What measurement/factor is most important when buying a new SSD?

[joepanek]

Hey Experts-


I am buying a new SSD for my system; my machine is at all 7's except the hard drive speed, hence my upgrade!

I'm curious as to what standard is most important when buying a solid state drive. Would it be GB/S alone?


Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks!

Joe

 

[tomatthe]

Reliability is most important imo. The real world differences between the varying SSDs are not going to be that great, but there are clear winners in terms of reliability.

Samsung 830 series, and Intel 520 series are worth the extra money.

 

[Chainzsaw]

Reliability is most important imo. The real world differences between the varying SSDs are not going to be that great, but there are clear winners in terms of reliability.

Samsung 830 series, and Intel 520 series are worth the extra money.

I concur. I would also like to mention the Crucial M4 is highly reliable as well (currently using this one).

 

[Branden]

i agree with tomatthe: reliability.

i've 13 SSD's. 4 were from a very common brand in SSD known for (apparently) having fastest and inexpensive drives... 2 of them died. (*cough*OCZ*cough)
all others are fine.

if you're putting a SSD in a laptop then power consumption is also a consideration.

i now put crucial m4 SSD's in machines and i'm very happy with them. can't go wrong with samsung or intel either.

 

[RetiredChief]

To answer your question, which factor is most important, in terms of Performance, and then I'd have to say random 4 K read/writes using a Benchmark that uses "compressed" data - That rules out looking at ATTO - LOL. High sequential read/writes based on ATTO are pretty much irrelative for an OS + Program SSD.

That said, in real life you’re not going to see but about a nickels worth of difference.
And I concur - reliability (Least user complaints) is more important.

Have to also concur with "Crucial M4s, Samsung 830, and Intel 510 or 520s - Of the three; Whichever is CHEAPEST at time of purchase.

 

[Onus]

Glad to see I was beaten to the "Reliability" comment. To me, right now that means avoiding Sandforce and OCZ drives; both have had too many reports of problems.
I'd go with a Samsung 830 or a non-Sandforce Intel drive.

 

[foscooter]

Here is a good website/article: The SSD Review

That being said, I love my Intel 520 Series 180GB SSD. I just replaced 2xOCZ Vertex 3 60GB in RAID 0 (no problems, just got rid of RAID).

 

[geofelt]

The most important metric to me is one which seems to never be stated, namely average response time.

Synthetic benchmarks use unrealistic programs to push the ssd's to their maximum limits for random or sequential i/o. But that is not what we normaly do.
The OS does mostly small random i/o , just one at a time.

When measured, the response time turns out to be remarkably similar across all of the SSD's.

I would concur with reliability as a metric. In addition to the Samsung 320, and the Intel 510 and 520 series, take a look at the newer 330 series. They are selling for less per gigabyte, and the performance in actual usage will be fine, despite the slower max i/0 numbers in synthetic benchmarks.

 

[WyomingKnott]

For me: Price and size!

Please see this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110-8.html
And Tom's' most recent Best for the Money: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-storage-value,3184.html

(hey, since this is Tom's, how _do_ you punctuate the possessive?)