Cheap, reliable SSD?

[Carson Dyle]

I'm looking for a small(ish) 60/64GB SSD for a server build. I figured that I'd find a couple-generation-old Samsung 830 or Crucial M4 for cheap. But, oddly enough, used ones are selling for close to what many new SSDs of that size are going for today.

Is there a relatively inexpensive brand and series that is also _reliable_? I see models from brands like Adata, Kingston, Corsair, Patriot, but know little about them. Doesn't have to be blazing fast.

Thanks.

 

[bbhaag]

I'd be tempted to get this Mushkin. For $35 shipped it is pretty solid deal and it comes with a three year warranty too. The aren't the fastest drives around but you said you aren't looking for a speed demon. Anyway here's the link check it out.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226677

 

[Carson Dyle]

Thanks. That looks very attractive.

 

[bbhaag]

Hey np. I know these are new to the field of ssd'd but they use the Sandforce 2200 controller which has proven to be pretty reliable. Don't let the SF name scare ya. It has matured a lot since the old days of OCZ.
I bought the 120 version and so far it has been good to me but admittedly it's still very new. Here's a link from the HD forum if you want to see my speed test results using AS SSD.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2423541&page=2

Best of luck finding a drive. There are a ton options out there now which is great but it can make it tough to make a final decision.

 

[hojnikb]

Hey np. I know these are new to the field of ssd'd but they use the Sandforce 2200 controller which has proven to be pretty reliable. Don't let the SF name scare ya. It has matured a lot since the old days of OCZ.
I bought the 120 version and so far it has been good to me but admittedly it's still very new. Here's a link from the HD forum if you want to see my speed test results using AS SSD.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2423541&page=2

Best of luck finding a drive. There are a ton options out there now which is great but it can make it tough to make a final decision.

You gotta be kidding.
Sandforce and reliability should never be in the same sentence 😵

OP, you're better off with something like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

Maybe not as fast as sandforce (but then again, mushkin uses async flash) but defenetly more reliable.

 

[CiPHER]

Sandforce today is not nearly as bad as it used to be in the past.

Sandforce is not a cool controller though. It has more complexity than other SSD controllers because it employs deduplication, which requires a separate deduptable to store the data. While other SSDs have just one table: the mapping table, Sandforce SSDs have two. This also means they have two points of failure regarding consistency, instead of just one.

Sandforce was designed to fool popular benchmarks at the time, like IOmeter and ATTO. This allowed OCZ to sell SSDs that do 75MB/s write as 255MB/s (SATA/300) or even 520MB/s (SATA/600). In the end, consumers got a slower SSD that was very error prone and paid more money than a 'proper' SSD.

Today, Sandforce has stabilised its firmware and its a decent SSD. But not very cool since all the tricks are not necessary any longer. Normal SSDs already peak their SATA/600 interface without resorting to dirty tricks. So in the end, all those complexity was for nothing. Only with PCI-express/NVMe Sandforce will live its glory again. They can claim 2GB/s write while in fact the device only does 650MB/s or so.

@hoknikb: i agree in general about your statement. But if you dislike Sandforce so much, why recommend a Phison controller? Sure it's cheaper, but i would never recommend such an SSD. Phison controllers are found most in USB sticks. You'll be getting an inferior product lacking the sophisticated design of Crucial/Samsung for example. It could fail in various ways the modern SSDs have protection against.

 

[hojnikb]

Sandforce today is not nearly as bad as it used to be in the past.

Sandforce is not a cool controller though. It has more complexity than other SSD controllers because it employs deduplication, which requires a separate deduptable to store the data. While other SSDs have just one table: the mapping table, Sandforce SSDs have two. This also means they have two points of failure regarding consistency, instead of just one.

Sandforce was designed to fool popular benchmarks at the time, like IOmeter and ATTO. This allowed OCZ to sell SSDs that do 75MB/s write as 255MB/s (SATA/300) or even 520MB/s (SATA/600). In the end, consumers got a slower SSD that was very error prone and paid more money than a 'proper' SSD.

Today, Sandforce has stabilised its firmware and its a decent SSD. But not very cool since all the tricks are not necessary any longer. Normal SSDs already peak their SATA/600 interface without resorting to dirty tricks. So in the end, all those complexity was for nothing. Only with PCI-express/NVMe Sandforce will live its glory again. They can claim 2GB/s write while in fact the device only does 650MB/s or so.

@hoknikb: i agree in general about your statement. But if you dislike Sandforce so much, why recommend a Phison controller? Sure it's cheaper, but i would never recommend such an SSD. Phison controllers are found most in USB sticks. You'll be getting an inferior product lacking the sophisticated design of Crucial/Samsung for example. It could fail in various ways the modern SSDs have protection against.

Phison S8 is far from an inferior controller. Yes, Phison makes cheap flash drive controllers aswell, but that doesnt mean that their ssd controllers are bad or fail for no reason.

S8 is out for quite some time now and so far it hasn't presented itself as problematic.
Unlike sandforce.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I have to admit that I'm a long time sandforce hater, especially after losing 2 sf1200 ssd's back to back. Right now I'm on a sandforce drive, intel 520, which is the fastest ssd I've used to date. It's slightly faster than the samsung 840 pro 256 that it replaced in my desktop after the controller on it froze just like the old sandforce drives. I'm glad that they got their ducks in a row with this controller and hope that they only get better in the future which benefits all of us.