OCZ Core Series Solid State drive in FX series

Has anyone installed or have any plans to install an OCZ OCZSSD2-1C128G Core Series 128GB SATA II 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive in their FX series laptop?

Here's a link to the drive: http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_core_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd

I'd like to get two of these and RAID them.

Any thoughts, recommendations, concerns?

 

Even though the prices have fallen dramatically, they are still a bit pricey for the amount of storage you get. 2 64gb drives are close to $600, much less the 128 gigers. I wont deny that I haven't drooled over the thought of having 2 SSDs in a RAID, though.
I'm sure you'll start to see more FX users with RAID SSD as the prices continue to drop.

 

anyone willing to ship a pair i will be happy to long run test them, weekly updates everything...

 

Isn't it a bit much to pay so much for those two hard drives that cost almost as much as the laptop itself?

 

I guess that would depend. These kind of drives were over $1000.00 a piece just six months ago. And just one of these drives I believe beats two mechanical drives in RAID 0 or comes pretty close to it. Not to mention the power savings.

I'd buy one now and get another later. I've never stored much data on my laptop and could easily get by with 128GB.

 

I had the 64gb one in my 6860 which did run very fast most of the time, but there were definitely problems. The drive would slow to a crawl whenever there was increased hard drive activity, like installing an app, unzipping a file, etc. OCZ still isn't sure what the cause of the problem is.

At the same time, the drive does work fine for a lot of people, and pretty much every professional review so far has been positive. I've also read that maybe the drive needs to be on it's own in laptops, and since I also used the stock 320gb 5400 drive in the second SATA slot, that might have been the cause of my problems.

The only definitive thing I can tell you is that YMMV.

I'll be testing the drive in another laptop in the coming weeks, hopefully I'll have better results then.

 

I don't think the speed is worth the current price. It's ridiculous overpriced.

 

They have a shorter lifespan too don't they?

 

No.

ten characters

 

Actually I just researched it, you can look it up if you'd like, just google "SSD lifespan". You'll see that SSD drives DO have a shorter lifespan than normal HDD's, but that it is really a non-issue because SSD lifespan (limited by a finite number of write cycles) is calculated to be 20 years of 24/7 use for older models, so you can imagine that the newer models are two to three times that. So while they do have a shorter lifespan, it is still much longer than you would ever use it for, and so it really shouldn't concern anyone.

 

I have a question. How come I can go buy 2, 32 Gb Flash thumb drives for 200$ but for a 64 Gb solid state drive it'll cost me anywhere from 300-600$?
I don't get it isn't it the same technology just packaged different?

 

This doesn't make any sense. Modern HDD's are cheap and fast, they typically last between 5-10 years (of normal usage -- not full time) which is why you no longer see companies offering 5 year warranties on their drives. When SSD's first came out, they were rated at 10 years full time. However, MTBF's didn't turn out to very reliable figures for predicting HDD lifespans, and obviously SSD tech isn't old enough to say wether or not the claims for longer life are true, though it would certainly make sense if they were.

 

Thumb drives are typically much slower than SSD's in terms of both access times and bandwidth. They are also limited by the USB interface.

 

If I am not mistaken Clevo pulled OCZ's ssd's from there new line up like the np8660 because of instability. I'll eventually put a ssd in my 7811fx but I'll wait first to make sure all the issues are gone.

 

I'm sorry if you didn't understand it. I'm not talking about how long they normally last, which takes into account many different variables including build quality and how well they're taken care of, I'm talking about their maximum lifespan - the variables here only being their read/write capabilities. SSD's have a maximum and finite number of write cycles that is much less than HDD's, but is increasing as the technology matures. This was what I was trying to get across, but I was also pointing out that you don't have to worry about it because the normal user won't even have his/her SSD for half its lifespan.

 

Is this why they aren't available when you're quoting out a custom Sager? I had wondered why they were not an option anymore.

 

Then your commentary isn't really relavent to the thread (in which you raised the question of cost vs lifespan of SSD's compared to HDD's). Why should it matter what theoretical maximum lifetimes of HDD's vs. SSD'sa are? People should be making purchasing decisions based on how long they will actually last. Most people are aware that actual HDD lifespans turned out to be much less than media failure rates predicted. MTBF rates are in fact lab calculations run from testing done under highly optimized and controlled environments, not full test data taken over real world conditions. Most likely, actual SSD lifespans will also be less than media failure rates predict, but I'm guessing not nearly as much so since SSD's don't suffer the same problems mechanical HDD's do.

I understood perfectly well what you said. What I'm saying, which seems to be going over like a lead ballon, is that your first gen SSD lifespan figures are much higher than they actually were reported to be. However, the reported read/write lifecycle limitations of SSD media should be a much better predictor of actual lifespan than HDD MTBF's were. Therefore, I would expect close to 10 year actual lifetimes out the SSD's that are currenly on the market (greater than HDD's), but since SSD's are relatively new, we can't say for sure how long they will last. So...

Considering that I still use my 5+ year old HDD's (in external cases) for archival purposes, I found your point that: "...you don't have to worry about it because the normal user won't even have his/her SSD for half its lifespan." tenuous at best.