I need your help. I am trying to decide between these 2 drives. I have read a ton of reviews and my head is spinning. I have a horrible time making decisions so I came to you folks for help. This drive will go in a Thinkpad T500 as the primary drive. I am going to connect the drive to my SATA II interface. Which drive should I go for? I want the fastest but I read differing comparisons. Any help would be great. Thanks.
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The Fire Snake Notebook Virtuoso
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Get the cheaper one. or one with longer warranty if same price.
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Gandalf_The_Grey Notebook Evangelist
To know more about the Plextor you can read: AnandTech - The Plextor M3 (256GB) Review
and Plextor M3 256GB SATA 6Gb/s Review - Another Win for The Marvell 9174 Controller - The SSD Review
The Plextor M3 and especially the M3pro is the fastest Marvell based drive on the market now, is 9.5mm high and has 5 years of warranty.
The Samsung 830 is the fastest Samsung based driveis 7mm high (possibly you need the spacer from the Notebook Kit) and has 3 years of warranty.
Found a review of both:
http://www.hardwarelook.com/reviews/samsung-830-series-128gb-ssd-review_150_1.html
http://www.hardwarelook.com/reviews/plextor-m3-128gb-ssd-review_156_1.html -
The Fire Snake Notebook Virtuoso
Thanks for the reviews. They seem to point to the fact that the Samsung is faster? The write speed of the Samsung looks quite a bit better on paper. What do you guys say about that?
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In sequential writing the samsung drive is much faster (but you're limited by sata2 port), but plextor works better with really small files.
Problem with sequential writes is you have to have some medium fast enough to read data at those speeds. Writes from memory are rarely large enough for that to make a significant difference.
Botom line, get whatever is cheaper, as you won't notice a difference in 99% of tasks. Only if youre concerned about warranty, than that plextor is better buy. -
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Gandalf_The_Grey Notebook Evangelist
:confused2:
@ The Fire Snake:
There was also a discussion about a lot of SSD drives here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...ow-another-ssd-into-mix-intel-520-series.html
At this moment you have to look more at the SSD controller.
The nice ones now are Marvell and Samsung:
Marvell: Crucial M4, Corsair Performance Pro, Intel 510, Plextor M2/M3.
Samsung: Samsung 830
And they are all great, so look for warranty, support and/or price. -
Samsung 830 has excellent support and RMA process.
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Gandalf_The_Grey Notebook Evangelist
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I'd rather have that than Plextor's warranty. -
Gandalf_The_Grey Notebook Evangelist
The system doesn't know the 830.
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The Fire Snake Notebook Virtuoso
The thing I was thinking of was that with my SATA II from my laptop I can get a max of 300 MB/s. I am assuming that is both read and write? The Plextor can do a max of 210 MB/s writes so I thought my SATA II might be constrained? Does that make sense?
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That's my Samsung 830 on a SATA 2 port. -
The Fire Snake Notebook Virtuoso
So from looking at those numbers the drive obviously won't constrain my reads but my writes can theoretically go at 300 MB/s but the Plextor can only do 210 MB/s writes. Isn't that quite a difference? Won't I notice that on writes?
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Gandalf_The_Grey Notebook Evangelist
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The Fire Snake Notebook Virtuoso
I have decided to go with the Plextor M3. It has a nice long warranty and is using a reliable controller and I can get it for a decent price. I hope I am making the right decision.
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Gandalf_The_Grey Notebook Evangelist
Samsung 830 128GB vs. Plextor M3 128GB
Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by The Fire Snake, Apr 19, 2012.