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Which SSD brand do you trust?

S

Shephard

Senior member
Ok I have never bought an SSD. Mfenn says in my general hardware topic that because my budget is $1000 Canadian I should get SSD.

SSD to me seems like Luxury item. SSD increases boot time and program loading times. Anything else major?

What is the difference between an SSD released 3 years ago to one released in 2012? Do they boot the computer faster?

What I am reading online is many SSD are just as unreliable as regular hard drives. Not dead on arrival, but they can die later because of driver software? Can you explain to me what this is?

I hear you can only trust Intel, Samsung, and Crucial. Everyone else, but especially OCZ is junk. I know OCZ makes junky power supplies so I can believe that!

Also what is difference between a caching SSD, caching SSD with Intel Caching technology, and a regular SSD?

thank you
 
Shephard said:
SSD increases boot time and program loading times.
Click to expand...

You have that backwards.

As for the highest quality SSDs, that would be Plextor.

A few days ago I would have included Samsung, but after two failures at anandtech with no explanation from Samsung, I have to take Samsung off my "high quality" list.
 
sorry I meant decrease loading times.

But can you guys answer some of my questions up above?

Also what is Sandforce? I hear complaints about it.
 
Why is seemingly every thread you start a "which brand do you trust" thread?

Anyway, short answer is Intel/Micron (Crucial), Samsung, possibly also Hynix but the jury is out on their collaboration with Corsair (Neutron)... I'd like to have more data on the Neutrons before recommending them. Everyone else doesn't make their own NAND or has had issues with their controller/firmware (I'm looking at you, SanDisk). Of the non-NAND-makers I'd recommend Plextor.
 
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blastingcap said:
Why is seemingly every thread you start a "which brand do you trust" thread?

Anyway, short answer is Intel/Micron (Crucial), Samsung, possibly also Hynix but the jury is out on their collaboration with Corsair (Neutron)... I'd like to have more data on the Neutrons before recommending them. Everyone else doesn't make their own NAND or has had issues with their controller/firmware (I'm looking at you, SanDisk). Of the non-NAND-makers I'd recommend Plextor.
Click to expand...
only 2 threads and both those threads involve a hard drives. They hold important data so wouldn't you want to know whats best?

I've never had an SSD so If I am going to get one I want to know what is good.

I read around an many people complain about certain brand or Sandforce or driver. I don't know about this stuff so I need your expertise.
 
jwilliams4200 said:
Why wouldn't you do some simple research yourself before you ask basic questions that google can answer in under a minute?
Click to expand...
I like to hear from expierenced people who have tried multiple SSD and all the technology.

I still don't get the sandforce I read from wikipedia. so it's memory controller but wikipedia says nothing bad.

what about the drivers?

SSD caching so from a forum post I read it copies stuff to SSD temporarily to load faster. but you need motherboard that has this technology so I am guessing z77 only because it has all the premium features.

I read that all new SSD are not worth money. you won't see any difference in speed from old SSD to new. Only on benchmarks thats it.

so I need to know what old SSD to get. so someone with expierence trying a few brands and what driver and sandforce to avoid.
 
Shephard said:
What is the difference between an SSD released 3 years ago to one released in 2012? Do they boot the computer faster?
Click to expand...

Newer ones are a bit faster. Think of it this way. A new SSD can be around 2X faster than a 3 year old SSD. A 3 year old SSD can be around 20X faster than a HDD. Thus, going SSD instead of HDD is probably more important than which SSD you get. Well, except to get one that doesn't suck for a number of reasons.

(Note that I'm making up numbers here, but it is just to illustrate the difference.)

Shephard said:
What I am reading online is many SSD are just as unreliable as regular hard drives. Not dead on arrival, but they can die later because of driver software? Can you explain to me what this is?
Click to expand...

There are a number of reasons why SSDs die, but buggy firmware is probably near the top of the list. Also, sometimes they don't actually "die" but just lock up or go into some kind of panic mode. I suppose that is kind of like the drive dying, but people have resurrected "dead" SSDs using various methods (power cycling, secure erase, re-flashing firmware).

Yes, both SSDs and HDDs can be unreliable. Faced with this, I would rather have something fast and unreliable than something slow and unreliable. 😀

Shephard said:
Also what is difference between a caching SSD, caching SSD with Intel Caching technology, and a regular SSD?
Click to expand...

They are all SSDs. Intel caching is just their RST software (free download) which works with some Intel chipsets (Z68/H77/Z77) where you can use any SSD and specify up to a certain size (60GB?) to be a cache to a HDD.

There are drives marketed and sold as cache drives. Those typically are smaller drives with more spare area, and bundled with 3rd party caching software that doesn't have the chipset limitation of Intel's RST.
 
thx Zap.

Well I don't want to spend a lot of money. Mfenn says it is worth it though.

I just ordered 1tb Western Digital Black if you read my other topic. So that will be main drive 7200 rpm.

So what is the size I should get of SSD? 80GB? I put operating system on it and then use this caching?
 
I really don't trust any of them yet so I keep a spare ssd with my boot drive cloned to it for when the big fail comes. The worst for me and the best for me has been adata. Ocz failed on me to but they've got a 1 week turn around on rma. I'm giving samsung a try at the moment with their 840 pro so only time will tell.
 
My old X25-M G2 80gb was quite the workhorse. I replaced it with a Crucial M4 128gb but didn't really notice any difference in performance.
 
I always shake my head and wonder why people focus so much on brands. The focus should be on models. Brands can have good models and not so good models. The same applies to HDDs. I have no qualms about Plextor. Crucial has good models. SanDisk has good models. Samsung has good, i.e., the tried and true 830, whereas the 840 Pro seems to be having a problem of late. That does not condemn the brand. I also trust Intel. OCZ is very model dependent.

On balance, I see SSDs as a plus. Already have two and pland to add more.
 
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