SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

crun, Intel 310 should be faster (it's same as Intel G2), but it's questionable if You'll be able to feel any difference.


hankaaron57, which notebook do You have?

 

M17X (my sig).

 

I just looked at service manual and I only see a slot for WLAN which is mini PCI-E.

Mini SATA is physically same as mini PCI-E, but electrically is different, it has pins for SATA data and power.

 

And I'm guessing there is no adapter for a mini SATA to pci-e

What I really want to do is stick a couple tiny SSD's on there in RAID so it's bigger, and then have a third drive. I can do the optical drive I guess, but I feel like the pci-e slot is just completely useless and it shouldn't be because it doesn't have the bottleneck SATA has, right?

 

As far as I understand it mSATA is typically seen in small and light notebooks that don't have a lot of space to build in 2.5" drives.

I don't think mSATA is interesting when you have 2x 2.5" bays.

 

Here is a list of some notebooks with mSATA slot.

It looks like it's usually used to put in a small SSD as a boot drive, next to bigger spinner for data.



No, I haven't seen an adapter for mSATA.

 

If I could spread more rep to you Tomy I would <3

And yeah, I get what you're saying Phil, but I'm terrible at saving up, so when I see the small drives for cheap, I jump on them, and I don't have any room left for bigger ones. I can't even find a reasonable 1TB spinner 2.5" or hybrid SSD 1TB drive for a reasonable price anymore. I was going to stick it in my optical drive bay (I think it's SATA I) and use that as the archive drive, but newegg doesn't have the caddy for my slim dvd drive.

 

Had a quick look, Superbiiz has Samsung M8 1TB for $129. That's about as low as it gets for 9mm 1TB drives.

Maybe next year prices will come down again.

 

Hey guys,

Whats the best 1.8" drive out these days or coming out within the next 2 to 3 months?

I cant seem to find any good 1.8" drives other than the C300, but even that is out of stock at most places.
Dont see a 1.8" M4, Samsung, or any of the new Intels.

What gives?

edit: this is for my brothers T410s as his 5400 platter is laughably slow.

 

Try looking here.

 

Lots of Intel 520 details leaked.

http://www.bouweenpc.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IntelSSD_520_Series_Product_Brief_Preview.pdf

GoT - Opslagmedia & I/O Controllers - Bekijk bericht

 

Nice! I think I might upgrade when the 520 comes out.

Do you think there will be a noticeable performance gain yet coming from a G2?

 

For normal usage not that noticeable. For heavier usage / disk intensive multi tasking there will be significant difference.

 

Hm. Well, I'll probably would be doing it for the capacity upgrade. Anyone else thinking the huge jump in capacities for the consumer drives equates to what will be a huge drop in price? I know it happened with the last shrink, but for example, at the current Intel $/GB ratio, the 480GB drive would be around $1,100.

 

Hello chaps. Can any of you smart people help me out with this one?

I have a Dell Latitude E6410 which tops out at SATAII. I want to add an SSD to it but I'm not massively rich and I also realise that most of the current tech is SATAIII and so would be a touch wasted on my rig.

Can anyone advise of something in the 80-160GB range that would be suitable for me? Maybe something I can pick up used, reset, and get cracking with (my understanding is that SSD's don't degrade with time since TRIM got sorted? Please help me understand that bit more if I need to)

Ta

Ah - just remembered that there are a limited amount of write cycles still. Used market will be a bit hit and miss then I guess?

 

Would never recommend used storage (especially SSD's...).

Intel 320 Series 160GB model highly recommended.

Other possible choices include Samsung 470 and (because it's competetive on price... ~100GB more for ~$100 more...) the Crucial M4's (256GB model).

I would be inclined to recommend the 256GB M4 (as an 'ultimate' plan) and partition it to not use the whole capacity (this will give you a faster performing storage sub-system over time and incur the least amount of WA (write amplification) no matter what your workload...) and have the ability to install it in a modern platform and be able to fully utilize the performance it can deliver.

Anything else is a crap shoot.

If you don't have the funds to purchase one of the above now, save up first before you (possibly) regret a lesser purchase.

Good luck.

 

Agreed, Intel 320, Samsung 470 and Crucial M4 are all good choices. Reliable, fast and power efficient.

 

i finally put my 320 into use (yeah.. after 3/4year.. ) and it's great.

those 520, are they intel internal again?

 

All signs are pointing to a Sandforce controller.

Intel 520 240GB 550/520 MB/sec, 85.000 IOPS max. random write.

OCZ Vertex 3 240GB 550/520 MB/sec, 85.000 IOPS max. random write.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...sd-520-includes-sandforce-10.html#post8128826

 

ihhks no buy from me (well, no need for a new ssd in the next months/years anyways..)

my next ssd will be the one in the samsung series 7 slate. other than that, no new hardware in sight => nothing new for me.

in use right now: 1 320, 1 g2, 1 g1, and one mtron still rocking my servers system disk. the others are somewhere in use, too. but those systems are on daily.

 

Who knows Intel might be able to make reliable firmware for a Sandforce based SSD.

It's probably not easy though. Rumor has it that this is the reason it has been delayed to Q1 2012.

 

Phil,

That information may be correct (in the end, we'll see...), but it seems funny to me to have future rumours based on past rumours with any/all 'rumours' unconfirmed one way or the other.

 

It's all rumor and speculation. As long as you realize that there's no problem.

 

Phil,

Good point. We know it's all rumour and speculation - anyone reading the last few posts won't though (well, until now).

 

Ta all for the advice. Think the 160s and above are a touch out of my price range.

I'm wondering if anyone can shed any light on the difference between the X25-M and 320 series? Think the latter are newer but perhaps more about cost efficiencies without loss of performance? Would be interesting to know as there are still some X25s kicking about. *runs off to google this*

 

Meh, the X25-M to 320 can hardly be called an upgrade imo.
Do they sell X25-M anymore?

 

Samsung 830 proves to be the fastest SSD at the moment in real world benchmarks.
SATA III SSD Showdown: Which Solid State Drive is Fastest?

 

Well just brought 128GB sammy.

BTW do I need to use Samsung SSD tool software?

 

No need for it.

 

In my haste last night I went for a Vertex Plus 120GB (Bear in mind I run SATAII)

Internal Hard Drive Deals - Cheap SSD drives, SATA, SAS, SCSI - Buy Online - dabs.com

Now's the time to stop me!

 

I brought Samsung 830 from dabs 2 days ago and it arrived today.

 

Performance is alright, reliability is a big question mark.

 

Thanks Phil. I'm going to be taking an image when the OS is setup how I like and storing it on my fileserver so hopefully even if it dies I'll not be massively annoyed. Maybe they'll even upgrade me when it does

 

Plextor PX-M3S review

Interesting for me is Plextor's True Speed technology. Unfortunately I don't see any benchmarks out there that test for this, not sure why as this might give some idea of slowdown effect later on from new / SE. Having done some tests on my own Agility3's, media fragmentation can have a big effect on sequential reads.

 

I just bought two Kingston HyperX's 120GB. Will these use the Intel toolbox software? And what firmware do I need so they don't get that horrible 8MB brick bug?

And since I want to run them in RAID, does that change anything?

 

Intel toolbox and the Intel bug are not relevant for Kingston HyperX, which is a Sandforce based SSD.

The HyperX should run fine in RAID.

 

I have a user who is looking to get an SSD for his 13" MacBook Pro - he wants a 512GB drive. Any recommendations? Crucial is one that comes to mind, but I havent studied much in the SSD markets to know which is good, which is better, and which may be considered best

 

Has anyone had any experience of the Corsair Force GT series of SATA III drives?

basically i'm looking to buy a SATA 3 drive in 240Gb flavour to replace my current Vertex 2E drive for more capacity and to be future proof incase i buy a SATA 3 capable laptop next year.

the Vertex 2 has been an excellent and very capable drive thus far so my brand loyalty after my first SSD experience is fairly high thus far so i'm keen to stick to OCZ, however the Corsair drive is around £20 more (nowt when paying £300 for a drive) and looks to be a good performer also. so i want to see if anyone can recommend me either way from their own experiences

thanks

Ben

 

Samsung 830 512GB is the fastest. Crucial M4 is slightly slower but more power efficient.

http://blog.laptopmag.com/sata-iii-ssd-showdown-which-solid-state-drive-is-fastest

I'd take Samsung 830 over Corsair GT. Corsair GT = Vertex 3 (except for the firmware)

Samsung 830 beats the GT.
http://tweakers.net/reviews/2389/4/ssd-test-samsung-probeert-het-opnieuw-trace-based-benchmarks.html

 

thanks for the quick answer, that eliminates the Corsair as a contender then as its £20 for nothing.

the samsung comes in at £30 more, £350 instead of £320, worth the extra cash, as i could use the £30 to buy the arc keyboard i want as well

 

Samsung 830 256GB comes in at 320 GBP for the full kit.

Samsung SSD 830 Series upgrade kit 256GB, 2.5", SATA 6Gb/s (MZ-7PC256N) | Skinflint Price Comparison UK

Nice bonus is the cloning software and the 16GB extra vs. Corsair.

Vertex 3 240GB is really cheap by the way.
http://skinflint.co.uk/618148

Perhaps a nice alternative: Seagate 750GB XT with 8GB SSD cache for about 160 GBP.
http://skinflint.co.uk/?in=&fs=momentus+xt+750gb

 

I returned my 128gb drive and brought 256gb version from dabs.com
with coupon code (STAR10)Total price £309 with free delivery.

planning to sell Norton backup software as I already have true image

 

which drive was that bigspin??

cheers for the price info Phil, i was going to research prices some more tonight as well so thats a good start for me to work from

i had a momentus XT 250gb before, they are quick but its not a patch on full SSD as i use a lot of different programs so the learning flash isnt enough at 8Gb but nice idea

 

Samsung 830 256gb

 

Or you can buy the Samsung 830 256gb from Computeruniverse in Germany for only £260 delivered to UK like i did....you will need a business VAT number though to get ex-VAT which knocks off 19%
So the full price is EUR 345
minus 19% vat = EUR 290
+ EUR 15 delivery to UK = EUR 305 = GBP 260 delivered
Pay by PayPal
(1 GBP = 1.17 EUR)

Samsung 830 Series 256GB Notebook-Kit - Solid State Drives (SSD) - computeruniverse

 

It's very strange that nobody pays much attention to ssd performance during rewriting data into used (with deleted data) memory blocks.

 

anyone know how the performance of Plextor PX-128M2S? how did it compare to M4?

 

Planning to buy SSD for my lapi, suggestion please. I already seen many post of including post Phil and idiot which suggested my to buy Samsung 830. No SF controller because of BSOD and M4 is good in power saving as compare to Samsung.

 

how is garbage collection of 830 ?

 

According to some sources not as good as for the Samsung 470.