Storage overhaul

[Twaize]

Hello, I'm want to refit my laptop, 1 TB in the optical bay, SSD in the standard drive bay and an external to backup all of it. My problem is, it seems like the new 520 drives from Intel are just around the corner. Should I wait? What kind of improvements can be expected?

Thank you

EDIT: Should note, that for any recommendations or thoughts, that I value reliability over speed

 

[Coup27]

The 520 series has been delayed for an unspecified amount of time. They should already be on the shelves but nobody really has a clue when they'll appear. You may be waiting a while. They're likely to be very expensive as well, compared to existing Sandforce options, or the Crucial m4, Samsung 830 or OCZ Octane.

I would recommend the Samsung 830 and then the m4. Samsung have an excellent reliability record and I have an 830 myself. The m4 is a bit cheaper and since FW0009 has shown to be pretty reliable too.

 

[Blain]

You've waited long enough as it is... Time To Buy!

 

[bryanW1995]

Does your laptop have SATA 6 Gb/s or SATA II ports? If it's SATA II then you might be better-served by getting a less expensive ssd like an intel 320 series, which is available right now. Of the other drives mentioned, I'd lean towards the m4 just because it's been around longer and appears to have all of the bugs worked out. The samsung 830 is probably going to be pretty good, but it's just so new that you stand a fair chance of having issues in the future with it. Ditto for the intel 520 series, if you really want to get an sata 6 Gb/s intel drive then get a 510 series elm crest.

 

[Zap]

Does your laptop have SATA 6 Gb/s or SATA II ports?

Fixed.

SATA III (Serial ATA Revision 3) is not used (regardless of how Newegg lists it) because SATA II was SATA 3 Gb/s, thus confusion of 3 and III.

 

[bryanW1995]

Sorry, I wasn't aware of the correct terminology until after I'd posted. I'll go change it.

 

[Twaize]

My laptop has a 6 Gb/s SATA port, so I'll go with an SSD that supports that .
But thank you for your wonderful feedback, I'll go and take a long hard look at Samsung 830 and Crucial m4.
About the height of the 830, do I need an adapter to make it fit in a standard 9,5 bay? And if so, can you recommend one?

Thank you

 

[Coup27]

Yes, the Samsung is only 7mm high but if you buy the 830 in notebook kit it will come with a 2.5mm spacer.

 

[Twaize]

Been looking at it for a while now, is the m4 really that much more reliable than the Vertex 3? In the latest review here on anandtech, it's mentioned that newer firmware should have fixed the problem? It's also suggested that the issue is lesser with OS X?
Thank you again

 

[Coup27]

Theres £20 difference between a Samsung 830 and a Vertex 3 in my country but masses of difference in terms of reliability. Anand said his 830 works fine in OSX so with that + Samsungs reliability record I can't see a reason to risk the Vertex.

 

[bryanW1995]

There is no comparison at all between a vertex III and anything from Samsung (or the m4 or any intel drive for that matter). The vertex III was released with beta firmware, so technically the firmware on the Vertex today is just getting to the basic level that you would get from a Samsung or Intel drive on day 1. Samsung and intel both enjoy a top-notch quality reputation in the ssd market, and the crucial m4 has proven to be on par in quality and customer satisfaction with the recent Samsung/intel offerings. If you want to have problems with your drive but save a few bucks up front then the vertex 3 is the way to go, if you want something that just works get an intel 510/samsung 830/crucial m4.

BTW, OCZ recently bought indilinx, and they're making their own controllers now. I wonder if they would have done that it sandforce had been able to build reliable as well as fast drives? And the new intel 520 series Cherryville ssd is supposedly going to be based upon a sandforce controller, but it has been indefinitely delayed? Why? Well, here's Anand's take:

Going forward, I'm not expecting a ton of change in the near term. Intel's Cherryville SSD has been delayed. This is the long awaited SandForce based drive from Intel. I suspect the delay has to do with Intel working through bugs in SandForce's firmware, but its efforts should hopefully make the platform more robust (although it remains to be seen if any of Intel's efforts are ported back into the general SF codebase).

source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5272/ocz-octane-128gb-ssd-review

 

[groberts101]

couple of counterpoints to that last post. I test the Vertex 3 and from day one I've never had any issues whatsoever. Many other friends and work colleagues who have no issues either. So, no.. not all drives and system configs will have issues like you seem to think. 10's of thousands(probably hundreds of thousands) of those similarly equipped drives have been purchased across the world. Hundreds(even thousands) of posts across the net with users who have issues.. does not make a gauranteed issue for a new buyer. Plus.. many of the problematic installs are fixed in the end. When boiled right down.. those drives are awesome and there must be a reason that Intel would jump on that bandwagon, eh?

And as for the quote and interpretation from "our saviour"? Funny how he didn't mention Intel's driver related issues across the spectrum of hardware using it. Plenty of users having driver and power mgmt issues who do NOT even use Sandforce SSD's out there. Some don't even use SSD either and still find issues relating to power mgmt effects caused in some config's.

 

[bryanW1995]

That comment about "intel's driver related issues..." is a strawman. This discussion is about ssd's, not cpu's/motherboards/igp/etc etc. Personally, I'd rather use AMD if they could bring out a decent cpu, but unfortunately they can't.

When it comes to ssd's, intel has far and away the best track record in the industry. I'd be happy to use any reliability metric that you want to compar an intel drive to a vertex 3 or anything else from OCZ. Intel had a firmware issue with the 320 series, Anand addressed that in an article last summer. 2 days later the fix was out. OCZ, otoh, took a lot longer than they expected to when releasing their sata 6gb/s drives like the vertex 3 (just as intel is now with the new sandforce 520 series). Then, once OCZ finally came out with their drive, it was on beta firmware. And there was a common bug with the OCZ (and other sandforce 2200-based drives) that took 6 months to diagnose but was allegedly fixed in October 2011. And you want to say that just because of your tiny sample size of you + a couple buddies that OCZ is high quality?

Here's some more evidence for you:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/2 - very large review article, but extremely complimentary of intel ssd's. He also mentions OCZ as a potential up and comer, though here's a nice quote near the end of the article:

The only potential gotcha is that both OCZ and Indilinx are smaller companies than Intel. There’s a lot of validation that goes into these drives and making sure they work in every configuration. While the Vertex worked totally fine in the configurations I tested, that’s not to say that every last bug has been worked out. There are a couple of threads in OCZ’s own forums that suggest compatibility problems with particular configurations; while this hasn’t been my own experience, it’s worth looking into before you purchase the drive.

This was nearly 3 years ago. And allegedly 2 1/2 months ago they finally fixed the bugs in their latest vertex? Sorry, I'm not buying it. Here's some more:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829 here's a nice comment from the very beginning of the ssd relapse:

The article that started all of this was the Intel X25-M review. Intel gave me gold with that drive; the article wrote itself, the X25-M was awesome, everything else in the market was crap.

Another good one:

When I started writing this article I took a big step. I felt that Indilinx drives had reached the point that their performance was good enough to be considered an Intel alternative. I backed up my X25-M, pulled it out, and swapped in an OCZ Vertex drive - into my personal work system. I've been using it ever since and I must admit, I am happy. Indilinx has done it, these drives are fast, reliable (provided that you don't upgrade to the latest firmware without waiting a while) and are good enough. We'll see how the drive holds up over the coming months but I don't have any regrets at this point.

If you're trying to move to an SSD at the lowest possible cost, there's finally a real alternative to Intel. We also have Indilinx to thank for driving SSD prices as low as they have been. If these drives weren't actually competitive, Intel would have no real motivation to deliver a sub-$300 SSD so quickly.

OCZ might not be as terrible as they used to be, in fact I think that they're actually decent now that they finally figured out their firmware issue. However, they've gone from jmicron to indilinx to sandforce and back to buying indilinx to use as their in-house controller company in the span of 4 years. And their validation capabilities just aren't up to intel's standards.

Anand's original ssd anthology that he wrote was read over 2 million times and linked to by microsoft, wikipedia, linus torvalds, the tech report, etc etc etc. I think I'll take his word for it on this one.

 

[Twaize]

Very convincing posts, I'll be buying a Crucial m4 . The 510 is significantly more expensive and the Samsung doesn't come with a kit, nor have I been able to find one. These last two pieces of information, are relevant to Denmark, I'm sure it's different elsewhere. But thank you for your help .

 

[Coup27]

It's odd that you are struggling to find the kit form of the Samsung as that's all I've ever seen for sale. Samsung sell the 830 in 3 options:

Basic Drive

Desktop kit = SSD, 3.5" to 2.5" bracket, screws, Molex to SATA power cable, SATA cable, Norton Ghost 15.

Laptop kit = SSD, 2.5mm laptop spacer, USB transfer unit, Norton Ghost 15.

Not really sure why these options aren't for sale in Denmark.

 

[groberts101]

LOL@ bryan... "Strawman"? You quoted an opinion.. I gave my opinion. I thought that's what all this stuff was about in the first place?

And please.. spare us the OCZ bashing scenario as no one wins in those contests around here until a moderator steps in. And when you post blanket statements like "If you want to have problems with your drive but save a few bucks up front then the vertex 3 is the way to go"?.. it begs for a reply from someone who's tested over 40 of OCZ's products alone, so far.

Point was that there were and still are many players involved with the SF-2281 debacle. Course if you want to point fingers without all the facts based on trials and tribulations for many non-SF drive owners from the past year?.. feel free and there are many who'll jump right in that water with you to push blame where they see fit. When a driver swap or ACPI tabling issue(think.. "power mgmt/MEI") can be remedied and all things go smooth again?.. might want to take the blinders off and look a bit deeper at what may be involved there. The one's who did?.. eventually worked through the issues even before any firmware changes came from Sandforce.

Oh., and PS. The cross section I mentioned is actually much larger than the few firsthand accounts and based on thousands upon thousands of posts across all the major players/forums involved with those controllers.

It's kinda sad that OCZ had to try and be so quick to market with a controller that had previous generation problems galore.. and that gamble surely cost them more than it made in the long run as the support forums filled up with incompatabilities, firmware bugs, and the resultant RMA's it caused. But in a way, OCZ helped push the amount of R&D that Sandforce should have had completed before they ever shipped those controllers out their doors. Many who had problems surely don't appreciate that they had to be pushed and dragged into beta-testing these products but as mentioned earlier.. there were many other players involved in that mess too.

In actuality.. the mobo mfgr's bios and Intel's driver development did more for owners of these SF-2281 drives than Sandforce's latest firmware ever did. And now that most of that's in the past?.. Intel can finally come to market and get a piece of that pie for themselves.

Anywho.. enough of the veering off course to play patty-cake with the OCZ haters here. As for my personal choice of drives to be used by the OP.. I would go for the 128GB Corsair Performance Pro drive. Toggle nand is the best out there right now and anyone who tweaks a performance drive to take advantage of it will have a winner.

 

[bryanW1995]

Your original argument was a strawman. I was specifically talking about intel's reliability compared with OCZ's in the ssd manufacturing segment. You responded with what appeard to be a criticism of intel's drivers in some other nebulous situations. That's using FUD to respond to my valid statement.

I'm not an OCZ hater. If anything, i admire Ryan Peterson's dogged determination to drag his company to the top of the heap. However, in a direct comparison of quality/reliability, no reasonably knowledgeable person is going to choose any OCZ drive over any intel drive of comparable speed/price. If you want to talk value or performance, then OCZ does great. If you want to just assume that you have to wait a year before buying an ssd from either company then OCZ is probably less unreliable and at least closer to intel. However, at least for me, I prefer that my stuff just works. I don't think that paying a 15% premium is too much to buy an ssd that is going to last twice as long or be only half as likely to fail in the first 3 years. Now, right now the intel premium is a lot more than 15%, and I don't blame anybody for considering other options. But one thing we should keep in mind here is that OCZ was sandforce's biggest partner, now they're not even collaborating on anything going forward. If another show-stopper rears its ugly head with the vertex 3 is OCZ going to take the lead in fixing the problem again, or will they just tell people to go buy the new Octane?

It's kinda sad that OCZ had to try and be so quick to market with a controller that had previous generation problems galore.. and that gamble surely cost them more than it made in the long run as the support forums filled up with incompatabilities, firmware bugs, and the resultant RMA's it caused. But in a way, OCZ helped push the amount of R&D that Sandforce should have had completed before they ever shipped those controllers out their doors. Many who had problems surely don't appreciate that they had to be pushed and dragged into beta-testing these products but as mentioned earlier.. there were many other players involved in that mess too.

I think that this does a good job of ending this discussion. Can you imagine a scenario where intel or samsung would do this with their ssd divisions? They are both very big fish in this relatively small pond, and they have extremely good quality reputations. They would have sorted out their issues first (as intel is doing with the 520 right now). OCZ is aggressive, pushy, in your face, and they are all-in on the ssd market. They HAVE TO be first/fastest/etc. If their quality or RMA's suffer a bit, then what does it hurt?

 

[groberts101]

Your original argument was a strawman. I was specifically talking about intel's reliability compared with OCZ's in the ssd manufacturing segment. You responded with what appeard to be a criticism of intel's drivers in some other nebulous situations. That's using FUD to respond to my valid statement.

I'm not an OCZ hater. If anything, i admire Ryan Peterson's dogged determination to drag his company to the top of the heap. However, in a direct comparison of quality/reliability, no reasonably knowledgeable person is going to choose any OCZ drive over any intel drive of comparable speed/price. If you want to talk value or performance, then OCZ does great. If you want to just assume that you have to wait a year before buying an ssd from either company then OCZ is probably less unreliable and at least closer to intel. However, at least for me, I prefer that my stuff just works. I don't think that paying a 15% premium is too much to buy an ssd that is going to last twice as long or be only half as likely to fail in the first 3 years. Now, right now the intel premium is a lot more than 15%, and I don't blame anybody for considering other options. But one thing we should keep in mind here is that OCZ was sandforce's biggest partner, now they're not even collaborating on anything going forward. If another show-stopper rears its ugly head with the vertex 3 is OCZ going to take the lead in fixing the problem again, or will they just tell people to go buy the new Octane?



I think that this does a good job of ending this discussion. Can you imagine a scenario where intel or samsung would do this with their ssd divisions? They are both very big fish in this relatively small pond, and they have extremely good quality reputations. They would have sorted out their issues first (as intel is doing with the 520 right now). OCZ is aggressive, pushy, in your face, and they are all-in on the ssd market. They HAVE TO be first/fastest/etc. If their quality or RMA's suffer a bit, then what does it hurt?

I was primarily responding to the quote above that you made about "being guaranteed" of failure from the V3 purchase. Not so at all and many here use the very same drive without issue.

As for the "FUD" response.. well.. takes FUD to know FUD! sorry.. couldn't resist that one.

and to sum up my reason for liking this company over most "safer alternatives" out there?.. You pretty much nailed it with.. "aggressive, pushy, in your face, and all-in" and is my kind of company since I tend to be like that by nature anyways. "Over-the-top" is my middle name and I'll take "speed" over "safe" any day and twice on Tuesday. Is part of the reason why I have big stereo's, big flatscreens, and raid anything possible, while using big horsepower cars for daily drivers. Life is short.. live it up and push the limits.

 

[bryanW1995]

Yeah, but with a 550 hp car you can tell a huge difference over a 300 hp car. With a 60" 1080p tv you immediately know its better than a 42" 720p model. But how many people could tell the difference between a 510 series and a 320 series without using benchmarks? Cost, support, and reliability are what matters in ssd's. Reliability and support are much better for intel (and Samsung and crucial for that matter) than for ocz, do ocz must compete on price/value instead. They typically do a very good job of that, and they also do an excellent job of looking good in canned benchmarks, so their sales are good. I'm interested to see how the octane turns out, if it's reliable then I'll be much more positive towards ocz going forward.

 

[Coup27]

and to sum up my reason for liking this company over most "safer alternatives" out there?.. You pretty much nailed it with.. "aggressive, pushy, in your face, and all-in" and is my kind of company since I tend to be like that by nature anyways. "Over-the-top" is my middle name and I'll take "speed" over "safe" any day and twice on Tuesday. Is part of the reason why I have big stereo's, big flatscreens, and raid anything possible, while using big horsepower cars for daily drivers. Life is short.. live it up and push the limits.

I must say I am the opposite when it comes to SSDs Roberts. My rig is whats in my sig. Even my RAM is 1333 so its in spec of the CPU. Obviously I can't overclock my CPU so I got the fastest dual core I could. My system is blazing fast, and 100% stable and I haven't had to do a thing other get the right components to begin with. I don't mind debugging something or messing around on a second system or a "play laptop" but thats just for fun. When it comes to a serious computer, I just want it to work. Nothing would infuriate me more than an intermittent show stopping fault from my SSD.

OCZ is aggressive, pushy, in your face, and they are all-in on the ssd market. They HAVE TO be first/fastest/etc. If their quality or RMA's suffer a bit, then what does it hurt?

I'm interested to see how the octane turns out, if it's reliable then I'll be much more positive towards ocz going forward.

I keep an eye on things generally and while I am no expert on OCZ, it does seem like it's going to be more of what we've already had regarding Octane.

The 830 hit the shelves long before the Octane did and we're already on FW#3 or 4 from OCZ. Samsung is still on #1.

OCZ released the drive with a toolbox which only works with msahci. Presumably an RST compatible toolbox is still under construction. They also haven't finished their OS independant firmware update process. Plus (classic line) "a small number of drives shipped with FW#1 and users are being advised to update to #3 (or 4??), but obviously this only works in certain setups."

I am not trying to stroke the fire in this thread as I try and avoid them these days but the above points are not opinion but fact and it's simply not good practices which ever way you try and justify them.

 

[groberts101]

Yeah, but with a 550 hp car you can tell a huge difference over a 300 hp car. With a 60" 1080p tv you immediately know its better than a 42" 720p model. But how many people could tell the difference between a 510 series and a 320 series without using benchmarks? Cost, support, and reliability are what matters in ssd's. Reliability and support are much better for intel (and Samsung and crucial for that matter) than for ocz, do ocz must compete on price/value instead. They typically do a very good job of that, and they also do an excellent job of looking good in canned benchmarks, so their sales are good. I'm interested to see how the octane turns out, if it's reliable then I'll be much more positive towards ocz going forward.

Yeah,, that's because most people aren't speed freaks like me, I guess. lol

And speak for yourself or thpse who don't run raided storage to match the OS drives perofrmsance. I can tell the differnece everrytime I read/write from/to my 8 drive HDD array.. so is completely perspective as most are never realizing that going from 275MB/s to 550MB/s will not shave that many seconds off their usage time without speed matched storage to make use of it. I save minutes a day.. hrs a week and days a year. That's what matters to me the most and raid delivers in spades in that respect.

Best not to underestimate the amount of folks who trade speed for stability either. These controllers have made a HUGE dent in the market and Intel themselves have made that clear by their very involvement with them. Money talks.