if there is nothing about things related to ssd, yes you can ignore bios update.

in general when hardware has issues, random things can happen so there is no definite answers. fortunately, most of them can be isolated if you do step-by-step trouble shooting.

vertex 2.. and it's still rocking? that's nice

this will be a good upgrade for you, in terms of speed and capacity.

great i suggest keep it. use it as storage. it's really too small for anything these days but it's still better than most usb sticks.

did you try garage sales? if you're out of luck, maybe you can look for other drives also.

if you're looking for mainstream drives for common usage, maybe transcend ssd370 should be good enough. (it should be below myr 800) use it as boot/apps/game drive. for downloads, storage, and scratch disk, use hdd.

scout garage sales also. good offers can be found there from time to time.

edit: note that reliability is really subjective, depending on your usage mainly. the only guarantee that you can get is warranty from manufacturer. here we can only suggest what's best based on user reviews and comments.

This post has been edited by horns: Aug 29 2015, 09:33 PM

performance drives will be few hundred more, usually over 1.3k. common choices are plextor m6 pro and samsung 850 pro.

most sata ssds (mainstream or performance) are almost at sata bandwidth limits (around 560MB/s). yes performance drives tend to have relative better sustainable r/w speeds, and with a longer warranty period.

about speed, the ideal choice is m.2 pcie 3.0 x4 ssds, ahci or nvme. (it can reach around 2.2GB/s per unit) however the price is much higher.

maybe you can tell us about the specs of your computer, especially availability of sata ports, m.2 ports (pcie or sata), and msata ports.

This post has been edited by horns: Aug 30 2015, 12:46 AM

oh there was a typo about sata approximate max speeds sorry. it should be around 560MB/s.

right, it's better to do research for what you want. there are some internals that you can learn only through research

edit: unless it's for work purposes, imo mainstream drives are good enough. go for capacity rather than performance.

This post has been edited by horns: Aug 30 2015, 01:33 AM

no 560MB/s are just numbers for marketing for sata ssds. in reality, the actual sustainable speeds (file transfers between sata ssds) are from about 200MB/s to 450MB/s (worst case; maybe a bit lower or higher).

here is my xp941 128gb. i picked this one because it has higher read speeds (i'm fine with anything above 300MB/s of seq. write speed). i use it as a boot drive only (where read speed matters more than write).


however, if you asked me about the difference between the two in terms of my daily usage, i will tell you i can settle with sata ssd. it's true that pcie ssd is faster (xp941 is pcie 2.0 x4), but to get full benefits out of it, you need to check your usage.

they are just numbers. if you really need that speed, just do 2x sata ssd 256gb raid0. i use pcie ssd because i wanna get rid of that raid boot screen hehe

you can also get samsung sm951 from garage sales too. that one is pcie 3.0 x4. max seq. speed is about 2GB/s.

yes. by then pcie nvme ssds should be more matured than now. as for sata ssds, we will look for much larger capacities.

in general, if you use a ssd within its limits, you don't need to worry about stability and reliability.

personally i believe ssds from kingston hypex brand are ok, but price might be high.

no it's not. it's a value drive for those who have tight budgets. it's still relatively better than hdd.

yes, i think you can. value ssds are mainly meant for entry-level market.

Samsung Magician Software 4.7

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/sem.../downloads.html

New in Version 4.7
Magician version 4.7 features a number of improvements over version 4.6:
- New model support: 850 PRO 2TB, 850 EVO 2TB
- Advanced Performance Optimization support for 840 EVO mSATA; New firmware is required to use Advanced Performance Optimization
- Minor bug fixes

Have you tried garage sales here? Not sure about availability but you can send them a pm to find out.

the risks with raid0 are more related to the scope of long term storage (e.g. 4x4tb raid0 as data storage. losing important data on that one can make people go crazy).

as boot setup, risks are still there but it's not really that critical, because the remedy is quite simple: create system images every now and then, and keep your data outside of raid0 (like store them in a separate hdd). with these two simple steps, you can recover from raid0 failure very much faster (in my case, under an hour. all software and patches installed up until the backup was created. usually no data loss)

tbh after 1 year+ i haven't got a single raid0 failure yet.

the pricing is relative to weak ringgit. well, good luck.

samsung 850 evo? if you're looking at warranty and its rapid mode (if your system has sufficient ram to support it), yes it's ok. however for best bang for bucks (and i thought you're going this route), you can get a mlc drive like s900 at cheaper price.

oh ok got it. tbh, there is nothing significant between mainstream sata ssds that you can compare, in terms of performance for common usage. however, the additional warranty is a good point.

rapid mode is ram-based caching. it uses system ram to store frequently used files from ssd. in general, the good things about this ram caching are that you can run anything stored in ram at much faster speeds, and it helps to reduce writes to your ssd. however, for common usage, you actually don't feel any performance differences between a system with and without it; there is a limit of how much ram can be allocated to rapid mode. (if a system have less ram, lesser amount can be allocated to it, hence the results might be less optimal)


This post has been edited by horns: Sep 7 2015, 05:36 PM

right, the priority to have a stable system still means allocating sufficient ram to the system itself first. 8gb imo is good for a system without rapid mode. (which is actually good enough for many) it's more optimal to turn rapid mode on only if you have 12gb system ram or more.

yeah ram caching makes user experience relatively smoother. however this is an optional optimization at the expense of your system ram.