Reliable Budget Conscious SSD for laptop.

[klinic]

Considering an OCZ 120G Vertex II SSD at $215.00, an Intel X25-M 120GB 2.5" MLC G3 Solid State Hard Drive at $288.00 or an OCZ 120G Vertex III Series SSD at $297.00.

 

The drive will be going in a 2011 MacBook Pro with OSX and XP installed on it (maybe upgrade to W7 if I can get it to accept my license key with the upgrade pack. >_>)

 

I've heard that Intel drives can be more reliable in Macs, but I can't think of a good reason why. Also not sure that the Vertex 3 justifies it's price when that speed isn't really going to be noticed that much in real use.

[wevsspot]

klinic - welcome to OCC.

 

Personally I can't justify the price premium for the Intel SSDs. And, I don't see any reason that an Intel SSD would be any more or any less reliable than any other brand regardless of whether it were going into a pc, notebook, netbook or mac.

 

Any reason you've excluded other brands from your wish list?

 

I had a bad experience with an OCZ Vertex II drive, so I won't be going back.

[DanTheGamer11]

Mac Book Pro eww... coulda bought a W& machine and fitted two SSD's?

 

I know a usb stick

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161373&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo Last dude has a 6 core AMD CPU and 16 MEG ram XD

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233154&cm_re=128gb_ssd-_-20-233-154-_-Product

 

 

Reliability depends more on luck...

[klinic]

klinic - welcome to OCC.

 

Personally I can't justify the price premium for the Intel SSDs. And, I don't see any reason that an Intel SSD would be any more or any less reliable than any other brand regardless of whether it were going into a pc, notebook, netbook or mac.

 

Any reason you've excluded other brands from your wish list?

 

I had a bad experience with an OCZ Vertex II drive, so I won't be going back.

No, there is no reason other then unfamiliarity. I'm very open minded. Although i have had some horror stories about some corsair drives.

 

 

 

As for the MBP, I like Macs. I like OSX. Actually, it's more a case of disliking windows, OS X is the lesser of two evils to me. And have you ever tried running Logic on a Windows PC? I didn't think so.

[wevsspot]

Reliability depends more on luck...

Having worked in the engineering and quality fields for the last 25 years I'd like to believe there's a little more to it than that

 

But it certainly seems that way sometimes. Degree of difficulty increases when you're buying individual components from a 3rd party supplier (memory ics for example) and then assembling and branding on your own.

 

Design, engineering, process control, quality control, management decisions, factory of assembly, work force training etc. also play key roles.

[wevsspot]

We've got an OCZ guru around these parts (Praz) and he tells us that the reliability on the OCZ drives is very very good these days. I respect Praz a lot, so if he says it, it's gotta be true.

 

With that being said, if you put one OCZ drive and one Intel drive in front of me, I'd pick the OCZ drive every time.

[imm0rt41]

We've got an OCZ guru around these parts (Praz) and he tells us that the reliability on the OCZ drives is very very good these days. I respect Praz a lot, so if he says it, it's gotta be true.

 

With that being said, if you put one OCZ drive and one Intel drive in front of me, I'd pick the OCZ drive every time.

Me too, but it depends on the model machine it is going in. We put OCZ Vertex drives in some Dell Latitude e6400s and there are boot problems all over the damn place. Half the time the primary boot partition can't be found and you need to ctrl+alt+del like 6 times for it to show up. Then again, the OCZ drives are rock solid in our d630 and e6410/e4300 models so it's most likely a BIOS problem.

 

We plopped some of the Intel X25s i nthe e6400s two weeks ago and absolutely no hiccups. Unfortunately, they are a little slower than the OCZ drives

[DanTheGamer11]

So the SDD i linked no good? you can always rma 'em?

[LuckyDeath]

I am in the process of RMA'ing my Agility 2, which is very similar to the Vertex 2.

 

It ran great for a month, then started to fail. After 2 months it was a brick.

 

The RMA process was smooth, started it last week and my new drive will be here by the end of this week.

 

Assuming the new drive works, I can recommend OCZ as they were quick to replace it. If it doesn't work, then I don't really care about RMA's because I'm doomed to repeatedly get a drive that will fail.

 

Time will tell. I would recommend picking a drive from at least a company with good support, because even 'reliable' drives fail. Make sure you will be able to get a replacement hassle-free.

[Shurman292]

I can recommend OCZ drives as well since mine has given me no notable issues whatsoever. It has been rock-solid for the past 7 months and it continues to be a very fast drive. Mushkin also makes good drives but they have not upgraded their Sandforce controllers yet so they have the same speeds as the Vertex 2s.

[Mikesnow]

it more depends on your bios, and achi roms and or raid roms your chipset uses then the brand of the SSD. If your running an intel cpu on an intel chipset the intel drive will work. Otherwise you need to find out what versions of roms your motherboard is using for it's achi controller and or raid controller, as long as it is newer then 2008 your probably ok, otherwise check for updates that specifically say they add support for SSD drives. Alot of x58 boards for example run the raid rom and achi roms from 2008 and if you run something other then an intel sdd in it you'll likely start to have issues with your drive within 6 months no matter the brand. If not sooner.

[klinic]

Eh, I have no idea about achi roms, raid roms, amy of that. :/ It's a 2011 MBP, so, uh, probably newer then 2008 I'd say, Sandy Bridge board and all, so, probably mostly all pretty new stuff.