Anything to look for in budget SSD

[jfelano]

I have plenty of storage space and SSD's are just now coming into my price range. I am in the market for a 240GB, and I have been waiting for them to come down to the $69 range, which I may see this July 4.

So I don't want a crappy drive that is slow, is there a certain controller I should be looking for, or does it not matter? I don't need top of the line read/write speeds.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

 

[Elixer]

Crucial MX/BX100 & OCZ/toshiba would be good choices.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Getting a $69 240GB SSD is certainly possible, but it probably won't be from a mainstream company. Something like a PNY/OCZ/Transcend drive.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, either. I've got a PNY SSD in my workstation and it works great.

 

[Data-Medics]

Avoid anything that has the word "sandforce" on the controller.

 

[pitz]

Avoid anything that has the word "sandforce" on the controller.

A little bit of an extreme generalization, wouldn't you say? The Intel Sandforce-based SSDs have proven to have an illustrious track record over the past 3.5 years.

Anything modern will be just fine and represent a huge performance improvement over HDDs. At that price point, sure, you won't be getting the latest/greatest, but there's really not that much of a difference between the brands anymore.

Personally, all other things equal, I'd rather go with MLC than TLC flash. But even the concerns over TLC longevity have largely been exaggerated for the typical consumer duty cycle.

 

[Data-Medics]

Tell that to the thousands of people who've lost all their data permanently when the controller failed suddenly, and they had to be told that it was encrypted and can't be recovered. Performance wise they are fine, but you'd better have a good backup solution in place.

 

[tweakboy]

Hope it stay alive....

 

[pitz]

Tell that to the thousands of people who've lost all their data permanently when the controller failed suddenly, and they had to be told that it was encrypted and can't be recovered. Performance wise they are fine, but you'd better have a good backup solution in place.

Do you have any proof or even anything anecdotal to offer that data recovery is more difficult from Sandforce chip-based SSDs compared to the other vendors?

I don't disagree that Sandforce had a bad rap for a while, particularly with respect to one integrator notorious for problems. But the Intel implementation in the 520 and later iterations has pretty much been proven to be flawless.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Do you have any proof or even anything anecdotal to offer that data recovery is more difficult from Sandforce chip-based SSDs compared to the other vendors?

If you know anything about SandForce's controller design / architecture, you would know his statements make perfect logical sense. Plus, I believe he works in data recovery.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Crucial BX100 is your best bet.

And yes, avoid sandforce.

 

[jfelano]

Thanks guys. I will avoid sandforce controllers.

AS for OCZ, no thanks, had to many problems with them in the past and poor, slow customer service.

Crucial, I have dealt with their customer service 4 times for the same set of memory, but they are top notch, wouldn't hesitate to buy from them again.

Anybody know anything about Silicon Power?

 

[Puffnstuff]

Old sandforce drives were horrible but the new ones aren't bad at all and I run my intel with complete confidence. All ssd's, regardless of brand, are susceptible to failing and how the company stands behind the product is very important so avoid samsung unless you want to join the ranks of the dissatisfied who have to jump through hoops to get an rma.

 

[Elixer]

AS for OCZ, no thanks, had to many problems with them in the past and poor, slow customer service.

That was the old OCZ, pre Toshiba buyout.
Now, they are basically a new company, so, if you see a deal on a OCZ product, there wouldn't be a good reason not to get it.

 

[MongGrel]

I'd still vote BX100 myself.

 

[bryanl]

Intel on sale.

 

[jfelano]

Thanks guys. Puffnstuff, I avoid Samsung ANYTHING.

Every Samsung item I have ever bought broke or failed.

 

[PliotronX]

I'd still vote BX100 myself.

Yup, its read speeds are in the upper echelon with epic reliability. I find it strange that it's only a few bucks more for the MX200 yet there are mixed reviews on which one is actually faster across the board. I nearly pulled the rigger on an 850 EVO but just the horror stories about Samsung lately gave me cold feet. Plus the only SSD I have ever seen die straight out of the box was a Samsung 840 EVO at work.

 

[Phynaz]

Intel on sale.

This is the correct answer.

 

[Phynaz]

Tell that to the thousands of people who've lost all their data permanently when the controller failed suddenly, and they had to be told that it was encrypted and can't be recovered. Performance wise they are fine, but you'd better have a good backup solution in place.

Thousands? Citation needed.

 

[Phynaz]

If you know anything about SandForce's controller design / architecture, you would know his statements make perfect logical sense. Plus, I believe he works in data recovery.

So what? I work in healthcare, does that mean I should be giving people medical advice?

 

[fortworthtechs]

Crucial BX100 is your best bet.

And yes, avoid sandforce.

What is wrong with sandforce?

 

[jfelano]

So what? I work in healthcare, does that mean I should be giving people medical advice?

Isn't that how it works?

Mechanics give people mechanical advice.

Data recovery people give data storage advice.

Healthcare workers give healthcare advice.

Am I missing something here?

 

[jfelano]

Newegg has an OCZ ARC 100 240GB after promo code and $20 mail in rebate for $69.99.

However, I'm going to pass on it, I'm banking that on July 4 I can get one for that price withOUT a mail in rebate.

 

[AlienTech]

Avoid anything that has the word "sandforce" on the controller.

Thats not the only one with compression, psion or what ever their name is also have it. I was just reading a review of 2 budget ssd's and they both have close to 500MB speeds.. But using data already compressed drops those write speeds down to 150MB. Thats a huge hit and I thought crucial M500's dropping to 250MB due to logical block lookups was bad, it does have close to 500MB on blank areas though. So any decent SSD's would be a mainstream drive and would all perform similarly. Most reviewers dont seem to have done real world testing. Because it took a lot of research to finally find out the M500's were so slow when reading real data. All the tools still show those mid 400mb speeds like in all the reviews I seen. And last but not least, speeds are not the main criteria, a lot of low cost SSD's now use TLC chips.. Also using a cache makes a huge difference.. Crucial and Samsung have SSD cache's..

 

[AlienTech]

Crucial BX100 is your best bet.

And yes, avoid sandforce.

Why not the BX200 or the M600? Both write in SLC mode and later convert data to MLC modes. That would be the best drives I see for the price.