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SSD advice

K

KingGheedora

Diamond Member
I'm looking for a ~256GB SSD. Should be fast, and reliable.

I'm looking at the Samsung. In Anand's benches it is mid-tier in the synthetic benches but seems to be one of the top performers in the heavy and light workload benchmarks that AT uses. Why is this?

I'm doing software dev, running multiple VM's and SQL database's on here, and compilations of large projects, frequent copies of gigs of data at a time. What would be the best SSD for this type of use?

Running on: win7x64, i7-2860, 16gb RAM @1600MHz, SATA-III port.

UPDATE: I'm OK spending in the $250 range. Up to $300 is OK if the performance is really that much better or if there's some other compelling reason I'm not yet aware of.
 
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Ok, lots of random access there, pay no attention to the man waving around the sequential transfer speeds. The OCZ Vertex 4 would be a good alternative, but make sure you flash it with the release-candidate firmware for a massive performance boost. The Crucial M4 is a nice stable solution that has been around a while. Won't perform quite as well, but can be had for pretty cheap.

Stay away from anything labeled SandForce.
 
npaladin-2000 said:
Ok, lots of random access there, pay no attention to the man waving around the sequential transfer speeds. The OCZ Vertex 4 would be a high risk alternative, but make sure you flash it with the release-candidate firmware for a massive performance boost. The Crucial M4 is a nice stable solution that has been around a while. Won't perform quite as well, but can be had for pretty cheap.

Stay away from anything labeled OCZ.
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Fixed.

Recommending ANYONE to use a RELEASE CANDIDATE firmware is absolutely absurd unless they don't give two hoots about their work and data.

Go with the M4 or Samsung. You won't regret either.
 
Minerva said:
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Ahh, i see we have one of the religious zealots here. When release candidate firmware is more stable than so-called "production" firmware being released by other drive and controller manufacturers, I have no problem recommending it, and not recommending the unstable stuff. Hence I will never recommend a SandForce-based drive. Ever.
 
My gf's OCZ Vertex 2 has been flawless for over a year now, in contrast to my flacking m4 which had TWO firmware updates one after the other, the latest to fix the 5200 hour bug. Though aside from that the m4 has been solid as well.
 
npaladin-2000 said:
Ahh, i see we have one of the religious zealots here. When release candidate firmware is more stable than so-called "production" firmware being released by other drive and controller manufacturers, I have no problem recommending it, and not recommending the unstable stuff. Hence I will never recommend a SandForce-based drive. Ever.
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This drive is NOT a SF drive. There is NOTHING wrong with Cherryville. That's the difference between "the guy in his basement" and real engineers on the firmware team.

The retail FW should NEVER be released in that form but as (beta) OCZ customers have at it. This is why you will NEVER find any of their drives in OEM systems.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
Hey, are you the same King Gheedorah on No Heroes?
You could just grab a SanDisk Extreme 240GB.
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I think the answer is no, because i'm not sure what No Heroes is. That person probably got their name from the same place I did (Godzilla movies).

I'll look on Anandtech's benches for the Sandisk. I haven't been fair to Sandisk. I think of them as low tier company for some reason so I don't pay attention to their SSD's when I have read comparisons. Same with Kingston.
 
npaladin-2000 said:
Ahh, i see we have one of the religious zealots here. When release candidate firmware is more stable than so-called "production" firmware being released by other drive and controller manufacturers, I have no problem recommending it, and not recommending the unstable stuff. Hence I will never recommend a SandForce-based drive. Ever.
Click to expand...

Good idea. Because octane was way more reliable than SF based OCZ drives...wasn't it? Oh, it wasn't. Then, um, yeah, I think I'm gonna 2nd the motion to just plain stay away from OCZ. Intel has proven that SF drives don't have to suck, while OCZ has proven than marvell-based drives don't have to be reliable.

@OP: The samsung is a great choice, I've seen the 256gb drive as low as $235 recently. If you value price over speed, then the crucial m4 has been as low as $199 for 256gb recently as well. Either of those is a LOT better purchase than anything you get from OCZ.
 
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I recently made an official recommendation for Samsung 830s for our entire development team. With the recent price changes (830s going up in price, M4s going (way) down in price) I may switch my recommendation to M4s. But we are a profitable business, so the Samsung's will probably remain my recommendation.
 
I had 2 sand force controlled drives die on me now, however neither were from OCZ. Think they were ram data? And corsair...
They were however each covered by warranty, hence I still have one...too early to tell if it's ok.
Haven't had any issues with intel 3 or 5 series though.

SSD would be awesome for VM development....
 
KingGheedora said:
UPDATE: I'm OK spending in the $250 range. Up to $300 is OK if the performance is really that much better or if there's some other compelling reason I'm not yet aware of.
Click to expand...

Without benchmarks, you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference between various "similar" SSDs. By "similar" I mean 256GB SATA 6G, your target specs. I would buy based on price, maybe paying a hair more for longer warranty (for instance Plextor M3 with 5 year).
 
KingGheedora said:
I'll look on Anandtech's benches for the Sandisk. I haven't been fair to Sandisk. I think of them as low tier company for some reason so I don't pay attention to their SSD's when I have read comparisons. Same with Kingston.
Click to expand...

While Sandisk are new to SSDs I wouldn't call them low tier. They make the NAND in their SSDs and apparently customised the SF firmware somewhat (I have no idea to what extent tho).

Either way I've got the 120 and 480GB versions and both work without any issues.
 
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