what ssd is best?

I am looking for a fast and reliable ssd, Which ssd is better?

 

samsung have the fastest read/write speed but all ssd's are fast. depends on your budget.

 

Also depends on your usage as well. If it's for transferring large, GB-sized files around regularly, you'll want to aim for something with a high seq. read/seq. write speed. If this is just for basic computer use, you'll be fine with a "slower" SSD like the Crucial M4. I say "slower" because what makes a SSD "snappy" is the random access speeds, which are more or less the same across the board.

Brands I'd consider are Crucial, Plextor, Intel, and Samsung. The rest are so-so. Avoid OCZ like the Plague.

 

1. In terms of reliability, I think Samsung tops the market. They've got complete control over the hardware and firmwares on their SSDs. They own their firmware source codes and such... unlike other manufacturers, they have to wait for the ODM of the controller to create a reference firmware, before modifying firmwares for their own purposes
2. Buying a 7mm inch SSD wouldn't harm. It means you can put it in drive bays both 7 and 9.5mm in height. If you're looking at Crucial drives (most notably the M4) you could look at the 7mm version
3. SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm
4. Those guys over in the link are running endurance tests on various SSDs. Looking at the charts on the main page, most SSDs die between 200TiBs of host writes to 800 TiB of host writes from 64GiB to 256GiB drives. The Samsung 830 hit 6PiB+ (6000TiB) of writes before dieing.
5. A regular user would exhaust probably 3-10GBs of writes per day, a power user would probably use about 20-30 per day (still not likely). Calculate how long will 6,000,000GiBs+ of writes last. Assuming the controller and other parts don't die.

I personally would recommend a Samsung SSD, either the 840 or 840 pro depending on your budget. In terms of reliability, they'll probably be trailing closely behind those of the Samsung 830. (MDX controller on the 840 series manages write amplification better, despite using a 21nm NAND as opposed to a 27nm, it could still last that long)

If you're in the US and you're interested in buying an ultra reliable Samsung 830, NCIX and Microcenter are some of the US retailers with limited Samsung 830 stocks. Many retailers have run out of 830 supplies since it was put out of production a few months back.

 

Do a quick search on this forum & you will find a lot of posts on this same topic.

Go with Samsung > Crucial > Intel 520

 

In terms of performance:
Samsung 840 Pro > Samsung 830 > Vertex 4 > Crucial M4 > Samsung 840
Neither of these will fail you, take whichever is cheaper. Although, I haven't had a chance to try the Samsung 840, but I heard a lot of horror stories about it so I wouldn't go for it regardless of the price.

 

ill second that. OCZ arghh! run away, run away.

 

My 1st and only SSD 256GB 830. I am very happy.

 

An SSD that deserves more recognition (for it's speed and reliability) is the Kingston HyperX 3K.

 

I've had 8-10 OCZ SSDs. Only the original Core drive stuttered badly. The rest have run perfectly.

 

The Samsung 840 Pro Series SSD's are on sale now at Amazon.com. They are $223.99 each, with free shipping.

Check it out.

 

Look at Newegg or Amazon for 1 star reviews on OCZ products. You'll notice they have a lot of DOA and premature death rates. This is consistent from OCZ power supplies, memory, SSDs etc.

The 840 Pro 256 is now back at $269, then $239 (I submitted a price feedback because Newegg was offering it at 239).

Kingston is a vendor too, it doesn't own the NAND or the controller I believe.


OTHERWISE, think of it this way.

How many SSD makers have OEM versions of their SSDs with boxmakers like HP, Dell, Lenovo, Apple?

• Samsung PM830 (most), even Samsung 830's mSATA version was used on HP Envy Spectres and various other notebooks out there. Macbook Pros use a proprietary version of the Samsung 830.
• Intel (Usually the Intel 330/520)

All in all, these manufacturers have OEM class reliability. If you could make your products go into the OEM market, you're a pretty reliable choice in general

Think about it, when a box maker buys parts to build its box, they will be giving support under their own name. NOT the ODM.

They'll want to prevent mass returns/recalls etc. therefore their selection of components should be very decent at the very least. You'll also probably see OEM versions of the Samsung 840/840 pro coming out in the next months.

I'd imagine it OCZ starts supplying SSDs for MBPs to Apple... LOL.


EDIT: Samsung PM830's predecessor was already released, the PM841.

 

People with a complaint tend to be much more vocal than those who are happy campers, which makes things appear worse than they are in reality.

 

But it appears as a percentage (since percentages are relative), OCZ has one of the highest percentages of Nay counts.

Also to note, OCZ drives tend to not meet its MWI specifications.

SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm

Chart on SSDs that did not meet MWI specifications.

 

So what? NewEgg or Amazon are not a scientific sampling. As I said people with a complaint are far more likely to post, which skews the perspective. There's also a bit of a mob mentality at work too in my opinion. One person says they had a bad experience, so people tend to jump on the bandwagon if you catch my drift. Too much emphasis is put on benchmarks. If you buy any SSD, regardless of the brand, by far the most likely outcome it'll work fine.

 

I purchased an OCZ Vertex 4 256 gbps from Amazon at a great price and it has a 5 year warranty. I have been using it for over 45 days now without any problem at all. My neighbor bought a very expensive Crucial that was the same size as mine.
So far, he has been through 2 of them. The first one wouldn't boot after using it for about 10 days, and the second one did the same in less time. He just got his third one back from Crucial and so far it is working fine, but I don't really see that his is faster than mine.
It might be, but in normal operation or games we play, I don't see any difference. I think you can get a bad one from any vendor, and I will say that OCZ did have a problem for a while. I just hope it's all fixed. It looks like mine is a keeper so far.
Am using it on my Sager 9170.

 

Samsung 830- for stability and speed.
Samsung 840, 840 Pro- for less power consumption, hence longer battery usage time.
Crucial M4- not bad if the price is right.
OCZ- it depends on the model you choose, but read thoroughly on the net, understand the return policies and find out where you have to send back if you need.
Intel- if you don't care about the money.
Samsung 830 is my choice but listen to more experienced members and decide.

 

The best SSD right now:
is the one that has all it's controller channels fully populated - only 240/256GB SSD's and above qualify here.
is the one that has it's nand optimally interleaved (almost like nand RAID...) again - only 240/256GB SSD's and larger capacities.
is the one with the most consistent high performance for the least over-provisioning.
is the one that has the least failures.
is the one that is validated at the highest level.
is the one that is the highest performing (in real world use).
is the one that unfortunately costs the most.


This SSD is the Intel 520 Series 240GB model (the 480GB model is useless - slower than the 240GB option).

If a single larger capacity SSD is required - the Crucial M4 is the ticket (both the 256GB and the 512GB models are still great in real world use - even if they're slower than the Intel 520 240GB version).

A very close cousin to the Intel is the SanDisk Extreme 240GB model (can be found for ~$170 for 240GB).

Every else?

Not even worth considering. (Yeah - not even the Samsung's with their 'amazing' benchmark scores if real world use is important to you).

Good luck.

 

If you have to get the 'best", then look at SLC models.

Anything else nowdays pretty much are similar. There are no dramatic difference between all current gen SSD.

 

What do you mean by validated at the highest level? There were drive encryption issues with specific revisions of the Intel 520 rated to be able to run 256bit AES encryption but it only ran 128bit

Btw, Intel 520 already has overprovisioning pre-set with it that cannot be preadjusted. The 256GB became 240GB. That's why the performance is consistent, try that with other drives too, they'll catch up easily. I don't think the Samsung 840 pro will go under the performance levels of Intel 520 in overall with that same amount of 7% overprovisioning.

Samsung's validation is no worse than Intel's imo. Intel 330's probable validation is pulling down Intel's SSDs overall standards.

 

By leaving some capacity of a new SSD 'unallocated' - you adjust the over-provisioning on the drive.

Samsung is one of the worst real world performers in the SSD area right now.


Anand Lal Shimpi;

See:
AnandTech - The Intel SSD DC S3700 (200GB) Review


Make sure you compare the Samsung SSD to the Intel 330 Series in the interactive charts at the link above...



See:
AnandTech - Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs


And check out the above link for why manually over-provisioning an SSD is a must if you want the highest performing storage subsystem at this time. Note that they don't even compare an Intel 520 or 330 Series SSD there (I sure would like to see those tests though). The 840 PRO is almost always the worst one - with 50% over-provisioning still not quite as fast as other drive's with only 25% over-provisioning.

By validated I mean validated to work (period) and at the highest real world performance - not some encryption parameters.

You are entitled to your opinion that Samsung is at Intel's level - but that has as much weight as you thinking that the 330 Series SSD's are bringing down Intel's overall standards too. The facts from the links above prove otherwise.

 

I got your point.

But that actually is an enterprise grade drive. The "DC" in its model represents "Data Center". The Intel 520 is a consumer grade drive with a Sandforce, not an Intel.

But, why the comparison of an enterprise drive that's double the price with a power rating that's not suitable for laptops versus consumer grade SSDs?

 

No, you missed the point entirely.

No problem - you can read what you want and understand what you like. But you did miss the whole point I was making.

(Hint: I am not linking you to the Enterprise DC S3700 Review so you can read about that component - I was giving you the opportunity to read up on what a real 'performance' SSD is: consistent - and the Samsung 830/840 Series are anything but - as those two articles show).

 

Ones again tiller is out with his personal experience that involve him and 2% of users in this forum (Enterprise, high IO, servers etc). You have always been leaning towards Intel as far as I can remember tiller. They are reliable but have never been there on the top on the performance chart. I think they are good balanced SSDs. I give them that

For the rest of us, Samsung 840 PRO is the best SSD all things considered. Atleast in my opinion. OCZ Vector is probably the closest. Its a good drive speedwise but its OCZ (Wouldnt touch it with a stick). 840 is on top with the heavy workbench and is way ahead on the light workbench. The QD32 test that seems so popular these days are useless for us normal users. I`m not shure what depth we will be using in normal scenarios, but if I remember correctly it is QD=2 or something. Look at the Newegg ratings ( Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)), it is just as reliable as the 830 series, aka just as reliable as Intel if not better.

Here is a test showing how fast the drives are with various % fill btw
http://www.rwlabs.com/images/articles/samsung/840_pro/49.png

 

An answer to the question 'what ssd is best' is already answered in post #18.

It has nothing to do with what my personal experience is, really. Just simple facts.

An SSD that flies in one moment and then stumbles in the next is not the best all things considered (and Anand Lal Shimpi says so too - not just me).

Newegg ratings are meaningless. What do those people know? I don't know what they know nor does anyone else here - so why give the ratings any weight at all....?

Most workstations run (mostly) at a queue depth of 2-5, btw - but consistency is what a balanced SSD should be: and that is what makes them PERFORMANCE orientated.

Intel is the only one that gives us reliability, consistency, compatibility, low power consumption (and heat output) and performance in one package - and what is surprising is that it does that on the same SandForce controller that OCZ has stumbled over for two years.

Sure - it costs more. But we get more than what we pay for with Intel: A balanced drive. Name one other consumer SSD manufacturer that gives us that.

And just to be 100% clear: I'm talking about the Intel 520 Series SSD's - not any enterprise version either.

 

You are quoting Anandtech from a ENTERPRISE review. QD32 and way below that are USELESS for 98% of the users, and therefor the spare area link you people keep throwing around are pretty uninteresting. Shimpi and you are both in the 2%, and if this forum was a server forum, I`d agree with you both.

And the post #18 is not an answer, its an opinion, a wrong one too if I have anything to say. Its probably right for YOUR use, but not for the 98%. I already posted results from different fill % and Samsung 840 PRO is just as good as keeping the MB/s high as Intel 520, but unlike 520, its way faster.

 

I know that Tiller is a high post count member of NBR, and I see that you are also.

Just a seat of the pants judgement, on my part, but I lean toward Tiller on this.

 

The Samsung 840 PRO SSD is still very new, and still way way overpriced. At least IMO.

I copied the above .png image to my local hard drive so that I could view it with a proper image viewing program where I can enlarge it enough so that it can actually be read.

A few questions:

Why do they give a speed rating for TRIM?

The other 4 labels for speed comparison are: 0% full, 25% full, 50% full, and 75% full.

What exactly does that mean?

Since all of the SSD units are of roughly 128GB total size, is some fixed amount of each SSD not allocated? i.e. so that the SSD units have better overall performance during their lifetime.

 

TRIM is a command that tells the controller to perform garbage collection on the drive. With HDDs you can just overwrite the data you just deleted, with SSDs you need to clear the blocks to write on them again. This is what the garbage collection does. Thats why its always good to have a certain spare area on your SSD that are unaffected by the system.

As you can see from the test, its clearly faster when you have performed TRIM

 

It's always best to have some skepticism over new products, especially when it comes to computer components. I ordered two of the 840 Pro Series SSD's and one of them was dead upon arrival. I'm not sure how it happened or why, but it did. I'm currently without SSD's, gaming, etc. because I am awaiting the arrival of the replacements. So, the second week of owning the best gaming laptop on the market, I won't be able to game and it is very frustrating. The Samsung 830 Series SSD's worked perfectly, and still do. If the replacement 840 Pro's have issues, I may end up going back to the 830's.

I'm not saying, "The 840 Pro Series SSD's are bad - don't buy them." I'm only suggesting that you do not go all in on them expecting perfection. The issues I am having are likely related to firmware. They seem to have rushed production of the 840 Series to hit the market by Black Friday, and look what happened. It is possible, since I purchased from a reseller through Amazon, that the SSD's I received are part of the very first batch released, which were reported to have faulty firmware issues. I'm not sure. Perhaps my situation has a one in a million chance of happening, but it does happen.

TL;DR? Read reviews, prepare yourself. Knowledge is power! The 840 Pro Series SSD may have better speeds and may be more efficient when it comes to power consumption, but will they be as durable as the 830? I'm not so sure... Great news though, they are covered by an amazing warranty and replacements will be sent with a phone call, at no cost to you - even shipping is free.

 

my vote goes to the sanddisk extreme SSD. It is very fast, realiable and is quite cheap.
SanDisk Extreme Solid State Drive (SSD)
It can be gotten for 140 pounds/180€. I say if you want a good ssd this is the one.

 

NONE, absolutely none brand of any SSDs are without flaws and failures. Look at the 830 ratings, There are many dead SSDs there (reading the feedback), both on arrival and after using them for a while. Does it mean its a bad drive? No. You have to look at all the feedback. Right now it have 90% rating it 4-5/5 eggs and only 6% rating it 1-2/5 eggs. Which is very impressive (try searching up Vertex 2 for LOL) Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128B/WW 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Same should be applied to Samsung 840 PRO. 89% is rating it 4-5/5 eggs while measly 6% is rating it 1-2/5 eggs. And whats even more impressive is that only 1 drive have failed after firmware update (known risk).
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD128BW 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

I understand your frustration that you have to wait for a replacement though.
And 840 series have not been rushed out. Thats wrong. No batch have faulty firmware either. It was pre-production firmwares that had the issues, ie not something end users recieved. Only a few reviewers got their hands on them, including Anandtech which the whole internet fired up like it was the end of the earth.

 

I said, "they seem to have rushed ... ", what I said wasn't meant to be definitive - I don't know what they did, how could I? And how could you? All of that was a personal review/response of my experience so far. I am still completely fine with the 840 and 830's. I'm brand loyal to Samsung and probably always will be. I hope you didn't think otherwise. Just trying to give some friendly advice to the OP.

I'll probably post my thoughts on the 840's once they get here, assuming they'll function properly - can't wait!

 

AnandTech - Update on Samsung SSD 840/840 Pro Failures

Oh and I forgot to post this

I`m enjoying mine for shure.

 

Yeah, even if it's my answer; Post#18 is still the answer to this thread. And best answer at that. Just because I am quoting from an Enterprise review does that mean the information is not applicable? If that is what you think - tell Anand that too - he's the one that compares everything to everything else (enterprise to consumer...).

All you have are opinions - and some of them I agree with - but on this issue all I can say is that neither you nor anyone else has answered my question of what other manufacturer offers as balanced a drive as Intel does - and balanced is the definition of 'best'.

Happy New Year to one and All!

 

The Intel DC S3700 has very high amounts of pre-set overprovisioning.

Hm... 30% out-of-the-box overprovisioning...

And a happy new year to all.

 

There's been a lot of dead/dying 840 Pro (not so sure about the normal TLC models). AnandTech had both review drives die. Someone at HardForums had several die.

Typical early adopter problems. There are ways to avoid these kind of problems. Don't be an early adopter. For SSDs, this means don't be a paying beta tester for the SSD manufacturer. Wait for the first firmware update and reports from other paying beta testers before purchasing.

 

Could you be clear with that?... It's scaremongering.

1. Pre-production firmware =/= retail shipping firmware. Those reviewers got PRE-Production firmware, NOT the public release one
2. The public release firmware (shipped with the SSDs that have debut has absolutely no issues)
3. The firmware hanged, the SSDs weren't broken. I hope you understand what you're reading.

*Facepalm*

 

There is 1 (ONE) guy from the HardForums who apparantly had 4 drives dying ( Click here). He is the only one in that forum and the rest have their drives working flawlessly. He didn`t even give any proof to his claims, so either he is blantantly lying or he somehow got hands on PROs with the pre-production firmware which no end users have recieved anyway. Maybe he is affilliated with some reviewer site, I don`t know. Anandtech also got the pre production firmware.

Anandtech is the only reviewer who had their drives dying. With many PRO reviews, 10+ reviews, nobody else had any problems. Newegg doesn`t have any reports of dead drives and the ratings are just as good as Samsung 830.

 

The word "BEST" is subjective like saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I've owned a total of 7 OCZ SSDs and had zero problems with any of them.

I had trouble with G-Skill and Intel drives I've owned and a Crucial C300.

I presently have 2 240GB Sandisk Extremes running without issues as are 2 V3MIs for over a year and a V2(34nm) for 30 months.

Reliability has a lot to do with the owner and the system it's in.

If I were in the market to buy a new 2.5" SATA III SSD today the Corsair Neuton GTX would be at the top of my list.

Why?

5 year warranty

Does very well with small file reads and writes of both compressible and incompressible data.

Retains performance when it's been filled to 80%
.
120GB:
Corsair Neutron GTX 120GB SSD Review

240GB:
SSD Review: Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB

2 x 240GB raid0;
Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB RAID 0 TRIM SSD Review

 

Number one reason to NOT buy a Corsair Neutron: power used/heat generated (at least it's a concern in any mobile setup).

 

Not in mine.

 

Reading comprehension needs improvement:

From your links:

And the word 'best' is not what I was defining - nor is real world performance only in the eye of the beholder, like beauty often is.

The characteristics of an SSD that would be 'best' is what I outlined.

You understood the exact opposite of what I was trying to convey - just as you misunderstood the intent of the links you posted (quote is from the conclusion of the first link/article).

 

It is not scaremongering. People will still be early adopters. My advice is for those who have concerns about reliability. Waiting for at least the first firmware update should do two things.
1) Some firmware bugs are fixed.
2) Can read end user reports of how well the part works "in the wild."

Why is that "scaremongering?"

I have a car I'd like to sell you. It doesn't run, but that doesn't mean it is broken.

Does the SSD work?
YES = not broken
NO = broken

Doesn't matter if it is the actual NAND that failed, the controller, the firmware. Not working = broken/failed.

Except for J.Dre above. Oh, but he didn't provide proof so he must be blatantly lying, right?

And why are Samsung 830 good? Oh, right, it got firmware updates.

 

They are subject to early release problems, yes.

But did the 840 series come with any early release stability issue? Please answer this. The 840 =/= 830, don't assume the 840 has to inherit its early bugs.

Consumers don't buy reviewer units/ Qualification samples from Newegg, Amazon etc. Apart from DOA issues, there's been no actual solid report about 840 firmware issues at all... I know... rule of thumb... wait till its 'proven'... in fact there's already nothing wrong for early adopters. The solid reviews keep coming on retailer sites. They're a good benchmark for stability, at least, out of the box.

Plus... If you're talking about 1-2 released firmware updates, 12 Dec, a new firmware was released on top of the previous firmware that was already stable.

 

This is funny. I can assure you both I am not lying about this, LOL. I spoke with Mr. Fox for an hour or so and he helped me through the process of removing the CMOS battery, resetting my BIOS, etc. because he thought it was unrecognizable due to the fact that I went from 830 to 840 PRO. I sent him pictures and several messages to prove it. I honestly believe I received pre-production SSD's. The odds of two SSD's being DOA from Samsung is unheard of in my opinion. They were sealed, new in box. I bought them through a "reseller" on Amazon for $224 w/free shipping. They may have been some old ones sitting around that needed to be sold. I'm not sure what happened.

All I know is that my replacements are in my hometowns post office right now, and should be here tomorrow (Jan. 4th, 2013). I'll install them and update you guys, hopefully they work! :thumbsup:

 

Name me ONE SSD brand that have NO dead drives or any other problems. Yeah thats right, all brands have that "problem". Except there is a ton of difference between Vertex 2 where 50% of the drives died/failed against Samsung 840 where you rarely read about it (less than 5%)
So please, take your scaremongering elsewhere and stop with the nonsense. I`ve already posted Newegg rating where there was dead drives, even last month there was some. Not even firmware can protect people (or companies) against the failure rates on their products

J.Dre: I believe you. Who knows why they died, could be that you somehow got the pre production firmware. Someone gets the products that is part of the failure rate anyways. Perhaps you just took the shortest straw this time. But hey, atleast we have warranty on our products

 

just to add to my "run away, run away" comment about OCZ.

i or should i say my hospital department bought 3 laptops with OCZ vertex 2 ssd's which were specifically for reading CT scans of stroke patients. we have a 4 hour window to treat these patients so these lappys were for on call remotely reading the scans for a quick diagnosis instead of having to rush into the hospital every time a patient was brought in. nothing else except encrypted network and scan software was on the drives.
this specific ocz drive died suddenly within 3 months at a critical moment which i wont go into here. luckily we had one of the other lappys as backup.
sadly my reseller had ceased trading so i had to deal direct with ocz which as far as i can remember were in the netherlands. after a quick phonecall a urgent same day rma was arranged within 1 hour and rushed off to the airport and it arrived at ocz within 4 hours.
drive was found to be totally doa and a replacement sent out the same day.

this is where the fun (or not) starts.
it was then attempted to be returned by carrier pigeon which struggled to get off the ground due to the weight of the ssd and their next best option was returned by donkey. but it didnt come from the netherlands but as far as i can remember it was from where ever their main factory is in either china/thailand/south korea or somewhere else in that part of the world. all i know is it took almost 2 weeks to arrive back in the uk. if it wasnt so important it would of been laughable as it almost done a world tour as it visited 12 different depots on its return journey (half of them i had never heard of and it sounded more like a chinese takeaway menu) i suppose the donkey had to have a rest now and again.
anyway it got back within 2 weeks. as i said luckily we had the backup lappys. in all fairness the other 2 drive have never had a problem.
so if anyone ever mentions ocz i will advise avoid just because of the fiasco we went through.

 

Then now some positive story ...

I bought my X25-M 80GB from my friend, 3 years ago, he had it for year and upgraded to larger one, now disk has 4 years of use, 4,25TB Host writes , as I can tell xtremesys forum has one that surviwed 866TB writes and 25 100h of use mine is reporting like 3800h and 97% MWI. Next I bought E6530 with 128GB Samsung PM830 SSD (OEM equivalent of 830) and it runs even faster. To my amazement Intel SSD is running on Vista without Trim (well Intel Toolbox is doing it sheduled everyday same hour) ... no issues at all. No special treatment for those laptops, I would say that they at weekend work 12 to 14 hours non-stop.
I agree on general "rule" that best is to buy from large enterprise - like Intel or Samsung as last resort from Crucial/Micron. This is minimising risk. If I'm considering best SSD's I'm looking at few aspects:

- no "storage mode" (filled 51% slows write speeds) ... only Samsung and only 830 and 840PRO
- no unrecoverable loads (no Sandforce drives)
- as large node process as possible ( 830 better than 840)
- ssd maintenance application provided
- controler that was used in two consecutive models of ssd (Intel and Samsung -> X25M -> 320 , and Samsung 470-> 830)
- controler that treats automatically un-formatted (or un-used) space as additional overprovisioning
- minimum 8 channel controler architecture

Those are rough requirements that leave very few SSD's as an options, best cases are: Intel 320 300GB (formatted as 200GB) could serve extremely long periods, 512GB Samsung 830 (formatted as 500GB - estimated 12,44 PB! of writes). Those are completely hassle free drives - you can torture them (I'm using many VM's and save a lot of snapshots ...) , you can happily feel speed long after your OS has all possible slowdowns...errrr updates installed. I've convinced many friends to Sammy and Intel's products, no one has had any complaint till today.

 

why you say crucial as a last resort

i only bought mine as at the time it was the only 512gb available and as i have a 15" i didnt want a msataII slower drive as well.
i would of bought samsung straight away if they had a 512 but only 256gb available. 512gb came out a month later.

now question.
whats the difference between spec and price of 830 and 840 and pro 830 and pro 840
not seen anything about the pro's advertised or are they generally not available for gaming laptops and offered by OEM's yet.

reason i ask is we have a prototype samsung digital wifi xray machine in my department which has already been replaced once and its only 5 months old. as you can guess it was quite a few hundred thousand £££ so im wondering if its worth pestering my rep to get me a pro ssd for the inconvenience caused

its worth a try