ssd recommendations

gazz9496 said:

an ssd that has a 20 year life expectancy if it performs worse than a basic mechanical drive...would be kinda pointless, i'm interested in a good balance between the two, oddly those are the two things with ssd's that contradict each other as higher performance means higher writes meaning lower life span...go figure.

An SSD that performed like a mechanical is defective for whatever reason and should be returned. It can happen with any brand.

I've never seen anything that implied the "life span" and "too many writes" was an issue for current generation drives used in the typical user profile--not in a corporate server where writes might be many times higher than in a home situation.

There is a thread on this site about another site that torture tested SSDs with constant writing. The result showed that the drives remained functional for a VERY high number of writes, well beyond anyone's expectations. I don't have the link, but it was from one of the better known hardware sites.

If I were buying tomorrow I'd probably go Samsung, but only because they are getting a lot of good online reports lately.

I've had a 120 Gb OCZ Vertex III for over a year now and had no problems what so ever. I also have 120 Gb Corsair and Kingston SSDs, which have performed very nicely as well. I haven't really noticed any differences in performance between the 3, although the OCZ does get the best benchmark scores.

If you look through this section of the forum, you will see the same question asked several times. I have a Samsung, and I will always recommend a Samsung. Reliability.....nobody, including Intel, has a more reliable consumer SSD. When I built my new rig this summer, I started out with the Intel 520 SSD, the one with the Intel modded Sandforce controller. Went tits up after 1 day. RMA'd it and got a brand new one.....same result, tits up in 1 day. Ordered a Samsung and haven't had problem one with it for almost 5 months. I just cannot in good faith recommend Intel anymore, at least not the 520 series, and I will probably never buy a Sandforce drive again. Not saying there aren't any good ones, I'm just saying I have shit luck with them.

I would also recommend the Plextor line, either the M3 Pro or brand new M5 Pro. Both use Marvell controllers and I've never heard anything about Marvells not being reliable. Plus, Plextor has awesome firmware for their drives. I would expect the M5 Pro to be THE drive to beat as far as performance, and I would also bet that they will be as reliable as the Samsung 830.......although it is purely speculation.

The OCZ Vertex 4 is a hot drive right now. New controller, very competitive price and outstanding performance. Let me tell you about why people shy away from OCZ.......yes, in the beginning they had some problems. It was very damaging, but one reason is because they sold a shit ton of SSD's. Naturally, they are going to have higher failure rate than a company that sells 1/4 the drives. They have a new controller now though, and I believe those problems are in the past.

The others that round out my list would be the Crucial M4 and the new Corsair Neutron GTX. There are a lot of M4 owners and I don't hear them complaining about anything. The Corsair Neutron GTX is a newer drive, with a new LAMD controller. Numbers on paper are really good and Corsair usually doesn't make junk hardware.

There you go, that is not an expert opinion, nor is it definitive. I'm sure other people on here have drives I didn't list that work perfectly fine......let them chime in. This is just a few drives that I could recommend, with a little bit of info as to why.

The Intel 330 and 520 series SSD's are using Sandforce controllers......The other Intel drives are flawless, especially the X25-M series, because it used Intel's own controller.