Buying my first SSD and have a couple questions

jimbob200521 · 10-29-2012, 09:24 PM

I'm considering buying my first SSD via Woot, can't beat the deal

http://tech.woot.com/offers/corsair-force-60gb-ssd-5

Anywho, I've heard a lot of caution when it comes to buying SSD's and wanted to know if this drive is a mistake. I read it's got the Sandforce controller (v 1200..?) and want to know if this drive has issues with garbage collection, if it has TRIM support, and if there's anything else I should know or be aware of when buying this. I trust Corsair as a brand, and have heard good things about Sandforce, but don't want to buy a horribly out of date drive that is going to perform poorly in a week's worth of use. TIA for any help.

lehtv · 10-29-2012, 09:39 PM

Meh. 30 day warranty on a SATA II sandforce drive? No thanks. I'm not sure what the good things are that you've heard about Sandforce... there's little good about it

Go for one of these: Samsung 830 128GB $90. It's about as good $/GB but new with 3 year warranty and it's much faster and much more reliable.

jimbob200521 · 10-29-2012, 09:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lehtv

Meh. 30 day warranty on a SATA II sandforce drive? No thanks. I'm not sure what the good things are that you've heard about Sandforce... there's little good about it

Go for one of these: Samsung 830 128GB $90. It's about as good $/GB but new with 3 year warranty and it's much faster and much more reliable.

I'm trying to keep cost as low as possible, I've got a 10k 72gb Raptor right now which has been serving me well. I would like to upgrade to a SSD and this price point seemed to be good, but it seems like you're cautioning against so I may hold off.

Zap · 10-30-2012, 11:49 AM

What was it? A 60GB Sandforce 1200 drive for $45 shipped? You should have gotten in on the Intel G2 80GB deal at Tiger Direct for $42 shipped after $20 rebate. I think it has a 5 year warranty, and is known to be one of the most reliable SSDs ever made. It was "on sale" at that price for a few weeks, but finally sold out maybe yesterday.

jimbob200521 · 10-30-2012, 02:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zap

What was it? A 60GB Sandforce 1200 drive for $45 shipped? You should have gotten in on the Intel G2 80GB deal at Tiger Direct for $42 shipped after $20 rebate. I think it has a 5 year warranty, and is known to be one of the most reliable SSDs ever made. It was "on sale" at that price for a few weeks, but finally sold out maybe yesterday.

I saw that yesterday when I got home from work but yeah it was already sold out. Just gonna have to keep my eyes peeled and hope I catch something good when it comes around again.

Sheep221 · 10-30-2012, 02:38 PM

Owning SSD is very comfortable, as the computer boots up in seconds and is very responsive. My first SSD died within 2 days, because sandforce circuitry crashed, it's still pretty unreliable technology. Seems the only SFs who don't die prematurely are the Intel ones.

VirtualLarry · 10-30-2012, 04:45 PM

I have a Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB that died pretty hard after half-working for a few months. Yes, I tried secure erasing it to fix it, multiple times. It had the 5.0.1 firmware, which was the newest at the time. Come to find out, TRIM was "broken" in that firmware.

It was a 2nd-gen SandForce.

mfenn · 10-30-2012, 07:30 PM

How much was it? It's definitely NOT worth paying the $45 number that Zap mentioned. Any Sandforce V1 drive is bad, a 60GB one is worse because Sandforce will back itself into a performance corner when full, and only 30 days of warranty is just icing on the cake. It'd literally have to be $20 shipped for me to even think about it.

johny12 · 10-31-2012, 04:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimbob200521

I'm considering buying my first SSD via Woot, can't beat the deal

http://tech.woot.com/offers/corsair-force-60gb-ssd-5

Anywho, I've heard a lot of caution when it comes to buying SSD's and wanted to know if this drive is a mistake. I read it's got the Sandforce controller (v 1200..?) and want to know if this drive has issues with garbage collection, if it has TRIM support, and if there's anything else I should know or be aware of when buying this. I trust Corsair as a brand, and have heard good things about Sandforce, but don't want to buy a horribly out of date drive that is going to perform poorly in a week's worth of use. TIA for any help.

Sandforce had BSOD issues about a year back, well so did other controllers including marvel and Samsung – probably not reported by many users. Sandforce fixed its issues with firmware 5.0.3 and 5.0.4 updates.
Many still remember it and many had raised their voices strongly ( including me) against sandforce; but in reality today there is hardly any difference between any of the controllers in real world usage scenario. So sandforce is as good (if not better) as any other controller.
As far as I remember – sandforce has better garbage collection and over provisioning than any other controller. However TRIM is subjective because by default all controllers have TRIM turned on, but many SSD manufacturers turn it off. TRIM also depends on the OS you use . For e.g Windows 7 only supports TRIM for ordinary (AHCI) drives and does not support this command for PCI-Express SSDs that are different type of device, even if the device itself would accept the command

mfenn · 10-31-2012, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johny12

Sandforce had BSOD issues about a year back, well so did other controllers including marvel and Samsung – probably not reported by many users. Sandforce fixed its issues with firmware 5.0.3 and 5.0.4 updates.

Correction, they fixed some of their BSOD issues about a year ago. There are other (albeit harder to trigger) ones still in existence. Even Intel can't get the firmware completely right, which suggests to me that the controller has some sort of flaw that isn't fixable in firmware.

johny12 · 11-02-2012, 01:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VirtualLarry

I have a Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB that died pretty hard after half-working for a few months. Yes, I tried secure erasing it to fix it, multiple times. It had the 5.0.1 firmware, which was the newest at the time. Come to find out, TRIM was "broken" in that firmware.

It was a 2nd-gen SandForce.

The sandforce 5.0.1 might have had some issues try using the 5.0.3 or 5.0.4 - all issues were fixed after this firmware update

johny12 · 11-02-2012, 01:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimbob200521

I'm considering buying my first SSD via Woot, can't beat the deal

http://tech.woot.com/offers/corsair-force-60gb-ssd-5

Anywho, I've heard a lot of caution when it comes to buying SSD's and wanted to know if this drive is a mistake. I read it's got the Sandforce controller (v 1200..?) and want to know if this drive has issues with garbage collection, if it has TRIM support, and if there's anything else I should know or be aware of when buying this. I trust Corsair as a brand, and have heard good things about Sandforce, but don't want to buy a horribly out of date drive that is going to perform poorly in a week's worth of use. TIA for any help.

Most of the sandforce issues resolved now with their firmware updates

johny12 · 11-05-2012, 05:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfenn

Correction, they fixed some of their BSOD issues about a year ago. There are other (albeit harder to trigger) ones still in existence. Even Intel can't get the firmware completely right, which suggests to me that the controller has some sort of flaw that isn't fixable in firmware.

I have been using an intel drive for some time now, my issues were fixed after the firmware update. I am not having any BSOD problems now

bononos · 11-05-2012, 09:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johny12

I have been using an intel drive for some time now, my issues were fixed after the firmware update. I am not having any BSOD problems now

Intel alone got to tweak the firmware which is off limits to other manufacturers. Your posts are nearly all limited to defending and playing up sandforce - you said in one of your posts that SF does not have reliability issues.

Bonesdad · 11-05-2012, 10:57 PM

What cost is too high? you can get the 64 GB version of the Samsung 830 for $65 at Amazon. Keep an eye out for one of the 128GB models, they pop up pretty cheap at lots of different places lately. Stock may be running low though, since the 840 came out

Eureka · 11-06-2012, 07:27 AM

$65 for 64GB is too expensive. The sweet spot for SSDs now is about $.75/GB. Hot deals can be had for $.5/GB. At those prices you have to watch out, but I bought a OCZ 60GB for a dying older computer for $25 AR (yes I know it's OCZ). But I remember the 830s were going for around $.5/GB as well.

mfenn · 11-06-2012, 07:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bononos

Intel alone got to tweak the firmware which is off limits to other manufacturers. Your posts are nearly all limited to defending and playing up sandforce - you said in one of your posts that SF does not have reliability issues.

Yeah seriously. Check out the stats:

- 15.58% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 240 GB
- 13.28% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 160 GB
- 11.76% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 80 GB
- 9.52% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 120 GB
- 8.57% OCZ Vertex 3 Series 120 GB
- 7.49% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 60 GB
- 6.61% OCZ Vertex 2 Series 3.5" SSD 120 GB
- 6.37% OCZ Vertex 3 Series 240 GB
- 6.37% OCZ Agility 3 60 GB
- 5.89% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 100 GB

Only Sandforce drives had failure rates above 5%

Also Anand just dropped a big bombshell today in his (now pulled) Intel SSD review: Intel's "custom" SF firmware wasn't nearly as custom as they made it out to be. Intel didn't have source code access to the firmware, all they had was a direct line to file bug reports and get changes made in their own special branch.

johny12 · 11-09-2012, 05:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfenn

Yeah seriously. Check out the stats:

- 15.58% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 240 GB
- 13.28% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 160 GB
- 11.76% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 80 GB
- 9.52% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 120 GB
- 8.57% OCZ Vertex 3 Series 120 GB
- 7.49% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 60 GB
- 6.61% OCZ Vertex 2 Series 3.5" SSD 120 GB
- 6.37% OCZ Vertex 3 Series 240 GB
- 6.37% OCZ Agility 3 60 GB
- 5.89% OCZ Vertex 2 Series SSD 100 GB

Only Sandforce drives had failure rates above 5%

Also Anand just dropped a big bombshell today in his (now pulled) Intel SSD review: Intel's "custom" SF firmware wasn't nearly as custom as they made it out to be. Intel didn't have source code access to the firmware, all they had was a direct line to file bug reports and get changes made in their own special branch.

Is that true? do you have a link or something to share

VirtualLarry · 11-09-2012, 08:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfenn

Also Anand just dropped a big bombshell today in his (now pulled) Intel SSD review: Intel's "custom" SF firmware wasn't nearly as custom as they made it out to be. Intel didn't have source code access to the firmware, all they had was a direct line to file bug reports and get changes made in their own special branch.

Hmm. Pulled, because it pissed off Intel, perhaps?

mfenn · 11-10-2012, 02:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johny12

Is that true? do you have a link or something to share

I provided a link to the first part. The second part isn't available because the review was pulled after being up for a few hours.

Wyndru · 11-10-2012, 06:05 PM

I'm starting to see some failed ssd's come back from people Ive upgraded over the past 2 years. A couple m4's that I didn't get a chance to upgrade the firmware on, and most recently a Samsung 830.

I'm starting to dislike ssd's because when they have an issue, they just die and you lose everything. At least with mechanical drives there is often some warning that something is up and you can get the data off. These ssd's that came back to me were completely inaccessible.

So of you are going ssd, be sure to back up often, redundancy is key with these things.

Muse · 11-13-2012, 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lehtv

Meh. 30 day warranty on a SATA II sandforce drive? No thanks. I'm not sure what the good things are that you've heard about Sandforce... there's little good about it

Go for one of these: Samsung 830 128GB $90. It's about as good $/GB but new with 3 year warranty and it's much faster and much more reliable.

I can't hit that link, I so often can't hit the links in these forums.

I get this:

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.tkqlhce.com.

Can you post a link that works for me? I've never used an SSD, am pretty frustrated quite often with 2 slow laptops and a slow desktop. Evidently going SSD is not a no brainer, so I've put those projects on the back burner.

mfenn · 11-13-2012, 09:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muse

I can't hit that link, I so often can't hit the links in these forums.

I get this:

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.tkqlhce.com.

Can you post a link that works for me? I've never used an SSD, am pretty frustrated quite often with 2 slow laptops and a slow desktop. Evidently going SSD is not a no brainer, so I've put those projects on the back burner.

The forum will automatically rewrite links to go through their super shitty affiliate redirector thingie. Said thingie is quite often down even when the actual sites are up. Paste the following into your browser:

Code:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147163&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10440897&PID=3332167&SID=u00000687

Code:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/196?vs=533

Muse · 11-16-2012, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wyndru

I'm starting to see some failed ssd's come back from people Ive upgraded over the past 2 years. A couple m4's that I didn't get a chance to upgrade the firmware on, and most recently a Samsung 830.

I'm starting to dislike ssd's because when they have an issue, they just die and you lose everything. At least with mechanical drives there is often some warning that something is up and you can get the data off. These ssd's that came back to me were completely inaccessible.

So of you are going ssd, be sure to back up often, redundancy is key with these things.

I haven't any personal experience. It would seem (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you put your OS and apps on your SSD, have your data on a HD. Back up your SSD, and you can restore and save yourself a lot of work, and of course, as always, back up your data at a frequency level you're comfortable with.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfenn

The forum will automatically rewrite links to go through their super shitty affiliate redirector thingie. Said thingie is quite often down even when the actual sites are up. Paste the following into your browser:

Code:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147163&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10440897&PID=3332167&SID=u00000687

Code:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/196?vs=533

Thank you, that works.

Remobz · 11-16-2012, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muse

I haven't any personal experience. It would seem (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you put your OS and apps on your SSD, have your data on a HD. Back up your SSD, and you can restore and save yourself a lot of work, and of course, as always, back up your data at a frequency level you're comfortable with.
Thank you, that works.

Very solid advice. I will do that.