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Best SSD Brands

xaeniac

xaeniac

Golden Member
Looking for a high performance 128 or 256 SSD to replace my SATA II drive. What brands/models should I be looking at?
 
most reputable brands are Intel and Samsung

highest performance are Ocz Vector/Vertex4, Samsung 840 Pro/Evo

best seller is probably Crucial M4 w/ middle performance.

take your pick.
 
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Plextor and Crucial are probably the most reliable drives out right now. They also get good marks for speed. Samsung makes a good drive as well. Very fast and reliable.
Kingston also makes a decent drive.

Steer clear of OCZ. They just filed for bankruptcy and their drives were never that good.

Edit:I meant Kingston not Scandisk.
 
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I have a Kingston Hyper X in my laptop and a Samsung 830 in my workstation, they've both done a good job.
Had a couple OCZ Vertex drives that were junk.
Amazon has had some pretty good deals on SSD's during their Holiday Sale, saw a couple Intels and Corsairs at pretty good deals if I recall correctly, they went fast.
 
Although my OCZ drive has been solid, I'm not lining up to buy another one.

Samsung, Plextor, Intel, Crucial are the Big 4 I look at. Reliability is what it is, however... my Samsung 840Pro died on me unexpectedly, yet my 'unreliable' OCZ Agility3 continues to soldier on.

Samsung and Intel have very nice toolboxes that have functions you can actually use, Plextor's is crap.
 
TMK, Plextor is the only maker that performs any significant post-assembly testing on their non-enterprise drives, hence the occasional infant deaths and DOAs with Intel, Crucial, Samsung, et al. Most electronics manufacturing relies on getting "enough" of them right without needing to let them sit around being "burned in."

In the U.S., Crucial and Intel have good and quick warranty service, Samsung has been OK as of late, I've not had to RMA anything Plextor (also haven't used much of theirs lately, though), and Toshiba generally has long turn-around times.
 
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Intel/Crucial/Samsung are the big three and people who argue that any of those is better than the others are really straining the definition of "better." Reliability is king for data storage. You won't be able to tell the difference between a so-called high end SSD and midrange SSD as a consumer, but if the SSD fails or gets corrupted, you can definitely tell! Intel/Micron tend to have more rugged MLC than Samsung which sells a lot of less-durable TLC, and though some people argue that obsolescence will get all SSDs built today before they run out of read/write cycles, I would still rather have a huge margin of error when it comes to durability.

Toshiba and Hynix have good reps but are barely in the consumer SSD market... but they are used in enterprise so I have little hesitation buying those brands. Sandisk has had issues with its use of Sandforce controllers, so even though they make their own stuff, I would avoid Sandisks for a while until they get their act together.

Everyone else is a reseller. Plextor has traditionally bought only good stuff. Corsair Neutron is rebadged Hynix IIRC so it should be fine. Kingston uses slightly lower grade flash for most or all drives but should be fine. Seagate has a decent platform, but I'd like to know about how they handle RMAs and other track records before recommending. There are a bunch of also-rans that are like Kingston, buying decent flash and pairing them up with a popular controller like a Sandforce/LSI one, with little to distinguish them after that... unless you get a stellar deal, I'd avoid those brands.

Bottom of the barrel is OCZ, which is bankrupt and probably can't honor warranties for much longer. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7549/ocz-files-for-bancrupty-toshiba-offers-to-buy-the-assets
 
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I would also add SanDisk to blastingcap's list.

The SanDisk Ultra Plus is a great mid-range, mid-capacity SSD, while the Extreme II is a top-tier pro-quality SSD.
 
Essence_of_War said:
I would also add SanDisk to blastingcap's list.

The SanDisk Ultra Plus is a great mid-range, mid-capacity SSD, while the Extreme II is a top-tier pro-quality SSD.
Click to expand...

I already mentioned Sandisk and not exactly in a positive manner, due to issues like:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6107/corsair-force-series-gs-240gb-review

So I didn't include them in the Intel, Micron/Crucial, and Samsung triumvirate. Like Seagate, I'd like to see more of a track record of good products from Sandisk before I would recommend them highly. Reasonable minds can disagree, but since Sandisk SSDs don't sell at much if any discount to Intel/Crucial/Samsung, I see no reason to buy Sandisks.
 
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Corsair Neutron GTX hands down. The LAMD controller is easily the best controller on the market today for reliable, stable performance. All of that and its the 3rd fastest drive.
 
Instead of worrying about reliability (most SSDs are quite reliable for consumer needs), I would focus on a SSD that has a complete toolbox or software solution for managing the drives. If you want manual TRIM, you kind of need a SSD that has these software options.

Intel and Samsung are the two big options here. I prefer Samsung because they are adding some interesting preliminary features like RAPID to their drives. Cost is also lower.

EDIT: The Corsair Neutron GTX is also a great third choice, the controller is very stable and consistent in performance as Despoiler mentions. You don't get a toolbox solution but TRIM is not as important if steady-state performance is well-managed.
 
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blastingcap said:
I already mentioned Sandisk and not exactly in a positive manner, due to issues like:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6107/corsair-force-series-gs-240gb-review

So I didn't include them in the Intel, Micron/Crucial, and Samsung triumvirate. Like Seagate, I'd like to see more of a track record of good products from Sandisk before I would recommend them highly. Reasonable minds can disagree, but since Sandisk SSDs don't sell at much if any discount to Intel/Crucial/Samsung, I see no reason to buy Sandisks.
Click to expand...

Yes, I saw that you mentioned them in relation to SandForce issues, but as Cerb pointed out, your criticism is no longer directly relevant to mainstream SanDisk drives as they are not using SandForce controllers any longer. You might still offer it as being evidence of willingness to put out an inconsistent product, and I might agree, but the reviews of the more modern Ultra Plus and Extreme II speak for themselves.

Like you said, reasonable people can disagree, but the flip-side to the "not-enough discount" is the "not enough performance difference to justify the added cost". 😉
 
Essence_of_War said:
Yes, I saw that you mentioned them in relation to SandForce issues, but as Cerb pointed out, your criticism is no longer directly relevant to mainstream SanDisk drives as they are not using SandForce controllers any longer. You might still offer it as being evidence of willingness to put out an inconsistent product, and I might agree, but the reviews of the more modern Ultra Plus and Extreme II speak for themselves.

Like you said, reasonable people can disagree, but the flip-side to the "not-enough discount" is the "not enough performance difference to justify the added cost". 😉
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Sandisk fan when it comes to flash cards, and I always recommend Sandisk ahead of everything else for CF/SDHC/micro SDHC for cell phones and cameras. But I'm not quick to forgive the company for shipping out Sandforce SSDs in a broken state... and the fix took forever and wasn't even complete by the time they moved on hardware-wise.

So given a choice between equally priced drives, I'm going to go with Intel or Samsung first since they have the best histories--both have had minor hiccups especially early on, but nothing big recently. Crucial/Micron is close behind though they did have a hiccup with their M4 firmware. Plextor I'd rate as basically tied with Crucial/Micron given their cautious controller selection. After that, I'd probably take Hynix/Corsair Neutron or Toshiba or Sandisk in some order. Then Kingston which at least does a little engineering work themselves rather than rebadge with zero value added, but they seem to use less-robust flash, like the "A-" grade stuff rather than "A" grade due to their lack of fab. From that point on, I'd pick the also-rans (Patriot, etc.) in some order. OCZ dead last because it is bankrupt and has no warranty or support.

In the real world, price is not equal, of course, so I might pick up a Sandisk drive if it were cheap enough relative to other SSDs.

And once again, reasonable minds can disagree, so all of the above is IMHO. 🙂
 
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Revolution 11 said:
some interesting preliminary features like RAPID to their drives.
Click to expand...

RAPID is nothing more than placebo marketing. you will never see that in real world usage.

if you need disk caching that bad due to constant repetitive read/write of the same data set. you would already be utilizing a ram drive instead.

as for bragging rights. more power to you.
 
Revolution 11 said:
Instead of worrying about reliability (most SSDs are quite reliable for consumer needs), I would focus on a SSD that has a complete toolbox or software solution for managing the drives. If you want manual TRIM, you kind of need a SSD that has these software options.
Click to expand...

If you have Windows 8 or 8.1, you can get away with that by using the "defrag -O" or "defrag -L" command, which does a volume-level batched trim.
 
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