Considering dipping into SSD's again

[Elcs]

Back in the day, I tried an Intel X25-M 160Gb SSD which set me back a pretty penny and it was a complete flop. The retailers gave me my money back on the deal and when they received word off Intel, it ended up being a dodgy drive (I received the drive during the 'flash this firmware and brick your SSD' fiasco and the firmware was already gone before I got my SSD). I felt burnt and never considered SSD's again until very recently...

60Gb OCZ Vertex Plus SSD at £57.99 (90-100 USD conversion, though we tend to be overpriced on tech in direct comparison)

60Gb Corsair Nova 2 SSD at £66.30

So after some reading, these SSD's looked pretty good in the Anandtech benches from last year. Then I came across this...

60Gb OCZ Vertex 2E SSE at £76.99

64Gb Crucial M4 SSD at £77.99

Now I'm very tempted to dip my toes back into the SSD realm for an OS drive plus small frequently used apps and perhaps a frequently used game or two as space allows.

I'm running a fairly old system at the moment, an AMD X2 6000+ on the AM 2 socket (Nvidia 560 chipset), I'm an interet surfer/varied games player and intend to purchase a new Processor/Motherboard/RAM/(possibly GPU) over the next 6 months, depending on work, expenses and the effect of Bulldozer on the face of the market.

Right now the only drives I have in my machine are both 500Gb Western Digital Green Power drives which whilst quiet are not known for their speed.

In my situation, would you avoid the SSD and just put the money towards a base upgrade? If you would pick up an SSD, which one of the four would you go with? Personally I'm leaning towards the Crucial M4 as it's the biggest and seems to be the fastest (in general).

Thanks for your time.

 

[Puppies04]

My OCZ agility 3 120 is used as my OS and application drive and i am about to pick up a second for my steam folder. The only words i can use to describe it are blisteringly fast. You can pick up a 60gb version of the drive from scan for £75.11. I am assuming that the drive would still function on a sata II port (it is rated as sata III) If it wont I would wait until you upgrade your rig and then get a third generation drive.

 

[zCypher]

Elcs, you've definitely come to the right place. I'll give my 2 cents, but you'll be well advised here for sure. I'm sure you've seen all the threads about SSD here, and the bad rap that OCZ have acquired. My best piece of advice is, GO for it and just don't keep any critical data on the SSD. The same can be said for any hard drive, but still. I've always operated with a single drive up till recently, and I guess I'm lucky to not have had any failures really. I recently got my first SSD as a bday gift, and I was amazed at the difference it could make even on a low end system. It lasted all of 5 months before failing on me though.

It comes down to this. ANY hard drive is liable to fail at any time, so always keep backups. Having said that, there are some important points to remember. Since SSDs are still maturing, you'll need to be careful about compatibility. The most compatible ones won't be the fastest ones, but will still far outperform any regular HDD. In one of Anand's articles, he noted that the Samsung was widely used in OEMs because of the extensive testing done - it was one of the slower drives in most of the benchmarks though.

Having said that, I'd say you're probably best off with the Corsair M4. I've had bad luck with 2 out of 2 OCZ drives. They are great drives till they fail! I'm sure there's a number of people here that will vouch for them though.

1- you want to be using AHCI mode in your system BIOS when you install windows
2- you want to make sure the latest or best drivers are being used for your chipset
3- you want to make sure your SSD has the latest firmware installed on it
4- if you're using XP/Vista you want to make sure that defrag is disabled
5- you may also want to disable any "sleep" options in your system as some have experienced issues with this

I would say NO to the "avoid SSD and upgrade system", and say if you ARE upgrading system DEFINITELY include SSD as part of the upgrade. It's possibly the single greatest upgrade you can make in terms of tangible performance increase per dollar. Depends what you do though. But hell, even my mother noticed the remarkable difference between her Black and OCZ Vertex3. Too bad it started freezing within the first month though.

I realize my post may have sounded like a bit of a downer, but it's not my intention. I remember reading about SSD tech years ago and getting excited about it. I'm so happy to see it in action today, and the results are amazing and I'm sure will continue to improve dramatically in the years to come. You can find all kinds of videos on YouTube, but to give you my own example - my not so stale install of Win7 with a regular HDD (Western Digital Black 1TB) would take about a minute or so to boot up, and to open up Firefox for the first time could easily take in excess of 10 seconds. The computer would be barely usable during the time Firefox would be loading. With an SSD, Firefox would load within 1-2 seconds at the most, and even while it loads the computer is totally usable and you can launch many applications simultaneously without bogging down the system.

On one hand, praises can be sung about the SSDs and on the other, words of caution. Then again, there are so many horror stories about regular hard drives (despite how many years the tech has had to mature) that I'm not sure there's even a real comparison to be made.

 

[know of fence]

and the effect of Bulldozer on the face of the market.

Nice, and smashingly graphic.

 

[Anonemous]

Do not get the Vertex Plus, I ignored alot of warnings because it was a slickdeal but I just got burnt. Things like corrupt files/error screens/disappearing drivers are some of the things I encountered within 24 hours of installing the 120 gig one. Yes I may have gotten a bad apple but I looked on the OCZ forums and there were 4-5 complaints (about the same problems I had) from people who had bought it within a few days/week to me. I thought the vertex plus would be immune to the bugs of the Sand force controllers but I was wrong. I knew I should have gotten an Intel and be headache free but this crappy drive wasted my time.

 

[Sebec]

Having said that, I'd say you're probably best off with the Corsair M4.

You mean, Crucial M4?

 

[Elcs]

You can pick up a 60gb version of the drive from scan for £75.11. I am assuming that the drive would still function on a sata II port (it is rated as sata III) If it wont I would wait until you upgrade your rig and then get a third generation drive.

I don't see why SATA III wouldn't be backwards compatible with SATA II but it's something I'll look at before dropping cash.

Also at that price I'd rather get the Crucial M4 64Gb which performs reasonably similar but gives me that extra 4Gb (60 Vs. 64). Not much in the grand scheme of computing but for an SSD it's like golddust.

Elcs, you've definitely come to the right place.

1- you want to be using AHCI mode in your system BIOS when you install windows
2- you want to make sure the latest or best drivers are being used for your chipset
3- you want to make sure your SSD has the latest firmware installed on it
4- if you're using XP/Vista you want to make sure that defrag is disabled
5- you may also want to disable any "sleep" options in your system as some have experienced issues with this

I would say NO to the "avoid SSD and upgrade system", and say if you ARE upgrading system DEFINITELY include SSD as part of the upgrade. It's possibly the single greatest upgrade you can make in terms of tangible performance increase per dollar. Depends what you do though. But hell, even my mother noticed the remarkable difference between her Black and OCZ Vertex3. Too bad it started freezing within the first month though.

When I got my 160Gb Intel SSD it was around £320 (with today's conversation rates, that's about 500 US, give or take). Despite a flawless installation, It actually gave me worse performance than my WD Green Power drives. Almost any hard drive related action such as opening a folder or opening a browser would almost completely lock my PC up for maybe a minute or two, then it would open up.

I know I've hit a bad drive and shouldn't let that affect me but bad customer experiences always give us that bad feeling. With the prices being much more reasonable it looked like the right time to at least make inquiries as to whether it would be a worthy investment or not.

You mean, Crucial M4?

Or the Corsair Nova 2 <scratches chin> Yeah, I think they meant the Crucial M4 too

 

[Bill Brasky]

All I know is that I work at a Microcenter, and we have more OCZ's returned than any other brand hands down. Maybe we got a bad batch or something, but I'm certainly not going to buy one. Crucial M4 and Intel in general seem to make pretty reliable drives. It really is hit or miss, though, so make frequent back ups.

 

[Elcs]

Despite the terror of an OCZ SSD....

120Gb Vertex Plus = &#163;100 ($150 US) right now. (83p per Gb)

Comparing that to &#163;77 ($116) for a 64Gb Crucial M4. (&#163;1.20 per Gb)

If I've done my mathematics properly at pre-6:30am, that makes the OCZ Vertex Plus drive about 30-35&#37; cheaper than the M4 per Gb. Now as someone who would be using the drive purely as an OS drive, storing a few basic programs and maybe games, plus in the future looking to use SRT, would I notice the differences in speed or would I care?

Reliability? It could be a factor but am I going to be one of the 2 out of 100 that has issues within my 3 year warranty? It's like everything else, you pays your money, you takes the chance.

Opinions?

 

[jhansman]

I can tell you that the M4 was my first foray into SSDs, and I'm glad I waited for it. I read many, many threads and articles before finally making the jump, and I have no regrets. My system has never been so responsive, but I will say that having only 64GB at my disposal has forced me to put most of my apps on my 1TB spinner. The Samsung F1 is not a bad drive, but no match for the M4. In the future, I'd probably save up and look for a deal on the 256GB model. Good luck.

 

[zCypher]

You mean, Crucial M4?

Yes, Crucial. Wow I actually did type Corsair eh, dang.

 

[Old Hippie]

When I got my 160Gb Intel SSD it was around £320 (with today's conversation rates, that's about 500 US, give or take). Despite a flawless installation, It actually gave me worse performance than my WD Green Power drives. Almost any hard drive related action such as opening a folder or opening a browser would almost completely lock my PC up for maybe a minute or two, then it would open up.

Let me get this straight.....you bought one of the most relaible drives around, it had a firmware/unit problem and that turned you against all SSDs.

I really don't have any idea what went on and I've had my share of Intel drives with problems but they have a tendency to fix problems not ignore them like some other companies.

And now you have a Vertex in your sites? :biggrin:

You have an older AMD system and no matter what drive you buy it won't give you the uber performance "As Seen on TV" because that requires an Intel chipset.

Buy Intel or Crucial.

Good Luck!

 

[Elcs]

Let me get this straight.....you bought one of the most relaible drives around, it had a firmware/unit problem and that turned you against all SSDs.

I really don't have any idea what went on and I've had my share of Intel drives with problems but they have a tendency to fix problems not ignore them like some other companies.

And now you have a Vertex in your sites? :biggrin:

You have an older AMD system and no matter what drive you buy it won't give you the uber performance "As Seen on TV" because that requires an Intel chipset.

Buy Intel or Crucial.

Good Luck!

Thank you for your most helpful post.

 

[Coup27]

If I was buying one from the shortlist you have made, I would get an M4.

The answer to your other question is it would all depend on how much you intend to spend on a new system and what we can price for that budget.