Are smaller SSDs a poor investment due to lower write speeds?

[alipmcg]

Hi, I am looking to upgrade my desktop's HDD to an SSD (keeping the HDD on hand for storage) but I'm not sure about whether to go with a 120gb or 240gb drive. In terms of space that I need for Windows and frequently-used applications I think 120gb would be enough, but looking at various reviews it does seem like the smaller drives have write speeds of about half that of the 240gb+ drives.

I realise that this is not true of all write speeds for a specific disk, but I would like to know what people think about this difference in speed, and what experiences people have had with these 120gb drives.

The drives I'm considering are the 120gb/240gb models of the Kingston SSDNow V300, the Samsung EVO 840, and Adata SP900 and SX900. I'm buying in Czech crowns, but the price ranges are around $100 for the 120gb drives and $150 for the 240gb.

Thanks in advance for all help and advice

 

[chesteracorgi]

The speed improvement of an SSD over a HDD is what you should focus on, not SSD vs. SSD. A SSD (even a "slow one") will increase boot up by 4X, and most other operations by at least a factor of 3X. That being said, if you can get a 120 GB drive for $100 and a 240 GB drive for $150, the 240GB drive is the value option.

 

[alipmcg]

The speed improvement of SSD over HDD is what has convinced me to upgrade, but my question is really what factors are most important when choosing an SSD. Whether I decide to go with a 120gb or 240gb, there is still a choice to be made of which drive, and reviews cite various benchmark statistics that I can't say I fully understand.

The Kingston 240gb is the cheapest, but the shop I'm buying from quotes the read/write speeds for this one as 450MB/s, as opposed to 550MB/s and 530MB/s for the Adata models, which are about $15 more. findthebest.com and userbenchmark.com are both pretty scathing about the Adatas (and the Kingston) but very keen on the Samsung 840, which is about $175. The question is whether 6 months down the line I would regret not stumping up the extra $35 for the Samsung, if I went with the Kingston.

From looking at this comparison it seems like the Evo is worth the extra: http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-840-Evo-250GB-vs-Kingston-SSDNow-V300-240GB/1594vs1817

 

[Y0GI]

I have a 128 GB SSD which is perfectly adequate for my current needs: Win 7 Pro X64, MS Office, Adobe Lightroom, Canon Photo Utilities and a BUNCH of computer utilities currently consume about 24 GB. However, I may run into space constraints in the future.

If you can double your capacity for a 50% price increase, I say go for the larger drive.

Also, do not get the Kingston V300. Read this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

Yogi

 

[alipmcg]

I have a 128 GB SSD which is perfectly adequate for my current needs: Win 7 Pro X64, MS Office, Adobe Lightroom, Canon Photo Utilities and a BUNCH of computer utilities currently consume about 24 GB. However, I may run into space constraints in the future.

If you can double your capacity for a 50% price increase, I say go for the larger drive.

Also, do not get the Kingston V300. Read this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

Yogi

Wow, that's enlightening. V300 is now ticked off my list of possibles