[SSD] Solid-State Drive?

[Wipeout]

hi there im upgrading my pc abit and was wondering what is the best SSD to get OCZ or Corsair ? i know theyre more exspansive than normal HDDs but i have a 2TB HDD booting up atm and it seems to be taking awhile to load everthing

thanks

[cp1]

From what I've read, Samsung is best followed by Crucial. I keep reading about problems with OCZ and Corsair.

[Perderder]

You really can't go wrong with Samsung 830, Crucial M4, Intel 520 or the Mushkin Chronos.

I personally own the Samsung 830 and 2 x Mushkin Chronos. Both have operated for months without error.

Previously I owned an OCZ Vertex and Vertex 3. I RMA'd the Vertex three times before finally selling it on eBay (they send you new in box replacements.) The Vertex 3 has been RMA'd twice. I haven't sold it yet. Both drives started throwing up errors after anywhere between 7 to 30 days of use. I could have just had bad luck, but the numerous reports I have read seem to indicate lots of people have "bad luck" with these drives.

[Deleted]

Performance difference between all the mainstream drives isn't very big and not something the average user will really notice so go for the best deal price wise and reliability track record considered.

I'd recommend any of these:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Hard Drive: Mushkin Chronos 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£78.19 @ CCL Computers)
Hard Drive: Crucial M4 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£79.91 @ Amazon UK)
Hard Drive: Samsung 830 Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£78.14 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £236.24
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)

Probably Samsung or Crucial considering the price is so close to each other, either of them is fine though.

[DeltrusDisc]

Here here for the Crucial m4 128GB, has been going strong for a year and a month now! The other two most trusted/reliable based on history are the Samsung 830 and Intel 520 as previously stated.

OCZ seems to have improved their stuff, but the only SSD I would even *consider* buying from OCZ would be the new Vertex 4, otherwise, ignore them. Corsair as I understand, has fixed their problems, so you could probably buy from them as well, but I'd still stick to a brand who has truly had no issues. Crucial, Samsung, and Intel.

[BicycleMafioso]

You really can't go wrong with Samsung 830, Crucial M4, Intel 520 or the Mushkin Chronos.

I'd advice against Intel 520. It may be intel, but it still is Sandforce based. It will suffer and tank speed hard post hard usage, post trim or just with uncompressable data (or just data that's already been compressed).

I'd advice Intel 320 in its stead. I realise it's s-ATA 3.0Gbps, but you'd notice the reliability and 5year warranty far more than you'd notice the speed difference.

[Esg]

Intel has best reliability but costs the most, crucial tends to be the best for performance/$ and hasn't had any major issues. Avoid OCZ like the plague, the majority of their drives have had major issues, and while their latest ones are supposed to have been fixed, its still a gamble when you can just get a crucial drive and have piece of mind. As for corsair, they did have initial issues but fixed that and no problems since then(at least to my knowledge). Have no idea about the samsung drives, but I would assume its a good quality.

Also the best drive sizes tend to be 128g-256gig, before/after those sizes tend to be slower.

[BicycleMafioso]

Intel has best reliability but costs the most, crucial tends to be the best for performance/$ and hasn't had any major issues. Avoid OCZ like the plague, the majority of their drives have had major issues, and while their latest ones are supposed to have been fixed, its still a gamble when you can just get a crucial drive and have piece of mind. As for corsair, they did have initial issues but fixed that and no problems since then(at least to my knowledge). Have no idea about the samsung drives, but I would assume its a good quality.

Good points.
I'd argue that the Vertex 4 is safe, despite it being seen as a gamble.
I also agree that your Crucial point is fair, as is your Corsair in general. Their Force-series is still sandforce, and it has its limitations even without the early firmware issues.

[Snorkle]

Sandisk extreme! Best SSD in the market atm

I would advice you to stay away from OCZ...

[n0cturnal]

OCZ seems to have improved their stuff, but the only SSD I would even *consider* buying from OCZ would be the new Vertex 4, otherwise, ignore them. Corsair as I understand, has fixed their problems, so you could probably buy from them as well, but I'd still stick to a brand who has truly had no issues. Crucial, Samsung, and Intel.

Even though I agree with this I find it funny how fast people forgot Intels 8mb bug and Crucials 5000 h bug, Samsung 830 also had issues with a firmware that was released a while ago. They have the best track record yes, but there is no brand that has had no issues, only some that have been extremely fast and good about solving them, such as Intel, Samsung and Crucial. OCZ on the other hand even tried to deny the fact that Sandforce had issues while Corsair were open about it and tried to fix it asap.

[BicycleMafioso]

Even though I agree with this I find it funny how fast people forgot Intels 8mb bug and Crucials 5000 h bug, Samsung 830 also had issues with a firmware that was released a while ago. They have the best track record yes, but there is no brand that has had no issues, only some that have been extremely fast and good about solving them, such as Intel, Samsung and Crucial. OCZ on the other hand even tried to deny the fact that Sandforce had issues while Corsair were open about it and tried to fix it asap.

This is true and I agree.

However, comparably few (ie, extremely few at all) were hit by Intel's and Crucial's. Both required specific circumstances that regular users don't experience. While that is no excuse, they handled it admirably.

I very much agree with you on Corsair - they're very good with that. But the problem is that Sandforce, today, is a really lacking chipset either way. It's not up there with speed, it's not up there with reliability (apart from Intel's complete firmware re-write), and it suffers hard in common situations. Ie, already compressed data/uncompressable data, post-trim and in full-out taxing the drive, its speed never recovers.

[Evildeffy]

Even though I agree with this I find it funny how fast people forgot Intels 8mb bug and Crucials 5000 h bug, Samsung 830 also had issues with a firmware that was released a while ago. They have the best track record yes, but there is no brand that has had no issues, only some that have been extremely fast and good about solving them, such as Intel, Samsung and Crucial. OCZ on the other hand even tried to deny the fact that Sandforce had issues while Corsair were open about it and tried to fix it asap.

Actually not entirely true on the Corsair part...

Corsair issued a recall AFTER the problems were acknowledged (by SandForce) and Anand Tech was able to accurately reproduce them (no-one else did btw!) and from all the vendors, OCZ was the one willing to have their software engineers dig deep and figure out the issue, from that point the corrections were sent to SandForce whom distributed them to their partners.

Perhaps because the OCZ drives were hit hardest due to their exclusivity contract is that they were willing to do whatever it took when the problem was acknowledged to fix the issues.
However, i am still wary around SandForce drives, and with their latest fiasco of not actually supporting 256bit AES encryption i am less favorable to the controllers, even though i DO have 2 * Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB drives, a Crucial M4 64GB, a Samsung 830 512GB, OCZ Vertex Turbo (Indilinx controller) 120GB * 2 and an OCZ Vertex 96GB (also Indilinx controller).

This is not counting the others i work with.

Basically the issue lied almost entirely with SandForce and their non-existant QA department, also they don't like people messing with their firmware in general, i think Anand Tech was also the one whom posted that the Garbage Collection, TRIM and compression routines (among others) are off-limits for even Intel, hence why they still suffer the speed loss they cannot recover from when being benched.

To be truthfull, we've now witnessed the insanely stupid speed that is the Vertex 4 (let's be honest, record breaking in next to every aspect with the proper firmware barring files that can be compressed) which is a full Indilinx firmware combined with a new generation Marvell controller and 5 year warrantee.
The Samsung controller is good, but like SandForce is very secretive... however Samsung actually has the ability to have a proper QA department, which they obviously used to their advantage.

There remains a new player on the field, which Corsair has already made SSDs with, the Corsair Neutron GTX series with a Link-A-Media-Devices controller, i am wondering as to their capabilities and performance, new players on the field can surprise you...
Remember when Indilinx came out with their Barefoot controller and basically shoved aside Intel's controller, to this day those 1st generation Indilinx Barefoot controllers remain 1 of the robust controllers, outdated, but functional, i very much enjoy my original Vertex Turbos still to this day (3 years old) with 50nm NAND FLASH memory which still has a P/E cycle of 10.000

The one thing i do notice though, believe it or not, the Indilinx controlled SSDs... they feel snappier and more responsive then SandForce, Samsung or Marvell.
Even though there is a generational gap of 3.

Also @ tetrisGOAT:

Love the Intel SSD 320... i have equipped 5 rigs with them on the property of companies i work at, including 1 hackintosh i equipped with em, all 300GB... no complaints whatsoever, and the SATA2 vs. SATA3 thing... no difference felt.
I love the fact of their SuperCAP though, even though a power failure can occur, it WILL finish it's last write with the SuperCAP.

If i were to buy a new SSD right now though, it'd probably be a Corsair Performance Pro (i cannot resist the Marvell controller with 34nm Toggle NAND) or the Vertex 4, as much as i like Intel's steady reputation, they are switching to SandForce more and more and they are way too expensive, especially since the OCZ Vertex 4 comes with a 5 year warrantee.

[Deleted]

Even though I agree with this I find it funny how fast people forgot Intels 8mb bug and Crucials 5000 h bug, Samsung 830 also had issues with a firmware that was released a while ago. They have the best track record yes, but there is no brand that has had no issues, only some that have been extremely fast and good about solving them, such as Intel, Samsung and Crucial. OCZ on the other hand even tried to deny the fact that Sandforce had issues while Corsair were open about it and tried to fix it asap.

probably because they fix their problems really fast and unlike OCZ they're much more open about it when they face issues. That's the main issue I have/had with OCZ.

[Tanthalus]

intel are the only company to completly fix the sandforce controller - ocz hasnt and neither has sandforce... as both have issue, which can be replicated (gaming on bf3 is an easily replicated one)

why? because intel rewrote the entire firmware from the ground up. As for an SSD - get either the samsung 830 or crucial M4; btw which motherboard will you be using it on?

btw , im now very wary of the vertex 4 - OCZ released new firmware which `boosts speed`, depending on the amount of free space , under 50% used? then its faster! over 50% then is slows right down... very dodgy to me

http://hexus.net/tech/news/storage/4...4-performance/

[BicycleMafioso]

intel are the only company to completly fix the sandforce controller - ocz hasnt and neither has sandforce... as both have issue, which can be replicated (gaming on bf3 is an easily replicated one)

why? because intel rewrote the entire firmware from the ground up. As for an SSD - get either the samsung 830 or crucial M4; btw which motherboard will you be using it on?

They hasn't fixed any of the major issues with Sandforce itself, though.

[Joxer]

Im using a 120GB Corsair Force 3 in my computer right now, and im seriously considering buying a new one. And if im buying a new one, it will be either Crucial m4 or Samsung 830.
I had too much trouble with my Force 3 before the latest firmware. Random bluescreens, disc not being detected in BIOS and having to restart the computer a few times before getting it to work again, until next time.
And some SSDs also tends to lose performance over time, but if i remember right, thats not the case with Crucial and Samsung.

Sure, they might cost more than other brands, but i rather pay the little extra and get something that works, or gets their issues fixed really fast.


So as many others said, my vote also goes for Crucial m4 and Samsung 830.

[BicycleMafioso]

And some SSDs also tends to lose performance over time, but if i remember right, thats not the case with Crucial and Samsung.

Yea, that's because it's the inherent problem with Sandforce, one that intel won't be able to fix with theirs (520) either. :P

If your Force 3 works after the latest firmware, which it should, I see no reason to just keep having it though. Its performance will only degrade the more you write to it.

[Tanthalus]

aye the problem is sandforce have actually locked down the TRIm (or lack of) and garbage collection (or lack of) which , as you said , even intel couldnt fix

[Evildeffy]

aye the problem is sandforce have actually locked down the TRIm (or lack of) and garbage collection (or lack of) which , as you said , even intel couldnt fix

Actually i said that :P

Intel hasn't built up the firmware for the 520 from the ground up completely, there were routines they weren't allowed to touch such as GC, Trim and Compression.
And as far as i read, the 520 also has the same BSoD issue, just less frequent, the SF-2281 controller itself is a bit unstable, no amount of firmware tinkering will fix that i think.

As far as the Vertex 4 performance modes go though, it's a toggle done by the controller that OCZ has built in, i think it's an experiment, and the ceiling is being increased with firmware 1.5 if i read things correctly.

With Firmware 1.4.1.3 the first 50% of the drive it runs in "Performance" mode, after which it toggles to "Storage" mode, i don't know the reason for it, but i know OCZ stated they increased the ceiling in 1.5 again, i believe it's to study the controller's effects on durability, we may in time get a simple software toggle to select what we want.

But for now... your guess is as good as mine, but it's intended, not a malfunction of sorts.

[Tanthalus]

personally i dont want to be a guinea pig for an SSD company whilst they learn `new and exciting` things.... i also want to beat marvell over the head with a haddock for releasing the POS called the 9128 sata 3 chip.... i suffer it daily