Reinstalling the whole OS is recommended if you are not so good at tweaking or troubleshooting problems.

Don't forget that there are data transfer protocol overheads as well. For example, SATA 1.5Gbps and 3.0Gbps uses 8b/10b encoding, meaning that 80% of the bandwidth is data only.

3 Gbps / 8 bits per byte = 375 megabytes per second
375 megabytes per second * 80% efficiency = 300 megabytes per second

Which is why SATA 3.0 Gbps has a theoretical limit of 300 megabytes per second and why most benchmarks are slightly lower than that theoretical limit. There are also other additional SATA protocol overheads, but I have not seen a value attached to those overheads.

Your operating system will turn off the SSD using the proper procedures. It will not simply instruct the motherboard to kill the SSD. The same goes for the HDD as well, which are far more sensitive to abrupt power failures than SSDs.

If you can actually use most of the 480GB capacity, then go for it. Otherwise I would recommend sticking with the 240GB. In about two years from now, 480GB SSDs should price at about RM500 (edit: based on your given price).

And if you are using a desktop, the value of buying a 480GB is considerably reduced. Primarily because you can store your data more cheaply in HDDs.

But where can you find RM558 520 250GB? The cheapest retail price for that model that I am aware of is RM759. Does it have the full five year warranty? They can sell much cheaply if it doesn't have the full five year warranty. Well, if you really do have access to that model with full warranty at that price at a reputable seller, I'd lean towards buying the 480GB because it is a big discount.

If you want to buy an SSD cache drive, you WANT it to run out of space during normal use. If it never runs out of space, then you have wasted performance by using it for caching when you should instead use it for your boot drive.

Both non-caching and caching SSDs have their pros and cons. Non-caching SSDs will always respond, but have limited capacity. Caching SSDs requires that the data be cached first before it can serve the data, so it will always be slow for data it has never seen before, but it can perform as fast as regular SSDs once it has a cached copy and it can cache for all of your HDDs. Caching SSDs do add one extra layer of complexity, which reduces reliability but this is usually negligible.

The primary difference is because there are more NAND chips to write and read from. SSDs typically function like RAID-5 or some variation of RAID; the more chips (to be specific, data channels) there are, the better the performance. At least for NAND chips of the same capacity; two 16GB NAND chips will outperform one 32GB NAND chip.

If you are doing this to "preserve" the life span of your SSD, DON'T DO IT.

1. All of these caches contains thousands of tiny little files.
2. SSDs performs best on thousands of tiny little files.
3. HDDs performs worst on thousands of tiny little files.

In other words, by doing that "little life-saving optimisation", you have forced your computer to perform in the worst possible condition. And the best part is that for most people, this life-saving optimisation will not really save the life of your SSD. You are far more likely to replace your SSD in three to five years time than your SSD dying from write exhaustion.

On the other hand, if you are doing that because you are running out of precious SSD space, this will help buy you some time. You should still plan to buy a larger SSD in the near future. It is for this reason that I have advocated larger capacity SSDs over performance SSDs — you are not going to get much performance from a 128GB high performance SSD if you need to put 129GB of data on it.

This post has been edited by everling: Dec 3 2012, 12:38 PM

The raw performance will be reduced, but you probably won't feel it. If this is your first SSD, it will still amaze you. And upgrading to a SATA 6.0Gbps motherboard will not double the performance you feel. You get a lot of people recommending SSDs, but you will hardly find anybody who will just as strongly recommend upgrading your motherboards to suit your SATA 6.0Gbps SSD. My recommendation about the motherboard is to not use the SSD as a reason to replace it, as it is not really worth the trouble nor the cost, unless you were already itching to replace the motherboard.

I recommend the Intel 330 180GB at RM409 on Viewnet's price list.

How much it improves depends on where the bottleneck is. With a very old laptop or desktop, the bottleneck may be at the CPU, so an SSD upgrade might not make much of a difference.

That's troubling, as I have my work on a M4. Is it likely that I will also experience the problem or do I stand a good chance of going through three years without a problem? I'm on firmware 000F.

Perhaps it is the benchmarks that you ran? Please benchmark with ATTO.

SATA 1 = SATA 1.5 Gbps = 150 MB/s
SATA 2 = SATA 3.0 Gbps = 300 MB/s
SATA 3 = SATA 6.0 Gbps = 600 MB/s

The ASUS M4N78 support only SATA 3.0 Gbps, so your benchmark results should be closer to 300 MB/s, not the 150 MB/s that you are getting here. Something is probably wrong here.

But ignoring that, there is a chance that your Athlon X2 6000+ processor might be another problem. SSDs may make old machines run much faster, but only if they're significantly bottlenecked by the HDD. If your system is bottlenecked by the CPU, you might not see much of an improvement.

Both have no known major problems at this time, after months of being on the market. You should be fine by going with either brands. I would recommend taking a look at Intel's 330 as well. Particularly the 180GB edition, as it is priced very closely to the Intel 520 120GB.

Your 520 was over three years old when it died?

I was poking fun about your recommending the Intel 520 for its 5 year warranty and using a less than 3 year old RMA event to support it. The Intel 330 with its 3 years of warranty would also have been covered by what you have experienced.

Anyway, it seems that the Intel 330 is out of stock at Lowyat.

You are forgetting that SATA uses 8b/10b data transfer encoding, so the data transfer efficiency is 80%.

375 MB/s x 80% = 300 MB/s
750 MB/s x 80% = 600 MB/s

This still doesn't include all the additional SATA protocol overheads. But I do not know how to estimate the overhead.

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Added on December 28, 2012, 8:58 amSeriously. Intel 330 120GB and 180GB are out. I went yesterday. Only check a couple of shops however but I won't hold my breath.

This post has been edited by everling: Dec 28 2012, 09:02 AM

True enough, but its value will still drop by a lot after the third year.

The Intel 335 is already on the price lists, but no one appears to have any stocks of the 335 as well. I've also been looking out for the Intel 335 240GB for a few weeks already.

Your problem statement was too ambiguous and could have been written better.

Someone is offering to sell to you an Intel 320 for RM220? It depends on the capacity and how old the SSD is.

While they would slowly shift to smaller NAND chips, the current NAND chips should still be under production.

Yes, it is using the next smaller NAND chip (20nm MLC).

I'd recommend the Intel 330 180GB if you are okay with spending that much. If not, the 120GB will be sufficient until the prices for larger capacity SSDs come down to something more agreeable in about two to three years time.

However, there seems to be a shortage of the Intel 330 SSDs for weeks now, so you are unlikely to find any on the retail market. Even some of the online traders here no longer have the Intel 330 in stock. It seems possible that Intel will drop the 330 entirely for the newer 335 series, which seems to be significantly cheaper than the 330. You can either wait for Intel to resume shipping the 330 or start shipping the 335, buy the inappropriate Intel 520 or buy another brand of SSD. Personally, I'm waiting on Intel to start shipping their 335 series.

The 335 is only a little better than the 330, but that's probably only perceptible on the benchmarks. What the 335 does offer is being cheaper than the 330 or the competition. Most 256GB SSDs right now are well in the RM600 range, whereas the 335 should come in the RM500 range. I do not know if there will be 120GB or 180GB editions for the 335.

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Added on December 30, 2012, 4:47 pmNot enough willpower or experience to resist the temptation.

This post has been edited by everling: Dec 30 2012, 04:49 PM

I wouldn't be surprised if they won't produce a 120GB or 180GB editions of the 335 for the near future. The write endurance of the 20nm is pretty low, making it harder to provide 3 years of warranty for these products. There is some new research that should fix the lifespan issue once and for all, but it might not be ready in time for the 335.

The write lifespan issue is less of a problem for high capacity SSDs.

It is probably not worth it. What is your budget?

Ok, the G2 has a couple of big issues.

1. The G2 was introduced in July 2009. You might want to check on its warranty status. If it has already or nearly lapsed, you should try bargaining harder for a better price because its value should have dropped even more.
   
2. You also need to check if that SSD's firmware has been updated or not. The original G2 did not support TRIM, an important feature to maintain performance on SSDs. I do not know how you can easily check it or if you can still update it.

Good luck in finding it, and please tell us where you found it.

For a 120GB drive, expect 111.75GiB of capacity.

G2 also didn't initially supported TRIM. That was added in later with a firmware update.