Recommendations for a SSD drive

Hi,

I am looking to purchase a SSD for my MSI-GT725.

I am looking for a SSD around 240/256GB. I haven't really set a budget as i am putting it on my credit card.

Any recommendations would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

Crucial or Intel.

 

I agree with MrSeaBass. I use a OCZ Vertex 3 in my rig and love it. They are the top for speed right now. Intel 510 series are just a little bit lower in speed but tend to have better reliability.

 

Crucial M4

 

Thanks for all the replies so far.

The Crucial M4 is the SSD that seems to have the most positive reviews that i have read but i'll wait and see if anyone else has any other recommendations before i make the purchase.

 

Crucial M4.

Read the support forums for Kingston, Corsair, OCZ, or any other current gen sandforce based SSD. That should be enough to scare you from considering it.

 

Crucial M4! At least that's what I'm getting

 

AnandTech - Bench - SSD

look whats on top right now, yes thats right, crucial M4!

 

They're all going to be pretty damn fast. I don't think you will notice any difference between any of the SATA III drives.

 

best i've heard on stabiltity and what not (lets say its nothing technical but from my fellow it employees) crucial, ocz and adata

 

I love my M4!

 

Intel Released User Friendly SSD Toolbox 3.0

Intel today made available version 3.0 of its Solid State Drive Toolbox software designed to help Intel SSD owners optimize and keep their drives running in tip-top shape as if just unboxed. This new version makes it easier than ever to update firmware, run diagnostics, and perform optimizations right from within Windows with a redesigned and streamlined user interface.



This free utility also includes a system tuner that makes system configuration recommendations geared towards squeezing the most performance out of your SSD. It does this by detecting and determining if things like SuperFetch/Prefetch should be disabled, and whether or not to turn off ready/boost, defragmenter, or DIPM, all of which are services designed to make mechanical hard drives run faster, but could potentially have a negative impact on SSD performance.

"Super easy and elegant, the Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox helps users embark on the road to the faster performance of SSDs without having to deal with the complexities of the drive," Intel said in a statement. "It makes it easier for consumers to make the technology leap as SSDs become more mainstream.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455

Intel® Solid-State Drives

The new Toolbox is now available in 11 languages as well.

 

@WhatsThePoint, would that software work with other branded SSD?

 

From my exp with SSDs, I'd recommend you buy Intel, they have performed quite well and absolutely no problems so far.
I've had several issues with OCZ and I'm definitely gonna avoid them in the future.
Intel SSDs have lower write (significantly) from the competition, but the number they've written, you can 100% expect to reach and maybe go over a little. The competition is tending to work the other way around.
The reads are also lower (less noticeable) but still the same with the speeds. Also the main work is for reading.

Finally, buy one of Intel's lower class SSDs with higher capacity and it will serve you well. Keep in mind though, that due to the fact that the latest chips in SSDs have reached SATA III max bandwidth and no SATA IV in the horizon, you can expect in the next two years, the manufacturers to start creating revisions of the current SSDs with higher capacity, not higher speeds.

 

Newegg's Black November ad this morning had a 120g ocz vertex 3 for $169.99 after mir. There have been some issues with these drives, but I've heard good things about the latest firmware update (2.15)

The only thing you really have to know is that they are not easily upgradable as primary os drives (requiring a Linux USB/cd boot and a lot of voodoo). However, knowing in advance makes it easy to upgrade first, os install later, providing you have another computer you can temporarily hook it up to.

 

The interest rates on most credit cards are sky high. For your own financial health, I suggest you set a reasonable budget and don't put things on your credit card that you can't pay off quickly.

 

What many are calling the "2nd Wave" of SATA III SSDs are starting to appear on reseller shelves starting with the Samsung 830 Series and the OCZ Octane Series(Indilinx controller).

The Intel 520 Series(aka Cherryville) will be released shortly and some speculate that Intel will use a SandForce controller instead of their own or a Marvell controller like the one used in the soon to be discontinued 510 Series.
Intel 520-Series Cherryville SSDs to Include SandForce Controller - Report - Softpedia

I'll believe it when I see it!

Those that know are under an NDA.

I own OCZ Vertex 2(34nm memory) and Vetex 3 MI SSDs and find them to be great SSDs.I've never had any issues with them.

I use SSD Tweaker Pro to tweak my systems to properly use SSDs.There's also a free version.

 

Nice! I will check out that software when i got the time. Rep'd

 

Here's a good read if your thinking about buying a Samsung 830 series SSD.

The Corsair GT series recently got a flah memory change.

The Crucial M4 got a firmware update to v009

So how do the SS 830,Corsair GT,OCZ MAX IOPS,Crucial M4 compare?

Corsair Force GT 240GB & Crucial M4 SSD Update - HotHardware

Performance Summary: Both the Corsair Force GT 240GB drive and Crucial M4 with its v009 firmware exhibited excellent performance throughout out battery of tests. Overall, the SandForce-based Corsair drive proved to be a somewhat better performer, especially in terms of writes. But the Crucial drive offered more consistent performance with all data types, thanks to the characteristics of its Marvell-built controller, which handles highly compressible and non-compressible data similarly.

The Corsair GT drive offers killer performance at a very competitive price. Crucial should also be commended for offering a free, sizable performance boost to owners of the M4 with firmware 009. The drive may not be as fast as SandForce-based alternatives, but the M4 is a good product nonetheless and worthy of consideration, thanks to its lower cost-per-GB and consistent performance.

 

What You Need To Know About SSDs Before Buying

SSD Components and Make Up – An SSD Prime

Every SSD has a number of components that are always present. There are different SSD form factors which we will cover in our next article but, for the most part, there is always a printed circuit board (PCB) which contains a interface to connect to the computer, SSD controller and a number of modules of NAND flash memory chips.

SATA INTERFACE
SSD PROCESSOR OR CONTROLLER
PROCESSOR TYPES
NAND FLASH MEMORY
SANDFORCE SSD CAPACITIES
OVER PROVISIONING AND DRAM CACHE MEMORY
SYNCHRONOUS VERSUS ASYNCHRONOUS NAND FLASH MEMORY

SSD Components and Make Up - An SSD Primer - The SSD Review

 

I have a OCZ Agility 3 from NewEgg got it little while ago.

It will come with the new 2.15 installed so no need to find that and worry about installing it.

I had no issue getting the SSD to run the O/S it works perfectly was as simply as PLUG n PLAY!! NO ISSUES

I think the new 2.15 fixed any and all issues people might of experienced before but since 2.15 I think that it is the way to go if your looking for a decent SSD for a rather cheaper/middle of the road price.. but has top performance.

This is the only Benchmark I ran for this SSD could go higher I'm sure just never kept running the Benchmark Test..



Also, those results are because I can not run SATAIII speeds only SATAII..

 

Some issues with the Crucial M4 512gb model i have.

Needed a firmware right off.
Needed to run the following patch in the registry (windows 7 Pro)
Solution: C300 Disk Freeze-ups in Windows 7 solved... - Crucial Community
This may have been solved in the recent firmware.

After that it has been flawless and very fast.
So far i have had it in the following notebooks.
W520
T420s
X220

no issues what so ever (Was modified for the T420s and X220)

 

Well I just finished installing my dual 128GB Crucial M4 SSDs. I didn't update the firmware nor check which version I had but so far I have no problems.

Ill update the firmware another time.

Here is my initial tests. I thought they would be higher, but then again I only have SATA 3Gb/s speeds.

 

Damn nice results!!

 

this is me being braggy mcbragery

 

That is sweet!

BTW,there's a new version of the SSD Tweaker program released,v2.0.
Elpamsoft.com Home of the SSD Tweaker for Windows

 

WOW!!!! Now I just wanna go back and delete my Benchmark Test!!!

I just got PWNED!!! Damn duals and raid0's hahaha

 

Much has been said with respect to performance degradation as a result of the ssd becoming ‘seasoned’ over time. Seasoned means that the drive will eventually use up all of its empty bloccks.Performance is greater when writing to ‘clean’ memory vice memory which has previously been used and contains invalid data that has not been cleared. The root cause of degradation is that when a non-TRIM ssd(early SSDs) is told to delete data, it actually only marks the area as clear which leaves the invalid data intact and tricks the ssd into believing that the NAND flash is available.

Data on a SSD cannot simply be over-written as it is done on a hard drive and this gets a bit more complicated when we erase information and the block that it is located on also contains valid information that we don’t want deleted. The process then becomes read data, recognize the valid information, move it to another clean block, erase the present block and write. Manufacturers have tried to combat this issue of performance degradation by creating 3 solutions to the problem which are wear leveling, TRIM and ITGC (or Garbage Collection).

TRIM

TRIM occurs when the ssd clears blocks of invalid data. When you delete a file, the operating system will only mark the area of the file as free in order to trick the system into believing the space is available. Invalid data is still present in that location. Its like ripping out a Table of Contents from a book. Without this, one would not know what, if anything, is contained on the following pages. TRIM follows the process of marking the area as free by clearing the invalid data from the drive. Without this, the process of reading, identifying invalid data, deleting or moving and clearing the block before writing can actually result in performance 4 times slower than it would have normally been as a new drive.

Recently Kent Smith, Sr. Director of Product Marketing for SandForce,identified that there are many variables outside of the hardware that are responsible for users not seeing the benefits of TRIM, the first of which are drivers at the OS level which have to be working optimally in order for TRIM to function correctly. Another example occurred with early Windows 7 users testing their newly installed drives and not seeing the benefits of TRIM.

Examination of these complaints revealed that users would have originally made the Windows 7 installation on hardware that did not support TRIM and then cloned to the SSD to which TRIM was supported but would not work because of the original configuration settings. The same could be said of cloning an OS that originally had AHCI turned off followed by a clone to the SSD where TRIM was not being passed, simply because AHCI has to activated for TRIM to function.

Garbage Collection (GC) is the process by which the SSD recognizes, in idle time, which cells are valid and which are not valid (or deleted) on the drive. It then clears the blocks of the invalid data to maintain the speed of writing to ‘clean’ pages or blocks during normal operation. GC was initially shown to be a last resort if TRIM was not available, however, recent releases are showing new methods to be very aggressive and results equal to that of TRIM are being observed. This is a huge benefit to those using RAID systems where Garbage Collection is accomplished as TRIM is not an option.

 

it sure is taking Intel a long time to get the TRIM support in Raid done

 

Intel stated in documentation that was with the RST 11.5.0.1109 Alpha release that RAID TRIM SUPPORT would be in an upcoming future release.

"This release will not enable the TRIM on RAID0 feature, but it will be added in the next RST 11.5 release".

 

I've got Xotic building me a 16F2 right now and I opted for the 120g Vertex 3. It seems to trade blows with the M4 in Anandtech's testing.

AnandTech - Bench - SSD

I've got the 120g crucial real SSD300 in my desktop and I compared it with the OCZ Vertex 2 back when I originally bought it and from what everyone told me, these benchmark tests are more or less irrelevant in real world use. Both would be fast as hell.

Despite my motherboard in my desktop being a 1st gen i7 chipset and not supporting 6gig sata, it was still a pretty nice speed increase vs the 300 gig velociraptor I was using before.

 

Here's the SSD benchmark test I use.

Beta 9 is the newest release of Anvil Storage Utilities

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?273661-Anvil-s-Storage-Utilities

 

Intel SSD Toolbox now at version 3.0.2

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455

This release fixes the following issues:
- Scheduled Intel® SSD Optimizer sessions do not run on encrypted Intel® SSDs.
- Intel SSD Optimizer does not run if Microsoft Windows* compression is enabled on any partition.
- Intel® SSD 320 Series updates to incorrect version number on Lenovo* platforms (LE02 instead of LE04).
- SMART details do not display if SMART is disabled in IDENTIFY DEVICE status on the drive

 

Crucial M4 SSD 0x00000f4 error

From Crucial:
We are aware of an issue that is currently affecting a small number of users whereby their m4 causes their system to require a restart. This issue occurs after approximately 5,000 hours of actual “on time” use. Following the initial reboot, the system then requires subsequent restarts after each additional hour of use. However, the data on the SSD is unaffected and will not be lost due to this condition.

Through our investigation, we have determined the root cause of the problem and will be releasing a firmware update that rectifies the situation. We are currently running through our validation and compatibility process. Once this process is complete, the firmware will be made available to our customers. Although we understand the desire of some people to start using unreleased firmware now, we want to ensure that our solution works across multiple chipsets, systems, and operating systems before publishing the release code. We are currently targeting the week of January 16th, 2012 to publicly release the new firmware update.

We understand the impact that this is having on some users right now and apologize for this inconvenience. We appreciate your continued support, feedback, and patience as we finalize code and resolve this issue.

Dude, Crucial Employee, US

0x00000f4 error on M4 64GB - Page 15 - Crucial Community

 

Interesting, I have not had a single problem, freeze, BSoD so far with my M4's so I hope that phrase of "a very small number of users" is true! haha. Considering I have only used mine roughly 160hrs, I still have a looooooooooooooong way to go for it to happen

 

As far as I know the most common problems with freez , bsod are on sandforce controlers.

 

I had freezing issues with my 2 OCZ Agilty drives but a update to the latest Intel chipset drivers fixed it

I just switched to a MSI Z68A board and it has had no issues with the SSd driive

 

Don't equate all you read to fact.

With the number of Sandforce SSDs produced the number of problems associated to the brand or controller will be higher.

Micron sampled its 1st SSD products in early 2008 and made its first appearance in the Top 20 SSD Companies list in Q3 2010.

But the company wasn't listed in the most recent edition of the top SSD companies (Q3 2011).

Top 20 SSD Companies - based on search volume Q3 2011
the top 20 SSD companies - updated quarterly

 

Samsung SSD Magician Tool updated.

This is for 470 series and 830 series SSDs.

Similar to Intel and OCZ Toolbox

Samsung