Recommended SSD to buy???

Hi,

Ok i'm after an SSD that is atleast 60gb for my laptop.

What are you recommendations on which to buy?

I've read OCZ users seem to be having a lot of stuterring problems, so was thinking of steering clear of those.

I'm in Australia and the Intel SSD's are not available, so apart from it, what do you recommend?

Thanks in advance!

 

Apart from intel probably nothing.
Just my 2cents.

 

Samsung SATA II SLC is an excellent SSD. It's the closest thing to the Intel.

14-Way SSD Hard Drive Roundup : Flash SSDs Compared
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/flash-ssd-hard-drive,2000.html

 

I would go for a Samsung drive over an Intel drive, for one main reason.
Samsung has been in the memory business for years, and they are much more knowledgeable and skilled than Intel. Intel specializes in processors, not SSD's. Their firt products are probably not going to be so great because they are new in the ssd world, so I would personally say to wgive the Intel ssd some time on the market, so that people can revew it and see if it lives up to what Intel says it does

K-TRON

 

I'm having a great experience with my Patriot WARP v2.

 

I also have this drive and Im amazed with the overall speed of the system.

 

***??? Intel *invented* memory chips. In *1970.*

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa100898.htm

Do you have any idea how many generations ahead the memory in an on-chip CPU cache is, compared to commodity memory??

Intel *invented* flash memory. In the *1980s*.

Samsung seems to make some good stuff, but Intel has been doing this for a lot longer than anyone else in the world.

 

Can you get Mtron in Australia? The 7500 versions are quite possibly the best around. They have 64gb and 128gb versions which fit your size requirements.. but they're very expensive..

For consumer level $ I would choose Samsung.

 

cache memory for processors is not the same as the memory used in ssd's. I was only trying to point out that samsung and other manfacturers specialize in ssd's while Intel does not.

K-TRON

 

You are wrong. Every review of intel ssd have been glow. Infact it has been branded a game changer. I believe intel was/is involved in the memory business.

 

But look:
http://www.samsung.com/ca/consumer/type/type.do?group=homeappliances&type=refrigerators

Samsung specializes in refrigerators!

[/sarcasm]

While it is not bad advance to give the SSD market some time and watch how it goes, if you’re buying now and performance is important to you Intel should definitely be on your list. Let’s not forget that they design cache, ram chips, turbocache (flash memory), SDDs, and more. Intel is both a research and production company and with their success in reviews I don't see any reason to avoid their SSDs, first generation or not. On the most basic level all I am saying is that just because you aren’t familiar with a company’s work in one product doesn’t mean it’s not there.

 

intel since years procuses flash memory when ever they make a die-shrink. before creating a processor in the new size, they always produce tons of flash memory t ofind any bugs in the new technology. (as you can't turn of the "divide" function of a cpu if it has a bug, but you can turn off some bits of storage without anybody bothering).

 

No, they make SRAM when they do a die shrink. Not the same as Flash (EEPROM) at all.

But regardless, yes Intel has years of experience with Flash memory.

 

yeah samsung makes refrigerators, trucks, tower cranes, construction equipment and other equipment. Their memory technology division specializes in memory. Samsung has different buildings for the different things they make, as does Hitachi and other manufacturers. Hitachi specializes in heavy construction equipment as well as harddrives, so their are other examples.

Okay I tried to say one thing but I did not elaborate enough.
Still nobody reviewed teh Intel SSD drive. I personally wouldnt buy one if it was good because I am not a fan of Intel.

K-TRON

 

And Intel specializes in IC and PCB production. Flash memory is ... wait for it... an Integrated Circuit. SSDs get delivered on ... wait for it... Printed Circuit Boards.

SSDs are right in Intel's wheelhouse, and the fact that their first available SSD is by all accounts a game changer is testament to their manufacturing capability.

Ubergizmo
Notebook Review
Tech Report
Ars Technica
Anand Tech

I think five reviews gets the point across rather nicely. Clearly they have been reviewed.

So you care less about performance and more about brand affinity? That's certainly a decision you're welcome to make. Me? I try to keep emotional factors out of my technology buying decisions.

 

John, if you've seen many posts made by K-TRON he really seems to have almost no idea what he's talking about. I think he just posts what he thinks, rather than what is generally perceived and accepted to be fact.

Since you've already proved him wrong, now he's just trying to justify his position, rather than admitting he had no idea what he was talking about and had no merit to speak on this topic.

Not to mention Intel's SSD's are breaking read/write records left and right. They're actually starting to push SATA II to its limits, which is very impressive.

I like how he says he won't buy Intel because he's not a fan, when Intel is completely dominating AMD processors right now. I guess that's his loss.

 

Yeah, we've been tossing back and forth where SSD best fits in our Enterprise storage environment as the "big boys" start talking about Tier 0 storage with SSD.

We think it's still a bit pricey to put multi-terabyte DBs on solid state for the time being. So the question becomes what is best benefited by the changeover?

If you need the utmost in performance, you'll get more out of an Intel CPU at this time. The existence of both of them pushing one another to advance CPUs is not a bad thing It's led to cheap multi-core CPUs which are quite awesome from my chair

 

If you're in Australia, your best bet is to buy from dvnation.com which can ship internationally.

Otherwise, you may also try sparco.com for the new Intel SSDs. They are a great reseller for virtually everything and they SHIP internationally via Fedex. I end up getting most of my stuff from them as it's cheaper and much faster than any Australian resellers who never seem to stock the latest parts until months after release. If you love technology, don't live in Australia

The Samsung SSD in my X301 performs great, but the Intel SSD now beats it hands down in read performance as it has a good cache (the Samsung still writes faster and has slightly better power consumption). I just wish I had a little more space so I can run a dual boot configuration.

Bottom line is I'd only consider the Samsung or the Intel SSDs at this point as they are at attractive price points (relatively speaking), have excellent performance and are produced in volumes and used by most OEMs, which means they are more extensively tested and deployed.

 

you know, I stated that my opinion, and maybe it is wrong. I have not spent time reading reviews on the intel ssd because of the importance of my schoolwork. John Kotches is very knowledgeable and has corrected me a few times. Atheist, adding that I am wrong and bashing me because my opinion is wrong does not add anything to the conversation. Please stop making false analysis's because I am sure that "most" of my posts have been very helpful.

Please do not be arrogant and only post unhelpful information just to get a post.

The whole point of this thread and my addition was to maybe warn the OP, since Intel is new to the SSD market, and the product had not been reviewed when this thread started.

K-TRON

 

If I were you, wait till the SSD hits the market so you are able to get one that is on sale. Right now, there aren't much competition going on so waiting is a good strategy until you will be able to see markets fighting with price drops.

 

K-TRON, you should just drop that "intel is new" slogan. Everyone is new on the SSD marked. it all started about a year ago with MTron, and intel started right then, too. they just didn't rush on the marked.

intel where in the memory (flash) marked since tens of years, just as most others. The SSD marked is new for anyone.

And how did you where able to miss all the "omg intel rocks" posts, tests, articles, etc? this requires close to more work than actually reading something about it

 

THe whole problem with that is, everyone is knew to the SSD market, and their drives HAVE been reviewed. I was bashing you because you were blatantly wrong and spoke as if what you were saying is fact.

And It's not unhelpful to point out who is wrong and who isn't. It will help the OP know whose statements are the ones he should be observing.

 

@ aimfox, any idea what the base price will be for a 64-128 gb Intel X-25m when it hits markets?

 

Intel X25-M currently ships at 80GB at USD 600~700 as of Oct 16th 2008. So far I can only find it carried by a few venders on google checkout. Newegg has not carried it yet.

Certainly nobody on Ebay is arbitraging and trying to sell you for more than other vendors do...


It seems Samsumg 32GB SATA II now drops down to a " semi-affordable" price at $259 on newegg today. See link below.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147053

But watch out if you want to buy samsung SSD on ebay. A few sellers try to confuse you between Samsumg SATA I 64GB and Samsung SATA II 64GB. These drives seem to be very different. These ebay sellers will purposefully price their SATAI I version a bit cheaper than SATA II version you find online so as to trick you into believing you get a bargin

 

Unfortunately for use as the main/only drive in a notebook, I don't see how I could survive with less than 100GB. The Vista that came preinstalled on my dv5z already used 54GB, without any of my data on it. I reinstalled a plain Vista Ultimate and it's still 36GB. So if you want an Intel SSD it would make sense to wait for the 160GB model to come out.

Me, I'm wondering if I should have waited on buying the 120GB drive I have, and gotten the OCZ 250GB instead.

 

@ highlandsun, I suggest using VLite. I managed to fit Vista Ultimate in a 32GB partition.

 

guys back off K TRON, everyone is entitled to their opinion whether we agree with it or not, and to claim he doesnt know what he is talking about is complete rubbish. One of the most knowledgeable people on these forums.

I would have to say go with the intel on after the reviews though, just read the one by Chaz on the main page.

 

I second the recommandation for buying Intel SSDs. They are the only ones in my opinion that offers the performance to justify the price tag.

As to Intel being new to the SSD market, they all are. And with Intels experience for many years in making flash chips and harddrive controllers, I am quite sure Intel SSDs will be prime quality. Already, the reviews show that Intel SSDs do not suffer from stuttering issues, and a performance that basicly outclasses most other consumer SSDs.

 

Aren't Intel's consumer SSDs outperforming even the best of the Enterprise SSDs? I thought that was the case, but I don't have the time to research it.

 

I'm doing the same for my HTPC. I didn't even use VLite, I shutoff indexing service and swap. I also clamped down the System Restore option to 1GB.

I could probably tweak it down even farther, but I'm running in 12GB which is sufficient for my needs for this machine.

 

Not even close... Take a look at Fusion-IO's solutions for enterprise SSDs...

Speeds of ~700MBps read and 600MBps write. And I/O performance that can't even be compared to consumer SSDs, far less ordinary harddrives...

Add-on:

Big 64-K packages
• 730 MB/s read
• 630 MB/s write (500 MB/s with 320 GB-version)

4-K packages, random
• IOPS: 102,000 reads pr. sekond (72,000 with 320 GB-version)
• IOPS: over 101,000 writes pr. sekond (52,000 with 320 GB-version)

1-kB packages, random
• IOPS over 140,000 reads pr. sekond
• IOPS over 115,000 writes pr. sekond

4-K or smaller packages, sekvensial (sp?)
• 141,000 IOPS read
• 110,000 IOPS write

This SSD uses PCIex4 interface to connect to the computer, not the SATAII interface of most consumer SSDs.

 

Does anyone know if the Fusion IO ever hit the market?
I know Tomshardware reviewed it like a year ago, but I have not seen any server advertisements with the Fusion storage system

It sounded like a really good product from Fusion's video review.

Also, the Gigabyte Ramdisc from 2003 beats the Intel SSD in I/Ops. The ramdisc was basically the first form of an SSD which used a SATA hardware controller and used standard DDR PC3200 for storage. If you youtube videos of it, it is insanely fast. I have one of these babies and it boots windows from the off position in less than 12 seconds. I cant say that any SSD can do that. The cons are that the gigabyte ramdisc (i-ram) are that its only 4gb, but you can stripe them in raid if you want more capacity, and you loose all of your files when the system runs out of power from the onboard battery.
Pros are that XP installs in less than 12 minutes, loading times are insane, and it looks awesome.

K-TRON

 

Where can you load up a bunch of these cards though to get real capacity? You can get 224-288 of them into a Sun M9000, but Solaris isn't a supported OS for Fusion-IO.

Of course a device direct attached to the PCI-e bus is going to outperform something that attaches through a secondary interface (SAS/SATA/IDE) that attaches to the bus.

 

Yeah opinions are all open, but talking about your own opinions as facts are wrong sorry to say, but i agree with Atheist first post about this.
He may have many posts and be very helpful and absolutely VERY kind, no doubt about it, but doesn't seem to know _that_ much as others with the same post-count. And remember, opinions are open

 

Bottom line on most things in life is the same here. If you knows something about something, speak up. If you don't, shut up.

 

Yeah, that's exactly what i mean with what he said earlier, so i understand you.

 

Well I'm with Intel and this is my current experience:
I thought I would post this experience since Anandtech review praised so highly the Intel SSD for not exhibiting any problems similar to generic SSDs.

I experienced freezes in the past few days with Intel SSD on my system. It didn't happen often but when it happens it's surely annoying.

In my case, when I was typing out my email using Outlook 2007 with Internet Explorer 7 on. My computer would all a sudden froze with an hour glass on the screen. Nothing operable except for the mouse. OMG at first you would freak out because you thought you would lose your email you just typed. The harddrive light indicator was also flashing brightly heavily. You wouldn't be able to do anything anymore with your computer for about 5 minutes and finally everything would return back to normal.

I have been trying to do my research reading the following forum.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=43525

I hope this problem resolves. Surely there is a problem with Outlook 2007 and SSD because I have seen my Outlook 2007 crashed(Non responding) few times in a day because when I re-opened my outlook, it would warn me that outlook was not closed properly and it would then undergo Data file check in progress with lower right corner little gear symbols.

Other than that, I haven't encountered any other problems(Finger crossed). Doing IM conversation has also been flawlessly. No stuttering no lagging.
_________________
IBM T60 2623A24- 2GHz T7200, 3GB RAM, 80GB Intel X25-M SSD, 14" SAMSUNG LCD SXGA+ TFT, 128Mb X1400,
Intel 802.11abg wireless, BT, and Vista Business SP1, 9-Cell Battery

Vista:
Processor: 4.9
Memory: 4.6
Graphics: 4.6
Gaming Graphis: 4.0
Primary Hard Disk: 5.9

 

You can get Mtron in Australia
http://www.scorptec.com.au/browse/40/800