SSD advice please

S

suryad

Veteran
So since I have been on a PC upgrading binge lately, I was thinking of getting a couple of SSD drives and for the hell of it getting them set up in RAID 0. I know TRIM commands cannot be passed down to the SSD if it is in a RAID array but I have also been reading that if you get one of the nicer ones you could actually get away without TRIM and degradation of performance a la this link: http://www.hardware-revolution.com/best-ssd-hdd-april-2011/

I have an Asus P6t Deluxe V2 motherboard so I doubt I have SATA 3 so far I can see the best SSD I can get is the OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB. Is that a correct statement? I would like to get a pair of these slap them together in RAID 0 and see what's what. My current Velociraptor RAID 0 set up I am not sure but I am probably going to either set them aside or keep them in the machine either as another RAID 0 setup or just 2 separate drives. I am not worried about hard drive failures because I usually back everything up. Recommendations? Suggestions?

Oh yeah so far I am liking this one: http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Technology-Vertex-2-5-Inch-OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G/dp/B003NE5JCO/ref=pd_cp_e_3
 
Your motherboard has SATA 3 according to the ASUS site.

Have you read through this thread?. Lots of good info there.
 
I've got a Crucial M4.
When I bought it I had a choice between it and the new Agility 3 from OCZ - the sales guy told me that there were reports of issues from customers about compatibility issues and steered me away from it.

It really is the seek times that make the biggest difference in performance so... forget the sexy read and write times on the latest drives and go for best real world performance - reviews at techreport, anandtech were a good reference point for me but I also listened to user experiences.

OCZ doesn't seem all that reliable compared to some other manufacturers.
 
Malo said:
Your motherboard has SATA 3 according to the ASUS site.

Have you read through this thread?. Lots of good info there.
Click to expand...

Hmm it says SATA 300 but that is the equivalent of SATA 2 is it not? Thanks for the link.

Tahir I will check out the anandtech and techreport sites. I think it was Anandtech who were saying if you wanted the fastest to go with the OCZ Vertex 3 IIRC. I have been reading from people that indeed OCZ's failure rate is very high! :( No purchase decision is easy nowadays it seems.
 
SATA 300 is indeed SATA 2... SATA 3Gbps

SATA 3 is 6Gbps.

And yea Anandtech loves OCZ and Sandforce but there is more to a drive than synthetic benchmarks which he relies on quite heavily.
 
oh sorry yeah, I was thinking of Sata 3Gbps, not SATA III :oops:
 
There are a lot of people totally caught up on the raw bandwidth numbers. It's like the classic RAID 0 HDDs crazies. They don't really realize that sequential access isn't that much of a bottleneck in the majority of scenarios, even with HDDs.

The more tangible aspect to SSDs is definitely the near zero access time and how many accesses at once don't really affect it. This is insanely faster than a hard disk and that's where you feel it. You see things like your quad core being pegged on Windows login because the accesses to all of the loading apps and services don't bother the SSD.
 
swaaye said:
There are a lot of people totally caught up on the raw bandwidth numbers. It's like the classic RAID 0 HDDs crazies. They don't really realize that sequential access isn't that much of a bottleneck in the majority of scenarios, even with HDDs.

The more tangible aspect to SSDs is definitely the near zero access time and how many accesses at once don't really affect it. This is insanely faster than a hard disk and that's where you feel it. You see things like your quad core being pegged on Windows login because the accesses to all of the loading apps and services don't bother the SSD.
Click to expand...

Well said sir. I am beginning to find that out from reviews that I have been reading myself on the web. I definitely find it hard to NOT be influenced by benchmark numbers though. I have always thought of Anandtech despite running a lot of benchmarks they do their fair share of non-synthetic benchmarks as well. But yeah it seems they really like the Sandforce and OCZ stuff and based on those numbers it is hard not to. I just want to know what real life is going to be like. They have this one benchmark suite where they are doing I believe photoshop editing and video stuff and a bunch of other things to simulate day to day real life usage but I have not finished reading up on all that yet. I also looked at the Crucial M4 and the Corsair offerings and though impressive I like the Corsair one more. The M4 looks like a solid product but it does not seem to be as fast as the others...not that I am going to notice probably :) but still it's kind of comforting to know that the speed is there with the other products like Corsair and OCZ.
 
homerdog said:
Intel makes really good and reliable SSDs.
Click to expand...

I can vouch for this statement. I recently bought a 120 GB Intel 320 SSD and it's superb. While the price is a bit steeper, I would totally go Intel over OCZ. Almost everyone I know that's chosen OCZ has had issues with them.
 
So I guess the next logical question would be should I look at the SATA 600 SSDs because SATA seems to be backwards compatible. Sure the SSD will not run as fast as it would with SATA 600 but are we maxing out SATA2 bandiwdth with these new SSDs?
 
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/21299

Simply put, the users allege that [Intel] 320 Series SSDs are wiping themselves clean in the event of a system power loss.
Click to expand...

As to whether you go for a SATA 6Gbps drive or not.. all the newer models are SATA 6Gbps - as to maxing out the SATA 2 bandwidth, some drives are performing faster with SATA 6Gbps but again it isn't sustained writes that are the major bottleneck for most users.
 
Thanks for the link Tahir2. So much for Intel drives being reliable. But that being said I think it is with every major product that gets released in the market, it is foolish to buy them right away without giving them time to 'bed in' so to speak. There will always be bugs whether it is software or hardware. I usually give a minimum of 6 months at least or so before I buy a just launched product so that it gives the vendors time to iron out bugs. When it comes to vehicles, a minimum of a year. Has served me quite well so far :)
 
If not for the problems associated with OCZ SSDs and it appears new generation Sandforce SSDs in general, that would be an easy recommendation. However, as much as I don't mind being a guinea pig, I'm steering far clear of any new generation Sandforce drive until all issues are ironed out.

IMO, that leaves the 2 best recommendations as...

Intel, generally being the safe, albeit expensive option. They have had some issues but nothing like most other manufacturers.

Crucial, IMO, is the next best and quite significantly cheaper than Intel.

If I weren't so happy with my Crucial C300 (which had its own issues at launch, and again I didn't buy until those were all ironed out), I'd probably pick up a Crucial M4 for just over 400 USD new for 256 GB. That's a fantastic price for a fast reliable SSD in that size category.

Since the M4 is closely related to the C300 using a modified C300 firmware and the same Marvell controller, it isn't exhibiting some of the growing pains that pretty much all SSDs have experienced. The downside to that, of course, is that performance is quite similar to the C300 but at a much much lower price due to the smaller MLC chips used.

Then again the performance of the C300 was quite good anyways. :)

Regards,
SB
 
Not had a single problem with my X25-E drive. Never bothered to update its firmware either, I'm not even sure there is an update frankly...

Of course, it's only 60GB and hella expensive, but it's been great. Super high performance, awesome pure "grunt" power; you can stack on basically any amount of disk activity and it won't choke, it'll just keep rockin' and rollin'.
 
I have a few OCZ drives and have had 0 problems. So now you know something that has no problems with them. I have 2 intel SSDs and also had 0 problems, but they are the first and second gen. With my experience I would certainly go OCZ again actually.
 
Actually my brother in law is visiting me and he showed me he had recently bought an Intel 320 series SSD and then I showed him the TechReport link and he was not too happy about that. As of now he is in a holding pattern till Intel fixes the issue as he was going to use it on his Macbook Pro laptop which he uses to do office work. So far in my mind I am leaning towards the Patriot Wildfire or the OCZ.
 
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