SSD Recommendation Help

the Intel ones are the best out there but they make you pay for it... a very close and much cheaper 2nd would be the OCZ line.

the price drop comes @ a cost of the sandforce bug (which Intel has fixed on their drives) but im running OCZ's on 3 diff computer and havnt had any problems.

id go with the Vertex 2's unless you have SATA 3, then go with the vertex 3. you can try the Agility line but for a few $$ more i would stick with the vertex line.

Personally I would stay completely away from OCZ in favor of Crucial or Intel. Way too many bad reviews of OCZ. Also, most people are preoccupied with the speed of SSDs. If that's your friend then he'll want a SATA III. Personally, I would consider a SATA II because they're cheaper and I'm mostly interested in increased reliability and not max speed.

All brands of MLC SSDs including Intel have experienced reliability or compatibility issues. Intel just released a firmware update to address an issue on the 320 series SSDs.

If your friend insists on an SSD, advise them they they may lose data, get BSODs or have other issues with any of the MLC based, consumer level SSDs. OCZ has had a lot of issues with their latest series SSDs as has Corsair, Crucial and others. READ carefully before you buy.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4604/the-sandforce-roundu...

Quote from Anantech review:

"It's a depressing time to be covering the consumer SSD market. Although performance is higher than it has ever been, we're still seeing far too many compatibility and reliability issues from all of the major players."

Consumer MLC NAND flash drives are still more "reliable" (reliable in terms of longevity) than magnetic disk drives, which have all sorts of complications with moving parts. Many compatibility problems can be avoided by doing your research, and the remaining DOA reliability issues (reliable in terms of it working when it arrives at your doorstep) you can get RMA'd quite easily with most companies. Intel's "issue" only had an effect on people that were rapid power cycling their systems iirc, and while it shouldn't have existed to being with, I'd say Intel SSD's are pretty reliable.

Also, Anandtech is an intel shill, so take their news with a grain of salt.

As for which drive I'd recommend, a 64gb crucial m4 or a 80gb intel 320 are both exceptional drives. Better yet, go with any cheaper SSD (< 1.7-1.8$ /gb) that has been on the market for at least 6 months and has received reasonably good criticism. There are a lot of drives that fit this criteria, and most people won't be able to notice any differences between them.

^ yar, what he said. OCZ the most frequent DOAs, firmware problems, and all around shady practice of any of the SSD manufacturers. I agree Intel and Crucial are the most reliable. The two reasons I typically prefer Crucial over Intel is typically a lower price and Intels write speeds tend to be slightly gimpy ( read speeds still amazing )

Unfortunately the belief that SSDs are more reliable than magnetic HDs is a false belief perpetuated by those who buy low quality HDs. In theory SSDs SHOULD be more reliable and SLC based enterprise SSDs costing thousands of dollars are more reliable, but not consumer grade SSDs - so far.

BTW Intel has also had issues with their 320 series SSDs.

Consumer grade SSD's are simply not ready for sale as they all have some issue or another. Perhaps Samsungs new 830 series will be reliable and compatibility issue-free but we won't know for 6-12 months.

There is some valuable SSD tech info. at the site link below.

http://www.storagesearch.com/

Some of what you are saying is demonstrably false. Check out http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-fai...

You say that SLC NAND solutions are more reliable than MLC NAND SSDs, but the controllers for these devices are often times (essentially) identical. Differences in the drives simply comes down to wearleveling, which essentially tells us that an SLC drive can take more average write cycles than an MLC drive. An average consumer probably won't ever significantly wear down an SSD that is being used as an OS/application drive.

Implied in the TH article (not sure if this is true), is that the average annual failure rate of SSDs has a linear time/rate relationship whereas most mechanical drives (Even expensive enterprise solutions) show a nonlinear (worse) relationship.

If you aren't setting up servers and don't have extreme requirements for reliability, purchasing an SSD can do wonders for your system. I have installed and used SSDs on three different systems an after making the switch I will most likely never use a HDD for a boot/application drive ever again.

Sure, SSD technology might be more reliable in 6-12 months, but its already quite good (Granted, from my experience and from what I've read). And again, enterprise SSD's failure rates are much closer to consumer failure rates than your seeming to imply.

jeremy - I think it's time to slow down a little bit. Please tell us about your friend's motherboard. What is the brand and model? It would help if we iknew the motherboard's capabilities. In addition, what does your friend do with his computer? Is it just for gaming or does is it for some kind of professional work. The intended use affects the decision making process.