fast; in fact, the newer (also sandforce) 530 is Slower in some aspects (faster access times, lower transfer speeds).

[Per Hansson]

Re: which SSD should i get?

Yea and I'm basing my recommendation on my own experience.
I've installed many Intel X25-M & Intel 320 drives.

All have been rock stable, but the 320 I have had to update the firmware on due to the "8MB bug". (Drive gets recognized as 8MB by BIOS and is inaccessible after power failure).

This issue is apparently not fixed for all users, my drives don't exhibit the problem but only time will tell of course, and that's why I don't recommend the original Intel SSD controller (320 is not Sandforce)

As for me not recommending Sandforce that just comes down to the huge amount of problems OCZ and other brands, including Intel have had with them.
https://www.google.com/search?q=intel+ssd+F4+BSOD

And I read the quote you made, but another problem with the Sandforce drives is if you write incompressible data over too much of the drive it will go into a state where the performance is very poor.
Only way to fix it is a secure erase, not very convenient, and also an issue that is not so widely reported.

[TELVM]

Re: which SSD should i get?

Guess I've been lucky thus far with this three year old OCZ Vertex 2.

[eccerr0r]

Re: which SSD should i get?

I have no problems with my Intel 520-series. I also have a Crucial M4-series SSD in another machine (laptop). The M4 has a few firmware issues but I haven't had data loss because of it.

It's also odd that googling "intel ssd F4 BSOD" just returns a lot of hits about FUD. Apparently some people are hitting something but the vast majority are not.

I think all "modern" SSDs have matured enough that if you get one that is backed by the company for a long while (warranty) you're probably set. The only popular manufacturer I'd be wary of is OCZ; but Samsung, Intel, Crucial, all I'd not worry about data longevity on.

That being said YMMV as always, and always backup. A high quality disk is NOT an excuse for not backing up. You can just get a mechanical hard drive to back up to.

[shovenose]

Re: which SSD should i get?

OCZ sucks.
Samsung 840 Pro or Evo.
Any Intel.
Newer Crucial (older ones are kinda slow)...

[dood]

Re: which SSD should i get?

Guess I've been lucky thus far with this three year old OCZ Vertex 2.

The Vertex 3 in my home PC is still running fine as well. I have way less data read from mine, though

[goontron]

Re: which SSD should i get?

ok iv'e decided on the Crucial M500 because the faster throughput on the sammy wont help much when its just a 2 core AMD at 3.0GHz

[slinkygn]

Re: which SSD should i get?

Sandforce problems are basically a 2011 thing. You're not going to find any problems with any modern Sandforce controllers, save for a few minor issues that already have firmware updates fixing them (a situation which every SSD manufacturer finds themselves in, including Intel).

840's a great drive, but I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the 830 yet... the 840's "predecessor" hardly performs like a predecessor. That sucker screams.

[TELVM]

Re: which SSD should i get?

... I have way less data read from mine, though

Yours has been kept running more continuously and has seen ~14 times less power ons.

[tmiha71]

Re: which SSD should i get?

Which rail SSD uses ?
12V surely not, no spinning...

3.3V or 5V ?

[mariushm]

Re: which SSD should i get?

3.5" ones use 5v for compatibility with systems that have molex to sata adapters. A lot of 2.5" ones use 5v also, a smaller percent need 3.3v.
Laptop ssds use 3.3v only.

mSATA and mini pci-e use 3.3v only.

note: it usually says on the ssd drive itself how much current it uses from each rail (or only rail). just check product pictures.

[Per Hansson]

Re: which SSD should i get?

2.5" SSD drives use 5v only because most laptops don't have 12v available in their SATA power connector.

[shovenose]

Re: which SSD should i get?

2.5" SSD drives use 5v only because most laptops don't have 12v available in their SATA power connector.

And because a lot of desktops (with molex to SATA adapters) won't have 3.3V.

[tmiha71]

Re: which SSD should i get?

So, anybody noticed any pattern, death related (if there's any), according to power rail they use ?

On first look, it seems that pci-e SSD's should be the most reliable ?