consumer grade ssd's are good enough to help you in many ways for common usage. it's really not necessary to go for enthusiast grade unless you really need it, or you have some extras.

as for the capacity, make some justifications of your system usage. the simpler way is to base on OS and apps (i.ee. OS, common software, and games that you play most). the rest goto storage hdd (internal or external).

soon we will get local warranty for samsung ssd's. they will come to Malaysia soon.

also found the new samsung 840 evo at lyp.

yeah finally 840 evo is the latest 2.5". hopefully we can see msata and m.2 versions later on.

1. cpu will affect the speed of disk access definitely (i.e. how fast the cpu can access the data on disk);

2. sata2 is fine. yes it's not that big of a deal if you use the ssd on sata 2 (unless, of course you wanna max it out);

3. the thing is this: everything can be snappier when your laptop has a ssd (due to much faster disk access). however, the overall performance of your system still depends on other components like cpu, ram size and gpu (all of which contribute to the overall performance of your laptop). by adding a ssd, it just eliminate the bottleneck of your previous hdd.

.. and with usd35mil, the warranty is back hehe

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/toshiba-corp...-002100301.html
http://ir.ocz.com/news/detail/3014/ocz-rea...-drive-business
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2...for-35-million/

This post has been edited by horns: Dec 3 2013, 10:15 AM

toshiba has made its move in retail market. hopefully it will bring ssd's that have more values to us with this merger

i appreciate your good intention. it's good to remind people about getting second-hand ssd's, because there are definite risks in obtaining one.

however to avoid giving people misconceptions on ssd's, i would like to add the following:

* '.. especially those made with mlc chips' - currently, we have 3 types of nand flash chip in ssd's: slc, mlc, and tlc. slc was said to have 100,000p/e cycles; mlc has 3,000-5,000 p/e cycles, and tlc has 1,000 p/e cycles. (actually we have another type called e-mlc, which was said to have about 20,000 to 30,000 p/e cycles) in general, most of current consumer and enthusiast ssd's are made with mlc chips.

* '.. which some said have 3000-5000 writes only' - this is supposed to mean mlc have '3000-5000 p/e cycles' (p/e is program/erase). this can translate into different outcomes that are depending on the actual capacity of the target ssd being used and how it is used (usage).

now imagine you have a 4gb ssd. you save a 4gb movie to this ssd. you watch the movie, and then delete it. you empty the recycle bin which triggers the trim command. the ssd's garbage collection now erases the movie from the ssd. 1 p/e cycle has now been used. (i.e. if you have 120gb ssd, 1 p/e cycle means you write and erase 120gb of data one time)

reading data has no effect on p/e cycles; only writing data and erasing data have.

some examples can be found here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung...nce-of-tlc-nand

you're correct. all those background activities surely contribute to the reduction of ssd's lifespan. however, let's say for a 128gb ssd, a user uses 50gb with 3x write amplification? (imo 50gb might be too large for common usage, including the part that caters for all those background activities; this is just to give a clearer picture) the estimated lifespan is still 7years. by that time i think that drive has long been replaced with much better ones.

there are useful optimizations that we do to help reduce writes further, while not sacrificing performance, such as temp folder redirection to ramdisk (not hdd). over-provisioning also helps.

it's all about how you set your system up to help extend the life of a ssd.

yes, it's way better; even if you're connecting the ssd through sata2 ports.

from my limited experience, samsung, intel, and plextor performance grade ssd's are fine.

1. in bios make sure set to ahci;
2. use intel chipset sata3 port.

no problem.

after windows installation, you might wanna try out the intel rapid storage (RST) drivers (you can get it from intel website or here: https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/966253)

the basic ssd optimizations can be found on the first page of this thread.

er.. no it's not like mechanical drives. the way ssd's are written is like flash drives. (so its theory is somewhat different than what you have described). that's why we have to take into accounts write amplification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_amplification). it's said that modern consumer ssd's have the WA value of 1 to 2 (non-sandforce based; sandforce-based ssd's are less than 1). in the previous estimation i used 3.

right.. well, they're electronics, surely with respective, limited, lifespans. it mainly depends on your usage. if you're talking about durability/endurance, maybe it's too early to determine this in ssd's based on real life usage. my ocz vertex 4 is 1++ years old and its health status still at 100% with crystal diskinfo (reformatted numerous times).

yeah those are some of the apparent advantages of a ssd over hdd. imo just take advantage of their strengths: ssd for OS and apps/games (more reads); hdd for storage (more writes).

another thing that i believe is useful for a computer, if you have abundant amount of ram's (like 16gb or more), is to use ram disk. this one helps a lot.

a ramdisk is a virtual disk that makes up of part of the system memory.

due to its natures (super durable and fast; ~ 7 times faster than ssd-based raid0), it's a better option instead of hdd to house most folders with high read/writes. for a start, you can point everything temporary for each desktop session into this disk (user temp folders; caching directories of web browsers; download folders, etc.).

--

owners of samsung 840 pro, now we can also run in RAPID mode! download magician 4.3 from here: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/sem.../downloads.html

if i understand you correctly, in terms of consumer grade ssd's: if you're looking for reliability mainly and don't care about speed (you're happy with the sata2 speed), then most ssd's today can offer that. maybe you can choose one that has mlc nand chips with enterprise grade controller (like corsair neutron gtx, notably the older version with 25nm nand).

whether to get an entry level or high-end one, it's up to your usage requirements. to most users, they're the same except for several things that some care while some don't.

sata3 ssd's are common now. sata3 is 2x sata2 in terms of speed. if your computer supports sata3, then why not? again, whether you must 'die die' get sata3 ssd's or not is still up to you.

now, if you are really serious about reliability, you can go for enterprise ssd's, not normal consumer grade.

This post has been edited by horns: Dec 16 2013, 09:26 AM

1024kbps has answered all of your questions. i will add that samsung 840 pro imo is the nicest. now it can take advantage of RAPID mode that was previously only possible for evo (although iops doesn't increase, the speed does).

you haven't turned the RAPID mode on for samsung evo. right, for common usage there is not much difference.

samsung 840 pro is an enthusiast consumer ssd. if you need to use a ssd for enterprise server apps with high read/write's, it's better to get the enterprise grade. alternatively, plan your deployments to use ramdisk and hdd if necessary.

plextor is one of the better ones (like intel and samsung). i have 2.5" and msata ssd's from them. never had an issue.

if you refer performance to speed only, normally yes the speed increases with size but slightly, but not necessarily. for instance, http://www.sandisk.com/products/ssd/sata/extreme-ii/

for now, usually 240gb range is the sweet spot. (and sometimes in terms of speed this range has better results).

first don't say like that. everything starts from small. small investment is fine. at least it's started. ok maybe ram disk is not for you.

yeah eSSD is rather expensive. samsung 840 pro is good enough i guess. other options with 5-year warranty are corsair neutron gtx 240gb or plextor m5pro xtreme.

from what i have read, it has a high return rate (http://www.hardware.fr/articles/911-7/ssd.html)

one way to get 840 pro is to be patient, save more, and get a higher capacity one. it's gonna last you for years. it's not that you will change it after months.

we hope things can be that easy for ocz consumer ssd's. unfortunately ocz always like to prove us wrong.

the current sweet spot is 240-256gb based on price/performance/capacity (performance means read/write speeds and iops). if you must get it like right now and you have budget constraints, then 120gb is still better than lower capacity ones.

right; you know what it was like that's why i really don't recommend small-sized ssd's.

it's just better to get a 240gb and have more fun and less hassles. (just be patient, and save a bit more)

of course, if ms.windows, ms.office, and a selected few other apps are pretty much what you need, then 120gb should be ok (use a hdd as storage).