Which SSD to buy?

[jmsellars1]

Hi guys,

I apologise if there are too many of these threads and i am just adding to them but i have searched through the forums and can't seem to find a solution.

I want to buy a small ~60GB SSD, i want one for the speed improvement so naturally i am leaning toward the OCZ Solid 3 60GB but i have heard the OCZ SSD's may be unreliable? The choices i have from the site i like to use are as follows:

SATA II Drives:

Kingston V100 64GB ~£72
Corsair Nova 2 60GB ~£72
Crucial M4 64GB ~£86
Mushkin Callisto deluxe 60GB ~£87

SATA III Drives:

OCZ Solid 3 60GB ~£93

I want something fast but don't want to sacrifice reliability for it. What do you guys suggest? I have heard good things about that Crucial drive but the very high read speeds and very low write speeds seem to put me off.

 

[Kamab]

Hi guys,

I apologise if there are too many of these threads and i am just adding to them but i have searched through the forums and can't seem to find a solution.

I want to buy a small ~60GB SSD, i want one for the speed improvement so naturally i am leaning toward the OCZ Solid 3 60GB but i have heard the OCZ SSD's may be unreliable? The choices i have from the site i like to use are as follows:

SATA II Drives:

Kingston V100 64GB ~£72
Corsair Nova 2 60GB ~£72
Crucial M4 64GB ~£86
Mushkin Callisto deluxe 60GB ~£87

SATA III Drives:

OCZ Solid 3 60GB ~£93

I want something fast but don't want to sacrifice reliability for it. What do you guys suggest? I have heard good things about that Crucial drive but the very high read speeds and very low write speeds seem to put me off.

I have 1st hand experience with the unreliability of OCZ drives, but I also have had a vertex 2 that has lasted for for a year and gives great performance for its price. Generally you find out more about the reliablility of a drive the longer it has been out and its firmware has been tested on a variety of systems. The Solid 3 series is pretty new, and therefore we won't know if it has a high rate of failures after 6-12 months until they've been out that long.

You really shouldn't worry too much about lower write speeds unless you belong to a relatively small group of people (video editting, etc) which requires writing to the hard disk frequently. In general, all of your applications might load out of your SSD, but they will then execute mostly out of RAM. A drive with slower write times might install programs slightly slower, but other than that your not going to notice much of a difference.

Almost any SSD drive is going to give you huge improvements in read times (in replacing an hdd), which users experience as faster boot times, faster program load times, and no hdd spinning noise. On that note, I'd recommend a Crucial M4 or an Intel 320 if your not intent on getting the fastest drive out there, and a OCZ Vertex 3 or Intel 510 series if you want close to the highest performance available.

Make sure you want a fast drive for the right reasons.

 

[jmsellars1]

I want a SSD just so that boot times and application loading times are faster but i'm hoping for something equally as reliable as my Seagate Barracuda or any traditional hard drive for that matter. The only hard drive i had ever had fail was an old 80GB Maxtor drive and that lasted at least 8 years or so. Looks like the Crucial M4 would be best then because the Vertex 3 is a bit out of my price range, nearly double the price of that Corsair.