M17x R3 with SATA3 modded A12 BIOS what is the best SSD to use?

Just about to buy a new SSD for my trusty old M17x R3, but at this stage in 2014 wondering what SSD will work without issues at full SATA3 speeds?

I see there are numerous SSD models that have issues trying to run at SATA3 speed, either under performance are just generally poor.

I'm using modded A12 BIOS, which is meant to unlock one of the SATA ports to SATA3 speeds. Which drive bay exactly is the correct one for SATA3, is it the middle bay or the bay to the side?

I currently running the stock 2x 750GB drives in a RAID0, which I will miss the capacity, but cant have a both, unless there is a way to keep the RAID0 moving one of the old 750GB drives into the optical bay?

Looking for a SSD around the 240 - 256GB in size due to price. Below are the drives that I am considering. Please post what works or know otherwise not listed?

Intel 530 Series SSDSC2BW240A401 2.5" 240GB
Kingston HyperX FURY Series SHFS37A/240G
Kingston SSDNow V300 SV300S37A 240GB
Crucial MX100 2.5" 7mm 256GB
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB

Also considering due to being on special:

Seagate 600 ST480HM000 480 GB - is a bit expensive but has a lot of space for price
Western Digital Caviar Black2 WD1001X06XDTL Dual Drive120 GB SSD + 1TB HDD - very near the same price of the 240GB SSD, cost about 25% more but less SSD space

Let me know if some are better then the others, all of them are around the same price.

 

Look at the Samsung Evo 850 or the Sandisk Extreme Pro.... They're the best choices..

 

The WD Dual Drive has some pretty terrible speeds compared to other brands of SSD`s. It is an awesome idea on WD`s part but I don`t think they are quite there yet. As Tom suggested the Samsung`s are getting amazing reviews and seem pretty solid. The Intel`s are pretty well known and liked as well. A lot of people have left Kingstons`s camp as they were advertising a certain brand of chips and then using something else, it was a big thing last month although I have bought two of them for relatives computers simply because of the price and they have been fine.

 

I cannot yet source either of these drives, so these are off the list.

Yeah agree these driver are great idea, but reviews are point to failure to deliver, also sharing of a single SATA bus does introduce some problems.


I read that drives the SandForce SF-2281 controller is the main problem/issue with the M17x R3, thus these type of drives should be avoided?

I have been looking Crucial MX100 2.5" 7mm 256GB which seems to give pretty great performance for the very lees dollars spent, there is a 512GB model which is faster but that is more than I want to spend. Honestly I don't need more than 256GB and will be using a remaining old 750GB mechanical drive for storage, and day to day performance on this drive according to reviews is meant to be unnoticeable compared with more expensive drives. Any thoughts on the MX100?

 

Hi, just some info re the SATA 3 thing on the R3.

Dell had a lot of problems with both bays and on many machines only port 0 worked. Dell tried to fix and then gave up and re-speced the machine to SATA2, dropping it completely from later BIOS releases.

Yeah, a couple of angry R3 owners got R4 replacements!

The modded BIOS is supposed to give the full SATA 3 to both drive ports.

I went through all this on my R3 (and got an R4 ) and from what I saw it's not any real-world better. Spent ages getting it to work and yes, benchmarks showed it was faster but in-use I could not see any difference. I put it down to the fact that a HDD will show a real boost but the SSD is so fast, miliseconds on load times is just for chasing benchmark numbers.

Not that there is anything wrong with trying to wring out the last bit of performance if that's your thing?

Depending on the size of SSD you get you can also set some of it aside (in 32gb blocks) to cache the HDD as well. Giving SSD like speeds there (usually ).

Chipset Software — Intel® Smart Response Technology User Guide

Good luck.

 

Wait for the Samsung Evo 850 , 10 yr warranty, or for now the intel 730 or Samsung 840 Pro,

 

Can't wait and I don't want to outlay to much on an aging machine for more expensive drives.
Purchased a Crucial MX100 2.5" 7mm 256GB which has the new controller that the M550 also uses.
The MX100 use new 16nm MLC but drawback it is 128bit which is not as good as 64bit according to reviews.
The MX100 save me the most space a full 256GB instead of cut down e.g. 240GB or 250GB, seemingly there are a lot of 240GB variants out there.
It was very cost effective, and runs no issues at 6Gbit/s with the A12 modded BIOS.

There is a larger MX100 512GB version, and this seems to trading blows close to the performance drives, although that would have double my cost, and I don't have the need for 512GB which would mean waste of space and money at this stage.

With that could recommend the new MX100 as a low cost option (non SandForce controller) that will work no issue with M17x R3 at 6Gbit/s