What is THE most reliable SSD as of now?

[Kristijonas]

What is THE most reliable SSD as of now?

 

[Coup27]

I don't think you can say there is only one.

The Crucial M4 and Intel 320 with their latest firmware have shown to be incredibly reliable. The newly released Samsung 830 appears to have launched without a hitch (using one now) so thats also doing well. The absolute winner would probably be the Intel X25-M G2. I doubt you can even buy these now, at least not new.

 

[Bill Brasky]

The five year warranty on the Intel drives is pretty nice. Since speed on the M4 and 320 are similar, I opted for the extra warranty.

 

[noblemo]

The five year warranty on the Intel drives is pretty nice. Since speed on the M4 and 320 are similar, I opted for the extra warranty.

5 year warranty on the Intel 320 retail drives; only 1 year in OEM packaging.

 

[Coup27]

That's a bit shit really aint it. The actual drive is identical.

 

[Karl Agathon]

Samsung 470 models from what I understand are very reliable.

 

[ccbadd]

I don't think you can really put the Samsung 830 in that list as it has not been available long enough to be evident. I would bet it will turn out to be, but there is not enough proof yet. Add the 8mb bug that the Intel 320 had, and I think it goes out the window also. I believe that while Intels overall failure rates are very low, a high percentage of the failure were 320's, but I can't confirm this. If you base everything off of the latest firmwares, I can't think of many drives that aren't reliable now including SandForce 2281's.

 

[pitz]

You really don't know the reliability of these devices, except in hindsight. For instance, drives can be very reliable when they're running, but do we have a lot of information about how they end up failing when they fill up/exhaust their cells? The vendors 'imply' that they simply will refuse to accept future writes. I am not so inclined to believe that all models will become read-only devices once their Flash capacity is exhausted.

Aside from firmware type issues (such as those described), different drives are more vulnerable to corruption as the result of power loss. Some incorporate significant numbers of capacitors that can provide enough of a power supply to write out the buffers/caches. Others don't. Testing of current models really doesn't have a great ability to predict exogenous failure modes. SSDs still need to be backed up like HDDs and all the usual precautions apply.

 

[taltamir]

That's a bit shit really aint it. The actual drive is identical.

OEM stands for Original equipment manufacturer. It is sold for system integrades like dell and HP to build and resale a system out of. The end customer doesn't get the warranty.
It also refers to whitebox (smaller ma and pa shops)
Typical OEM warranty is 30 days and is basically only for DOAs.

 

[frostedflakes]

5 year warranty on the Intel 320 retail drives; only 1 year in OEM packaging.

This came up in an Intel 320 thread I posted recently in Hot Deals. I wasn't sure about it either because there is a lot of contradictory info out there, so I contacted Intel support to help clear it up.

The person I talked to stated that OEM 320 SSDs come with a 5 year warranty too.

Retail and reseller box warranty: http://download.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/5yrlimitedwarrantyssd320seriesmay102011_en.pdf
OEM/brown box warranty: http://download.intel.com/support/s...wearoutltdwarrantyssd320seriesmay102011en.pdf

The difference is that with OEM, the warranty is 5 years OR when the media wearout indicator reaches 1, whichever period is shorter. Whereas with retail and reseller box drives, they will still cover it under warranty even if the writes are exhausted within the 5 year period.

 

[Zap]

What is THE most reliable SSD as of now?

Intel X25-E?

 

[taltamir]

Intel X25-E?

Agreed.
But I honestly recommend you get a faster cheaper one unless you are building an enterprise database that MUST never go down (which means much more then just choosing reliable hardware)

 

[noblemo]

The difference is that with OEM, the warranty is 5 years OR when the media wearout indicator reaches 1, whichever period is shorter. Whereas with retail and reseller box drives, they will still cover it under warranty even if the writes are exhausted within the 5 year period.

Thanks for the clarification. Looks like the OEM warranty is sufficient for moderate to casual users. That said, at NewEgg the retail kits (G3K5) are currently cheaper than OEM for the 80GB* and 160GB models. The 300GB retail kit is $15 (3&#37 more than OEM.

* after rebate

 

[kmmatney]

Samsung 470 models from what I understand are very reliable.

I have one of these in my laptop. It has been reliable, but it is pretty slow compared to the others, so I wouldn't recommend it over the other SSDs mentioned. The newer Samsung SSDs are much better.

 

[Concillian]

That's a bit shit really aint it. The actual drive is identical.

A guarantee does cost the company money (on average, due to cost of handling returns.) It makes sense that one with a longer guarantee would cost more than the one without a longer guarantee, doesn't it?

 

[Coup27]

A guarantee does cost the company money (on average, due to cost of handling returns.) It makes sense that one with a longer guarantee would cost more than the one without a longer guarantee, doesn't it?

Well no actually, I disagree.

Retail means it comes with a full colour printed box and manual, maybe some CD's with software on, 3.5" to 2.5" bracket and whatever else. Because you have saved some money and and gone with OEM in a small brown box does not change the fact you have bought the same product.

As frostedflakes has posted above, Intel do actually offer 5 years on both retail and OEM. Noblemo posted incorrect information.

 

[Kristijonas]

So this is a good choice? http://www.skytech.lt/ssd-samsung-830-series-64gb-sata3-mlc-sparta-520160mbs-rinkinys-p-88157.html

I'm also a lover of new technologies, so perhaps soon some new concepts will come to reality in SSDs and I should wait a while before buying?

 

[Coup27]

Yes that is a good choice.

 

[ncalipari]

A company I work for has thousands of SSD.

The intel ones never had an RMAs, the same can't be said for others. I'm not saying OCZ or crucuial have poor quality, but 0 RMAs vs 7 or 8 RMAs is a huge achievement. Can't be sure about the FW version though.


Anyhow if you're not in the server business, you would be much better off buying OCZ or crucial, as you don't need the higher reliability, but you benefit from a lower price and a somewhat faster disk.

 

[Kristijonas]

Yes, I just checked the prices on Intel SSDs and they are really too high for me. ncalipari, do you think this samsung 830 is a good one? Perhaps the company you work in had a try in them?

 

[ncalipari]

Yes, I just checked the prices on Intel SSDs and they are really too high for me. ncalipari, do you think this samsung 830 is a good one? Perhaps the company you work in had a try in them?

No samsung, sorry.

Why not choose crucial?

 

[Coup27]

If you're on a budget and cannot stretch to an Intel drive, it's likely the Samsung 830 will also be too expensive.

The Crucial M4 is around the same price as the OCZ but has an excellent reliability reputation.

 

[bryanW1995]

I don't think you can really put the Samsung 830 in that list as it has not been available long enough to be evident. I would bet it will turn out to be, but there is not enough proof yet. Add the 8mb bug that the Intel 320 had, and I think it goes out the window also. I believe that while Intels overall failure rates are very low, a high percentage of the failure were 320's, but I can't confirm this. If you base everything off of the latest firmwares, I can't think of many drives that aren't reliable now including SandForce 2281's.

No, that's correct. And technically the intel 320 drives didn't fail b/c they were still good, working drives, they just needed updated firmware to keep them from randomly eating your data like godzilla at a japanese steakhouse. Since the updated firmware they are again the most reliable drives out there.

Intel X25-E?

Definitely. But that drive had been around for a while when I got my x25m g2 a couple of years ago, and as Tal stated it's older/slower than current offerings.

 

[bryanW1995]

A company I work for has thousands of SSD.

The intel ones never had an RMAs, the same can't be said for others. I'm not saying OCZ or crucuial have poor quality, but 0 RMAs vs 7 or 8 RMAs is a huge achievement. Can't be sure about the FW version though.


Anyhow if you're not in the server business, you would be much better off buying OCZ or crucial, as you don't need the higher reliability, but you benefit from a lower price and a somewhat faster disk.

The others aren't necessarily any cheaper if you have time to hold out for good deals. There was a BF deal at newegg on intel 320 series for $155 AR on a 160gb drive + free copy of BF3 for example, it was basically the same deal as anything from any of the other brands.

 

[Kristijonas]

If you're on a budget and cannot stretch to an Intel drive, it's likely the Samsung 830 will also be too expensive.

The Crucial M4 is around the same price as the OCZ but has an excellent reliability reputation.

I'm only buying a 60-64gb SSD, and Samsung 830 costs almost the same as OCZ and Crucial, atleast in the country I live.

http://www.skytech.lt/ssd-samsung-830-series-64gb-sata3-mlc-sparta-520160mbs-rinkinys-p-88157.html

http://www.skytech.lt/ssd-crucial-64gb-sata3-sparta-41595mbs-p-65707.html

http://www.skytech.lt/ocz-ssd-60gb-...-random-iops4kb-mlc-2281-control-p-67281.html

http://www.skytech.lt/ocz-ssd-60gb-...-random-iops4kb-25nm-mlc-include-p-74748.html