Another boring 120GB SSD. Will somebody please give us an interestingly affordable 300GB SSD?

phat_mcjack opened a topic to discuss his problem in detail: is my ssd normal and in good condition

SSDs function internally like RAID. The more NAND chips they have, the faster their performance. 60GB SSDs will have less NAND chips than 120GB SSDs, so I expect their performance to be a little less.

Did you checked with other Corsair 60GB benchmarks?

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 9 2011, 03:47 PM

Viewnet is selling Kingston V+ Series 96GB for RM549.

Or the Kingston V 100 64GB for RM369.

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 10 2011, 02:28 PM

It'll actually cost about RM5230 and RM6080, if we calculate by cost/GB.

They are indeed more hardier because they don't have moving parts that can fail. Unfortunately, electronics can still fail due to fatigue or manufacturing defects. Bad firmware is also another possibility, because SandForce-based SSDs are known for a higher failure rate. You could say, "Speed kills."

What's your motherboard? And you probably should have switched over to Intel or Kingston once you started facing the problem.

AnandTech's recent article might shed some light on your problem as it spent some time on the reliability issue:
The SandForce Roundup: Corsair, Kingston, Patriot, OCZ, OWC & MemoRight SSDs Compared



Source: http://communities.intel.com/message/133499

Emphasis mine. Eeek!

Afaik, the firmware hasn't been released yet. Might want to avoid the 320 series for desktop use until the firmware is out.

No. Not for real. You should read my following post.

What is affordable depends on your budget for SSDs. Now what are you willing to put in for SSDs?

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 13 2011, 12:45 AM

That's just another SATA 6.0Gbps SSD based on a SandForce controller. Nothing interesting.


Wait, what? SATA 3.0Gbps is no longer sufficient for HDDs? What are these guys taking?


No, you didn't lost the 9GB after formatting. It was lost before you even touched the drive.

The drives are marketed as 120GB, so they will have at least 120,000,000,000 bytes. Windows uses GiB, so 120,000,000,000 bytes divided by 1,073,741,824 bytes (1 GiB) = 111.759 GiB. Take note that this 9GB difference is only due to using different standards for measuring capacity!

As a side note, the traitorous OSX changed to use GB a few years ago, so OSX will show that it has 120GB instead of 111GiB. Them GiB or GB units are crucial, people! Don't just discard them and cry foul.

While the OCZ and Intel toolboxes allow you do to some maintenance work, you shouldn't need to defrag or do any other regular maintenance.

That's a pretty sweet improvement. Does your Agility 3 feel much faster than your Vertex 2 in regular use?

I would recommend larger capacity SSDs over high performance SSDs, because capacity is usually more useful. Even with the "slower" SSD, you will feel a difference if compared to HDDs. And the difference can be huge on certain tasks, like anti-virus scans.

Although the Intel 320 Series does have that terrible 8MB bug at the moment, Intel has reported that it has a fix for the problem and that it may be released before the end of August. You can get Intel's SSD 320 Series 160GB for RM940 at Cycom. If you used up the 160GB on this SSD and find yourself wishing for a larger capacity SSD, then you'll know that it was worth it.

Strictly speaking, high performance SSD are not required for the applications you have listed. Also, I wouldn't expect much of an additional performance improvement over regular SSDs. Take a look at the following benchmark:

Here we have the super fast Vertex 3 losing to the Intel 320.


Here we have the budget-class Kingston SSD and the Intel 320 outperforming the super fast Vertex 3.


And here, we have the previous generation Intel G2 or the current generation Intel 320 being nearly on par with the super fast Vertex 3 in gaming.


For an SSD that has at least twice the speed of the older or slower SSDs that I have mentioned, it doesn't really show that much of a difference in these benchmarks. And the author of the benchmarks, Anand, likes OCZ.

Please feel free to buy the Vertex 3. After all, while it may have quite a bit of reliability issues that may lead to BSODs, unable to boot up or dying within the first six months, at least it doesn't have the Intel 320's terrible 8MB bug that would hopefully be fixed by the end of the month (fixed). And if you could never use more than 120GB, the 25% extra capacity in the 160GB SSDs is not really worth paying 7% more over the Vertex 3.



To be fair, there are other graphs that show the Vertex 3's advantages. But in my opinion, performance isn't that big a factor for SSDs because they're already so much better than regular HDDs.



Edit: Updated that the updated Intel firmware has been released.

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 22 2011, 01:11 PM

Ack! How did I missed this? Thanks!

Yes, it is safe. You could even enable secure file erase if you want, but it is unlikely to work properly on SSDs because of the wear levelling algorithm so it would be better to not bother with file level secure erase to save on your writes.

This may help you: http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-to-avoid...7-installation/

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Added on August 20, 2011, 1:57 pmIf I hadn't already owned a U2311H, I too would have bought the U2412M.

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 20 2011, 01:57 PM

I saw. Nice clean setup.

You found a 510? Yeah, 128° Celsius is too much. I'd go back to the shop for a replacement.

He is serious about the fact that RAID will not pass the TRIM commands. However, most SSDs by now are capable of internal garbage collection, although at a less effective rate because it does not have the assistance of the OS explicitly stating what blocks are no longer needed (TRIM). It is for this reason alone that OSX prior to Lion, which does not have TRIM support, were able to use SSDs without seriously killing performance over time.

If there are any performance degradation because TRIM was unavailable, it will be mostly or fully restored once TRIM support is enabled. Please don't feel guilty if performance was not fully restored, because this is normal for some SSDs even if TRIM was enabled from day 0.

I hope you're aware of the ~3,000 writes limit. If you have secure erased your SSD a hundred times, you have reduced your SSD's write lifespan by ~3.33%. At that rate, your SSD would be dead in less than a year.

I have no idea.

But even if you could, I would suspect that for normal users it would have about the same feel as an ordinary SSD most of the time. You're going to be bottlenecked by your CPU. And even if not, SSDs too suffer from "diminishing returns" even as performance doubles or triples; because while 60 seconds (HDD) to 1 second (SSD) is very impressive, 1 second (SSD) to 0.3 second (PCI-E) is a lot less so. It would be cool to have one, but you may need to be an extraordinary user to actually feel and enjoy the difference.

It would be noticeable only if you're looking for it. Otherwise a SATA 6.0Gbps SSD will probably feel like a SATA 3.0Gbps SSD most of the time.

I haven't seen a YouTube comparison between a SATA 3.0Gbps SSD and a SATA 6.0Gbps SSD. I wonder if that means something.

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 27 2011, 06:13 AM

How about a Intel 320 Series 160GB SSD? RM940 from Cycom, which is in about the price bracket for SATA 6.0Gbps 120GB SSDs.