Sata II SSD upgrade? Which one?

I currently run a Samsung 470 256GB SSD. I have been very happy with it. However I have noticed my wife's laptop in dire need of a performance boost.

I hope to upgrade her's using my 470 and buy something a little more modern. What will give me a significant boost in real world performance. I don't care for benchmarks really. I know however SATA II although limited in sequential reads and writes still isn't a bottleneck elsewhere so performance can be gained. I tend to play games and browse a lot. Also watch many videos. Not really a power user. At the moment anyhow. Still it would be nice to see more responsiveness as well as faster loading times and power savings if possible. I also don't fill my SSD's up more than 50% so if there are particular drives that do well in that scenario perhaps worth mentioning.

Any suggestions. 256-500GB please Budget 250-300 dollars max.

Thanks KoI

 

If Samsung's worked well for you so far, why not stick with that?

You can get a Samsung 840 256GB for less than $300

SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Newegg.com

Unfortunately (well, not that unfortunate) most, if not all, SSDs for sale will be SATA III. It will only run at SATA II in your M15x (just like my M17x R2) but if you were to ever upgrade to a newer model Alienware, you can take your SSD with you and it would run at SATA III in the new laptop.

 

Intel would also be a good bet for a reliable SSD with decent performance. You have the 500 and 300 series with SandForce controllers (which some people may not like) and you have the S3500 which has an Intel controller (bit expensive though). I got a Samsung Evo for my Elitebook and so far so good after a few months.

 

It depends, are you planning to keep that SSD for a long time (i.e. looking forwards to future upgrades) or is the SSD gonna die with that machine.

If you want the ultimate in reliability, get the Intel 320, possibly the smoothest and most reliable drive I know, only caveat is the speed is slow by modern standards and also very pricey.
If not, get the Crucial M500, M4, Plextor m5s or Intel 330/520/530, I won't recommend the Samsung drives that use TLC memory as you will be sorely disappointed with the Write speed and the tendency to get slower with time (i.e. it has a very lax GC scheme to preserve NAND). Trust me I have a Samsung 840 500gb and I'm forever having to use the Samsung tool to restore the performance.

 

It will not die with the machine. I will carry things if they live over to the next machine. Although I have no intention replacing the M15x yet.

The M4 and certainly the Intel 320 are getting on a bit aren't they. The 320 is the same age as the 470. I need something more modern.

I would like to see a performance improvement. I also will go for 256GB if I can get a much faster drive for the money. I intend to update my ODD storage to 1.5TB + in the future so capacity not an issue.

 

Your budget is not in line with the real world prices (at least for the 500GB capacity wish).

See:
Intel SSD 520 Series SATA III Solid State Drive, 240GB with Desktop Installation Kit at Memory Express


No doubt about it: the fastest drive (real world) I have ever used (sustained, over time).


For the larger capacity point; the 480GB M500 is the only choice imo (bang for the buck), at this time. However, the Samsung 840 Pro 512GB model is noticeably faster than the Crucial - but it is also about $100 more expensive too (not worth it to 'upgrade' to Samsung for me for the difference in real world performance though when $$$ are the issue).


Hope this helps.

Good luck.

 

IMHO you may as well go for the newer Intel 530 series if you decide on going with an Intel 2.5" SSD.

The Intel 530 mSATA would have been my first choice if not for Intel charging premium rates on their mSATA SSD's.

 

Not necessarily a good thing as the 520s use 25nm MLC NAND which are a fair bit more durable than the 20nm in addition to being cheaper at the moment (520s are being phased out and you'll find them on clearance). I know the whole spiel about endurance but 25nm vs 20nm (especially when 25nm is cheaper) is pretty obvious.

 

The 520 looks pretty tasty! What sort of performance improvements would I be seeing with it over my current 470 not forgetting of course that it will run at Sata II? Real world being the more important I believe.

 

@ Marksman30k

That's not exactly the case here in Canada in fact a clearance sale Intel 520 only comes down to the price of a Intel 530 and when it comes down to endurance the same could have been said about the 510 series compared to the 520 series.

Really it all doesn't matter, these SSD endurance myths are taken way over proportion; a SSD will outlast any mechanical hard drive and you'll probably end up upgrading way before you've exhausted the SSD.

@ King of Interns

Real world the Intel 520/530 is one of the fastest SSD's on the market since Intel makes great SSD's for real world performance not just benchmarks and the pricing on Intel OEM 2.5" SSD's is also very fair.

I only mentioned the 530 series because I'd thought the pricing would be the same throughout the world with the 530 series being cheaper than the 520 series as you did mentioned you wanted a more modern SSD.

 

The 510 couldn't really be compared to the 520 considering the controllers were completely different but the 530 and 520 use the same Sandforce controller, just with different NAND. However, that is true that the good prices are no longer present, the 520s were actually selling for about $250 for 240gb here in Australia a few weeks ago but now they're gone and the 240gb 530s are now $300.

 

So to answer the question...where would I see noticeable performance increases if I were to take the Intel 520 (that is if I can track one down!)?

Thanks

edit: found one for 176 dollars! Seems 480GB version is 4x more expensive 240GB is very cheap though. Amazing how prices have dropped. About 100% cheaper than the 470 when I bought it!!

 

I only recommend the 240GB version of the Intel 520 Series (actually, all SF based drives). The lower and higher capacity points are drastically slower performers.

 

Where did you find a 520 for $176?! In the US the 530 is about $200 the 520 $240+

+1 on the 480GB SandForce, at least last generation, i.e. the 520. The sweet spot is 240GB.

All other 480-512GB are over your $300 max, the M500 480GB by about $60 (in the US)

The 470 is a SATA 2 drive like the Intel 320. The 520 SATA 3. You won't gain in large file transfers, sequential transfers. Both will top out at about 270MB/s - SATA 2 limit. You should see/feel a difference in OS usage. The smaller files, a mix of 4K read and write, that make up the bulk of a desktop workload is where the quicker drive (snappier, more responsive) would be my first criteria in selecting a SSD. If available, I prefer to look at "Steady State" Read/Write Mix to determine the quickness in a "real world" test metric. Unfortunately, there aren't results for the 470, that I am aware of, to make the fairest comparison. There are 520 and 840 Pro results, if we can assume the 840 Pro is an improvement over the 470, the 520 is quicker, but not by a wide margin. The quickest drive I've seen in this metric is the M5 Pro Xtreme.

Idle power performance of the 840 Pro is the best. The shrink to 20nm should save power in the 530 vs 520 25nm. The value line Intel 335 also 20nm ($170 in US) has excellent idle power draw and is a good SSD too.

Other factors are price and price/performance = value. If I could get a 520 240GB for $176, here and now, I would buy it! I might buy more than one. At $240+ I'm passing.

Not to forget reliability. You know well of Samsung reliability, considered in the top 3 with Intel and Crucial.

Latency = access times. A bigger problem for smaller drives than you are looking for. Latency issues in the 120-128GB Samsungs and higher latency with the NAND shrink in the M500, along with other performance hits, you won't see a recommendation for M500s smaller than 480GB from me be it 2.5" or mSATA. The M500 480GB is stellar; "Steady State" Mix and price/performance, Crucial reliability, enterprise features. The 960GB is even better but twice your max $

 

Check UK ebay. 109 quid new including shipping! Do a quick currency check on google it comes to $176.

Seems like the 520 is not only a bargain but gets a thumbs up with many here! I may well pull the trigger on it.

A question: how and what is the best method to clone my 470 to the new 520 if and when I get one. Clean and simple process I hope. The same for cloning my wife's HDD to the 470.

 

Download Intel's cloning tool and clone away if you get the 520. Note that the Intel cloning tool (rebranded Acronis) works only with Intel drives and you may need to have the drive hooked to a SATA port, eSATA works.

for the 470, try this: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads.html. Worked flawlessly on my 840 evo.

 

Do not buy the Intel 320. The 8MB bug was never fixed despite having the latest firmware that touts to fix the issue. I have a friend with an Intel 320, RMA'd multiple drives due to the 8MB issue

Sent from my GT-I8190 using Tapatalk 4

 

I agree with this statement. Intel 320 all the way. I have one in my desktop and it's been great. Be aware though of the 8MB bug. Rarely happens and was more common on the X25-M's but I've had it happen to one of my 320's in the past.

Also, I managed to purchase my brand new 256GB for $140. Deals are out there, just gotta look.

 

I've bought 7 Intel 320 SSDs (OEM, retail) and never had the 8 MB bug. Just have to make sure the firmware is up to date, otherwise a good solid performer.

 

From what I could gather, the 8mb bug is related to power cycling the SSD too aggressively as the "bug" is some kind of recovery mode. That being said, it became much rarer after the latest firmware upgrades

 

hoenstly get the Sandisk Extreme II. An awesome drive. It's probably in top 3 drives right now and if you watch Amazon its been fluctuating down to 189.99 which is really cheap!

 

The 320 probably isn't really an upgrade over the already decent 470!

 

An upgrade, it is not. You are right.

 

I have a SATA II HM5x chipset based Intel notebook around with a Samsung 830 (in SATA II speed) in it , benchmarking at ~250Mb/s read, ~250Mb/s write (with registry fix applied), random IOPS hovering at ~30k read/write. Over 70% disk space used, 7% OP.

I must say a Samsung 470 already close to saturating the SATA II speeds. Probably not for the write.

I don't think the small performance bump you'll get would be worthwhile in anyway in getting a new SATA III SSD running SATA II mode.

Lastly with consumer workloads, they tend to be more read intensive than write intensive. You shouldn't see much of a difference between a current gen SSD and a SATA II one.