indeed.

tbh it's hard to suggest something that are the results from mass production, especially new releases that come with new technologies. all the brands that we know today suffered from hidden bugs that only time will tell in the past. crucial? they had their shares. the same goes to ocz, sandisk, plextor, intel, kingston, and samsung, to name a few. there is almost no exception.

all we can depend on is the commitments of these manufacturers to be there when we need them most. all they need to do is to identify the issues and get them fixed. everyone will be happy. unfortunately, only a few of them can handle these scenarios well.

ok. maybe you can consider crucial mx100 512gb and plextor m6s of the same size.

yes, the drives use mlc.


there are two obvious differences between mlc and tlc chips, speed and endurance. these are physical characteristics of nand chips that cannot be fixed by firmware. endurance is not a problem because improper usage void your warranty anyway when you exceed their tbw. speed wise, it's not night and day difference, but it's there. so for the same amount of money, i will still always go for mlc. (do check the mlc nand type. skip those mlc with lower performance)

there is nothing wrong with tlc drives for general use. (samsung has already pushed these chips to enterprise. you can find some of them @ hikari85's sale thread) in fact, 840 evo surprisingly outperforms many mlc drives with rapid mode turned off in real world usage. (yes, 840 evo are my test drives mainly to check differences between mlc and tlc drives. believe it or not, they do have differences. however, i have found some good use cases for them)

by the way i forgot to mention that a fix to the same slow read bug in older samsung 840 non-evo is also on the way.

edit: quotes are not working?! no there was a coding bug. fixed

This post has been edited by horns: Nov 7 2014, 09:26 AM

Mx100 is newer. But m550 is the performance drive. (Although theres is not much difference between the two if the size is 512gb)

Intel drives are not as attractive as before (the old intel 520 era) when there are plenty options to choose from. The price is on the high side.

same size. definitely different speed

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/40979/aberde...hdds/index.html

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/40935/membla...-ssd/index.html

Ah suspected so. You installed the OS before switching to ahci, not after.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/256931-3...-ahci-mode-hdds

for now, intel 530 should be the one with better values for money.

good luck

yes. everything is also good here after performance restore.

the time spent to restore depends on how full your drive is i suppose. mine took me 20 minutes each (the drives are quite empty).

we know there are different configurations for m.2 slots. maybe the following information is useful to you guys.



when i did a research for my new laptops recently, i realized that different manufacturers offer different configurations. there is so far only one that implements pci-e 3.0 x4 m.2 slot.

This post has been edited by horns: Nov 12 2014, 02:10 PM

so far, no one can beat intel 530 yet if you take its 5-year warranty period into considerations.

honestly, it's better for you to do some research yourself. (i.e. check all price list available; scout garage sales) some ssd's have price tags below 400 per piece.

haha!

according to hardware.fr, the following are the latest ranking of manufacturers in terms of ssd rate of return (published 6 November 2014):

- Samsung 0.24% (last year 0.54%)
- Intel 0.27% (last year 0.90%)
- Sandisk 0.29% (last year 0.70%)
- Crucial 0.57% (last year 1.08%)
- Kingston 0.63% (last year 0.72%)
- Corsair 0.87% (last year 0.91%)

ssd's with high return rates:
- 3,27% Kingston SSDNow mS200 mSATA 120 GB
- 2,84% Corsair Force GS 240 GB
- 2,54% Corsair Neutron 64 GB
- 1,44% Corsair Force LS 120 GB
- 1,34% OCZ Agility 3 480 GB

120-128 GB 2.5":
- 1,44% Corsair Force LS 120 GB
- 0,70% Crucial M500
- 0,66% Kingston V300
- 0,66% Corsair Force GT
- 0,45% Sandisk Extreme II
- 0,37% Sandisk Ultra Plus
- 0,29% Kingston HyperX 3K
- 0,29% Samsung 840 Pro
- 0,07% Samsung 840 EVO
- 0,00% Corsair Neutron
- 0,00% Intel 530
- 0,00% Sandisk SSD

240-256 GB:
- 2,84% Corsair Force GS
- 0,71% Kingston HyperX 3K
- 0,68% Crucial M500
- 0,64% Kingston V300
- 0,49% Sandisk Extreme II
- 0,34% Samsung 840 Pro
- 0,32% Sandisk Ultra Plus
- 0,26% Samsung 840 EVO
- 0,00% Corsair Neutron
- 0,00% Intel SSD 335
- 0,00% Intel SSD 530

480-512 GB:
- 1,34% OCZ Agility 3 480 GB
- 0,27% Samsung 840 EVO
- 0,15% Crucial M500

you might wanna check out the conclusions as well. again, this is for reference only.

source: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-1/taux...posants-11.html

good to know everything is fine

like what wildwestgoh explained, that's normal speed for sata 2. for general use it's still better than hdd.

intel 530 120gb. there are also other cheaper brands so please refer to the price lists published online.

the best option is a fresh install. it gets rid of a lot of potential problems. cloning works, with the risks of dealing with potential problems, including corrupted OS.

maybe your laptop takes 7mm only, but what do you mean by falling apart? there must be a bracket in your laptop for you to secure the ssd to its place.

i don't have experience about these two. based on price only, i will go for transcend, but i will go for much higher capacities. (smaller drives usually run slower) imo they are both mainstream drives, so they should be good enough for general use.

wow your friend is lucky to have you as a friend.

transcend is not in the list doesn't mean it's "not good at all". it just lacks of user reports. you can always refer to online reviews and make your own justifications.

Do you mind sharing more info about your machine? Which windows version? Is the 4k-alignment ok? Do you use rst or default windows ahci driver? Is there a new firmware for 530?

In general there is no waiting when you log in (actually almost instantly) I haven't had such issues before with intel drives.

yes windows ahci is ok. the thing about rst is that the performance is different from one version to another. for 4k alignment, you can run 'as ssd benchmark' to check if the alignment is stated as OK or not.



uh? you are having the same problem too? are you using w7?

i wonder why no one reported about this issue before.

This post has been edited by horns: Nov 29 2014, 10:35 AM

oh. from what i have read, there was a firmware released to solve this previously. still, there are some people who reported that the firmware didn't solve the issue.

what if you disable login page? (using netplwiz)

with ssd optimizations, the initial fast boot thing is usually disabled. in my case it takes 2-3 spins for w8.x to reach desktop too.

i think it's a good price for 512gb. for mx100, it's better to go for 512gb.

oh ok haha it's just a test to see if you can go into the desktop instantly (by instantly, i mean there is still a 1-second black screen in my machine)

you're right. i am dealing with that 2-3 spins every time i restart my machines. it's more than fine to me lol!

just try not to look at the numbers :/ i think by the time it's low enough you already have a new drive.

this is one of the disadvantages of smaller drives, and it also depends on how you set the system up. if you can, use ram-based caching enhancements with deferred writes turned on.

how much is the shipping cost? if you think the total price can help you save, then it's a good deal.

still, you should think of warranty also.

imo both are decent. between the two, i choose mx100 because it has mlc nand flash. i have primocache license for ram-caching. maybe someone else can give you a better good reason.