Which SSD? Crucial M4 vs Corsair Force 3

Hello Guys....

I'm looking for a SSD to my Alienware M14X.......

Right now, I have 2 choices.

Crucial M4 256gb
or
Corsair Force 3 240gb (not the GT version)


Which one is the best? both work perfectly in the m14x?

Thank you and sorry for my bad english

 

The crucial m4 hands down, either that or the intel 520 or samsung 830, can't go wrong with any of those, they are the higher end ssds. But that doesn't mean the corsair is cheap and ineffective tho. I bought the corsair force gt 180gb. The difference between the force 3 and the gt is asynchronous vs synchronous memory. The corsair also has a sand force controller, which people hate on for reliability reasons, but my ssd has never glitched, and i get the rated read/write speeds. If you ask which one is the best, its the crucial m4, but if you ask which one is the better value, its the corsair.

But I see that new egg has slashed 100 bucks off of the crucial m4 256gb, so there's a clear winner, get it befores its sold out lol.
Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Both will work perfectly in the m14x if everything goes right.

 

m4...dont' even consider the Force 3

 

you should rather not go with a SATA 3 because they only run with an older BIOS and cause crashes and bluescreens thats why Dell reduced the speeds to SATA 2 since BIOS A07...

That was the case i chosen the Samsung 470 Series which is the one Dell builts in the M14x and works perfect and dude its very fast aswelll, maybe not theat fast as SATA 3 but Windows still boots in 19 Secs.

 

Hummmm.....

So, the best one is the Crucial M4........

But now I'm worried..... should I buy a Sata 3 or Sata 2???
I don't wanna have bluescreens or crashes.....


Thanks

 

I would buy SATA 3 (Crucial M4) and if you start getting problems with stability, Bios A08 will cap the drive to SATA 2. All Bioses up to and including A05 support SATA 3.

 

My m14x can fully utilize sata 3 on using my corsair. 555 mb read and 520 write speeds I'm getting, running bios a05. The only downside to that bios is that the fan speed is reduced, which keeps the noise down, but makes the temps higher. But i use a cooling pad anyway. Should work with the older bios's, but I'm too worried to switch since mine is working perfectly.

Just buy sata 3. Most likely it will work. And if it doesn't, you can tweak around with the bios and other settings, and if that doesn't work, then last resort is to use the newer bios that limit it to sata 2.

But to make sure you don't have any glitches, you have to do things correctly. Like switching the bios mode to ahci, before installing windows. You also should do a clean install, it will help with the alignment, and reliability of the drive. Once windows is installed, enable trim and download the right bios you want, and do other ssd tweaks you can find on google.

 

I have been very happy with my Samsung drives. I have a 470 128gb in the M14x, and a 830 256gb in my desktop. Both have had awesome performance and reliability to date.

Had my desktop 830 since Jan., and my 470 since Dec., couldn't be happier. Got the 470 for $150 on newegg shellshocker, and paid $370 for the 830.

 

Haven't had issues with my m4 yet. Really solid drive so far.

 

Crucial M4 without question. It's rock solid.

Alienware is shipping SATA-III Samsung SSD drives now, and the recommendation to purchase a less expensive SATA-II SSD drive is no longer appropriate. You just need to have the right system BIOS installed. The Sammys are also good drives.

 

Crucial, Samsung, and Intel only.

 

I would avoid Corsair like the plague. Last year I had a month long episode which drained the life out of me.

I had an array of four SSDs in RAID 0. About once in 5-10 days, a drive in the array would fail; the array was comprised entirely of identical Corsair Force drives. I first worked with the retailer I purchased the drives at to replace the first two failing drives.

Despite two brand new drive replacements, the failures continued like clockwork. I contacted Corsair to arrange a refund for all of the four drives, given that they had proven to be completely unreliable. This was after the third drive failure.

Anyways, the shocking thing is, the third drive that failed, I had not exchanged it while attempting a total return of all the drives, so it was just sitting there. At the point of failure the drives would be bricks, unrecognized via USB, eSATA, or SATA 2 physical connections (tested on multiple laptops). Now, while I was working out the refund with Corsair, in about a week or so, I ran another test with this third drive that had failed. It worked! For whatever reason it pretended to be bricked before, and for whatever reason it worked, I will never know.

To Corsair's credit, they did refund the drives. However the damage had really been done by that point. The SSD brands that have let me down time and again in this manner are Corsair, OCZ, Memoright (anyone remember SLCs?), and Solidata.

The ones that have proven themselves viable long term have been Toshiba, Intel and Samsung.

I haven't had any Crucial products but I'd definitely avoid Corsair like the plague. When they work they're fast as lightning but that's a big gamble to take when on a sample of four drives, three failed in a matter of a month.