Best bang for buck SSD Options

[insan3]

i want to up grade my HDD to SSD and use my HDD for storage. i know very little when it comes to SSD. i want to put my OS and a couple games on the SSD. i am looking at a 32GB,64GB or 120GB depending on price.

This post has been edited by insan3: Nov 5 2009, 01:25 PM

[IVIYTH0S]

i want to up grade my HDD to SSD and use my HDD for storage. i know very little when it comes to SSD. i want to put my OS and a couple games on the SSD. i am looking at a 32GB,64GB or 120GB depending on price.

probably 60-64GB would be a good entry level SSD, I was considering one of those before. I'm not sure what the best for the money is now though, for the time being I'm still not ready to part with storage space.

[Compxpert]

I'm honestly not ready for SSDs until 1tb ones cost $500... then I will show some interest. Honestly though if I did have some money to burn on the next rig I might consider a 60-80gb my self in addition to my hdds.

[road-runner]

I dont know I read Intels where the fastest then I read they where having problems with the firmware bricking them the other day. I am personally going to wait till they get the firmwares lined out. I have 4-30 or 32gb vertex upstairs on the shelve in the closet, and mattwalter85 gave me 2 more older ocz 32gb drives the other nite.

[IVIYTH0S]

...mattwalter85 gave me 2 more older ocz 32gb drives the other nite.

GAVE you? now I know who's good side to get on.

"Oh matty boy, where are you?" haha

(is your sig accurate btw, are you running 4 4890s again??)

This post has been edited by IVIYTH0S: Nov 5 2009, 10:33 PM

[road-runner]

GAVE you? now I know who's good side to get on.

"Oh matty boy, where are you?" haha

(is your sig accurate btw, are you running 4 4890s again??)

No I sold those, just have not bothered to update the sig...

[IVIYTH0S]

No I sold those, just have not bothered to update the sig...

I figured (for I bought one remember )

[Guest_Digitalis_*]

Intel 80GB G2 Postville.

Intel SSDs do not suffer from fragmentation issues as Samsung or Indilinx controlled drives.
The last two mentioned are faster on paper, but their performance drops very hard in time; to restore them you have to delete all data and use a special command (and tool) to erase the "internal address phone book".

Not to mention, that Intel drives are made with the new 34nm technology.
Samsung has to stack together two memory cells, while Intel has a one piece solution.

[Praz]

Intel SSDs do not suffer from fragmentation issues as Samsung or Indilinx controlled drives.
The last two mentioned are faster on paper, but their performance drops very hard in time; to restore them you have to delete all data and use a special command (and tool) to erase the "internal address phone book".

Not entirely correct. The Samsung based drives are available with 3 different firmware versions. The latest version maintains the drive's performance to within 80% - 85% of new, which is equivalent to the performance drop maintained by the Intel drives. The other firmware versions require that the drive be wiped to restore like-new performance. But even in a degraded condition they are considerably faster then a conventional hard drive. Trim capable firmware is planned to be released by the end of the month if the last couple of bumps can be smoothed out. Samsung has stated there will never be the capability to flash back and forth between firmware versions, only forward. Because of this and not knowing what firmware version may be on the drive when bought unless the drives can be had for a really good price there are better options.

The current version of firmware from Indilinx supports Tim. For users not using Win7 or running RAID the previous firmware has a mild form of garbage collection. Either firmware version (along with the garbage collection optimization tool, which does not cause a loss of data) will maintain the same 80% - 85% performance of a fresh drive. For OCZ drives a second version of the newest released firmware is available for non-Win7 and RAID users. It maintains the same level of performance or more as the Trim version with no need for user initiated maintenance.

[RJR]

You may want to consider waiting a little while before making the plunge into the SSD world.

I thought a couple of months ago that they had them sorted out pretty good, great reviews, etc. so I took the plunge and bought a Patriot Torqx 128 GB, worked great for about a month then started dying. It's in the middle of an RMA right now. If you check the reviews at somewhere like Newegg you will see, dead drive, dead drive, lasted one month...........
They just are not reliable enough yet to use as an OS drive IMO. When I get my drive back I will probably just use it as a secondary drive for a while and hope they get all the problems figured out.

Also, Praz is completely correct about the performance issues and the Wiper tools that are available, you don't have to worry about the SSDs performance degrading over time anymore even if Trim is not available to you.

[Guest_Digitalis_*]

Not entirely correct. The Samsung based drives are available with 3 different firmware versions. The latest version maintains the drive's performance to within 80% - 85% of new, which is equivalent to the performance drop maintained by the Intel drives. The other firmware versions require that the drive be wiped to restore like-new performance. But even in a degraded condition they are considerably faster then a conventional hard drive. Trim capable firmware is planned to be released by the end of the month if the last couple of bumps can be smoothed out. Samsung has stated there will never be the capability to flash back and forth between firmware versions, only forward. Because of this and not knowing what firmware version may be on the drive when bought unless the drives can be had for a really good price there are better options.

The current version of firmware from Indilinx supports Tim. For users not using Win7 or running RAID the previous firmware has a mild form of garbage collection. Either firmware version (along with the garbage collection optimization tool, which does not cause a loss of data) will maintain the same 80% - 85% performance of a fresh drive. For OCZ drives a second version of the newest released firmware is available for non-Win7 and RAID users. It maintains the same level of performance or more as the Trim version with no need for user initiated maintenance.

the last OCZ's solution had such heavy bugs, you needed an industrial insecticide.

Samsung
uses "looks like TRIM"function. The controller uses NTFS as a map for free areas when the drive is not in use.
NTFS is Windows, just to remind you, so bye, bye: MAC, Linux.
The drive needs few hours idle time to correct itself, so do not think about coffee breaks; during this correction period, it writes with 45 Mb/sec to 60 MB/sec speeds; at the end it returns to 180 MB/sec.
If you perform sequental writes than the self-correcting is quick, and you should see at least half write speed before it returns to normal; for an average user the Samsung solution works very good.

BIG problem: "no RAID" if you wish that the "false TRIM" works; so, not usable.
Intel hits till 500MB/sec in read and 200MB/sec write in Raid-0; so if I'm building a better PC, the only thing left to do with Samsung is to clean a freezer with it.
Second big problem till now: if you have an older model there is no place to get an end-user flashable firmware that is in new drives shipped from factory; talk about customer support.

Indilinx:
Special firmware, only Windows, as usual.
With the first dedicated firmware, that should keep fragmentation at bay, the end result is far behind Samsung. The read speeds have a free-airplane like drop; even the write speeds get really HIT.
Samsung solves fragmentation rapidly with sequential write; the only thing to do for Indilinx with this firmware solution (the one most users have at this date) is to use, once a few months, the secure erase command and special program that restores performance and destroys ALL data.

The new and last firmware with native TRIM support is limited to Windows 7; they are promising that it will work with future Mac and Linux. Not to forget that it is limited only to SuperTalent and OCZ hardware.
OCZ wanted to salvage their reputation with their latest firmware solution, that features "Garbage Collection". This tool is not leaning on TRIM while cleaning around, at least not, if you want a functional drive.
The last firmware revision manages to achive a miracle compared to the previous state of affairs, returning the read and write speeds to the start point; however it needs many many passes-heavy usage of cells-life span???
Trim is disabled, since they do not know how to implement it, without crashing all together.
One hour of idle is usually needed restore the drive.
They are trying now a solution with multiple Indilinx controllers; one could remember JMicron (well, that was stuttering).
It works in RAID.

Intel
Even under heavy testing abuse, that is far from home conditions, Intel returns to the intial write performance in just one pass, read is not affected.

At home there are no drops in performance; all without TRIM!!!
Intel has released an updated firmware (that had an issue with the updating tool) that includes native TRIM support. The most heavy issue, LBA tracking, was solved. The others can only dream about it.
Extremely effective in RAID; the motherboards almost choke with two drives in RAID; even if AHCI mode enabled (in BIOS).

So, I believe that Intel SSDs are the best choice on the market.

The best technical solution is having two Intel drives in RAID 0.

__________________

[Waco]

Intel
Even under heavy testing abuse, that is far from home conditions, Intel returns to the intial write performance in just one pass, read is not affected.

Of course they do...they have an artificial write speed cap internally. It's not hard to get back to that cap.


Personally I love my 128 GB Falcon. The slowdown in write speeds is next to unnoticeable and read speeds never suffer (which is really the only time I care about speed anyway...loading games/programs/etc). Also, you don't have to wipe the drive to use the TRIM tool, it works in-place.

I haven't upgraded to the TRIM firmware yet but it won't be long before the TRIM command is implemented for Linux as well.

This post has been edited by Waco: Nov 7 2009, 03:43 PM