The SSD Megathread - Don't buy OCZ/Toshiba, Kingston, or Crucial drives, read the OP

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The SSD Megathread - Don't buy OCZ/Toshiba, Kingston, or Crucial drives, read the OP

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

the spyder posted:

My Intel 520 240gb is getting full on my laptop. Should I go for a Intel 520 480gb or the Crucial M4 512?

Why not clear up some space first? Start with reducing the size of WinSxS (http://www.iishacks.com/2011/06/23/reduce-windows-7-winsxs-folder-size/) and try using windirstat to find out what's taking all your space. Pagefile, hibernation file, and outlook pst is usually what takes the most space

# ¿ May 3, 2012 03:49

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 06:11

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

2 more OCZ drives died, hooray.

Any 1.8" drives come out somewhat recently? Thinkpad X300 needs a new drive.

# ¿ May 11, 2012 01:07

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Dogen posted:

much like Thermalright products.

You take that back :mad:

They only really do black or silver these days anyways

# ¿ May 18, 2012 00:48

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

I supported them because back then, nobody else made a 1.8" drive that didn't cost a hundred million dollars.

I am stupid and I should feel bad.

# ¿ May 24, 2012 04:45

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Don't forget about OCZ's actual capacity (115 vs 120gb) thing going on, or the switch to 25nm without advertising it as such, or that they didn't even admit to the marvell controller until someone took one of their drives apart and called them on it.

Shady, shady company.

# ¿ May 24, 2012 21:30

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Don't do that, it's not good for your ssd. Use an actual ssd erase program.

Parted magic can do it: http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20115106-285/how-to-securely-erase-an-ssd-drive/

# ¿ May 25, 2012 10:33

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Remember when OCZ was hyping up an affordable phase-change cooling system, the Cryo-Z?

# ¿ May 28, 2012 05:28

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Crucial makes an mSATA c400 drive

# ¿ Jul 2, 2012 07:50

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Oops, looks like the C400 is the oem version, and the M4 is the retail version.

Which I can't find either.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2012 10:20

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

There's more:

http://blog.macsales.com/9438-not-all-ssd%92s-are-created-equal-the-story-continues

And probably the most damning:
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/890075-copperfield-research/166874-ocz-the-master-of-ssd-shady-suspect-deceitful

# ¿ Jul 7, 2012 00:48

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

I doubt it's the least reliable. There's always the Solid and the Petrol and the Octane. Not saying the Agility is reliable at all, but

# ¿ Jul 15, 2012 20:09

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

It'll sell for far less than the MSRP.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2012 02:12

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

In today's installment of OCZ being shady fucks, they're using Micron nand, and "Micron wafer packaged by OCZ".

Guess who else uses Micron wafer? That's right, everyone's favorite, Spectek.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2012 09:28

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Empty your recycle bin. That's one of the events that will start the garbage collection process. Then leave it for a while.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2012 07:56

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Recommendations for the first post:

- the Kingston hyperx 3k is fine, it's just 3k nand. Which is very common, and not a problem at all; lifespan is technically reduced by 40%, but you'll almost upgrade before you're even close to half of that, since the estimated lifespan is about 8 years for 3k nand as opposed to 13 years for 5k nand when writing 10gb per day. Even the Crucial M4 and Intel 330 use 3k nand.
- Kingston's v200+ is sandforce sf2281 but with async nand. Given the price, also not worth buying.
- Cache drives: Not worth buying.
- Crucial V4: It's a budget sata 3gbps drive that was just released. Probably so Micron can get rid of some nand. It's not worth buying.
- PCI-E ssds: Too expensive for home users, weird compatability issues (some boards will not boot to a pci-e ssd).
- Plextor ssds are excellent, if they're on sale.

- Does the 830 use IMFT ONFI 2.0 Synchronous nand? Pretty sure Samsung makes their own nand and doesn't use Intel Micron Flash Technologies

- TRIM when using ssd's is now possible, provided you have an intel 7-series chipset.

- Also, maybe post some crystal disk mark results of the popular ssds (mushkin, crucial, samsung, intel) in that post so people can see about what speeds they can expect

# ¿ Sep 2, 2012 04:50

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

The 320 is old. 25nm nand, Intel controller, but also much slower speeds.

The 330 and 520 are almost the same, except the 330 uses 3k nand instead of 5k nand. That's the major difference.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2012 02:55

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

I've looked through dozens of Kingston HyperX 3k reviews, and not a single one shows anything spectek, kingston branded, or anything of that nature. Every single one I've seen is Micron branded nand. The HyperX 3k should be fine.
In fact, the only brand I've ever seen using spectek is OCZ.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 02:25

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Martello posted:

I'm thinking of getting a second SSD to move all my games to, and I was looking at the new Crucial V4 line. Are they good or should I try out the Samsung? I have an M4 as my system disk right now and it works just fine.

No, the V4 is a 3gbps drive. It's slow, and not worth buying.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 21:28

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

There are so many things wrong with that, that I'm not even going to try to begin to tell you.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2012 10:48

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Got mine, had to wait 3 months, but that's not unexpected with a mail in rebate.

Most rebates are one-per-household though, so those 3 OCZ Vertex 3 120gb drives for $60, will probably end up being more like $60+$80+$80 = $220.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2012 21:00

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

mik posted:

I wonder how many OCZ drives does it take in an array to ensure a probability of failure = 1?

2?

Real question, sadly OCZ related:

I want to replace the platter HDD in my Mac Mini HTPC with an SSD. I have two SSDs sitting around, an older 120GB Vertex II (no issues when I was using it) and a 160GB Intel 320. Since OS X is TRIM-less, should I put in the Vertex which has better GC? Given that the HTPC streams data off a separate NAS - the drive will sit pretty much empty (and infrequently used) - does that negate the preference for good garbage collection?

Put the intel drive on. The mac mini is a pretty big pain in the rear end to replace drives in.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2012 04:49

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Best choices are the Intel 330 and the Samsung 830.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2012 09:20

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

yes

# ¿ Dec 15, 2012 02:13

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Ninja Rope posted:

He can go ahead and use them if he really wants, but there's what, a 5-8% chance per drive that the drive will fail?

plus, 2 drives, and most likely in raid 0, so basically a 100% chance of failure

# ¿ Dec 26, 2012 07:01

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Another drive to avoid: Kingston SSDNow V300. Uses 19nm nand. Isn't a stellar performer.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2012 01:10

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Crucial announces M500

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6614/microncrucial-announces-m500-ssd-line-of-ssds

- fast on paper
- 20nm MLC nand
- increase of overprovisioning from 7 to 14.5%
- 7.5mm height.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2013 23:10

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Alereon posted:

Newegg also has the Samsung 840 250GB for $179.99 and the Intel SSD 335 240GB for $194.99. The 840 has low-endurance NAND, but that's not really expected to be an issue on 250GB and larger drives. You can find widespread reports of failures on LAMD-based drives via Google, though of course that doesn't prove anything. The bottom line is that you can find fast, proven drives for around the same price as questionable LAMD drives, so why bother taking the risk?

335 has the 19nm nand as well, and given that the 240gb 330 is usually around the same price

# ¿ Feb 8, 2013 05:54

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

The Pink Ninja posted:

Speaking of the reliability of Intel SSD 335, I just had one stop working entirely on me and was wondering what the best way to do data recovery or troubleshooting is? I had noticed (and shouldn't have ran with it) that in about 1 in 10 boots it wouldn't register and it would hang at the BIOS screen, but otherwise it was running OK. I tried to boot it this morning and the BIOS doesn't even see it.

Try going into bios, and leaving it there for a few minutes. It might show up. I know it's not a crucial drive, but I've done that with another drive and it's worked afterwards.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2013 23:23

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

NEW drives to avoid until they mature:

* SanDisk Ultra Plus (would make a decent low-end drive, but isn't usually much cheaper than the other faster drives in the "Good" list above)

# ¿ May 31, 2013 08:24

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

There exists an adaptor that converts from the MBA connector to regular SATA. It costs about $15.

Don't forget that different generation MBAs have different connectors, and the ooooold MBAs are PATA ssds.

Honestly if it's older than 2011 it's not really worth it.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2013 07:33

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

I have a mid 2011 mac mini with a 2.3ghz core i5 (sandy bridge), 8gb ram, hd3000 graphics, and a 128gb Crucial M4. Said M4 is running 0309 firmware, and trim is enabled.

Recently, I upgraded to 10.9 Mavericks, and I've been getting more beachballs (where I had almost none back in 10.8 mountain lion) and random slow performance; could this be because I only have about 5gb free on the drive, or would this be another reason?

# ¿ Nov 16, 2013 11:58

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

So, about pny..

http://www.tweaktown.com/blogs/Chris_Ramseyer/93/bait-and-switch-the-sad-state-of-ssds/index.html

# ¿ Jun 14, 2014 04:14

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 06:11

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

For the op rewrite it may make sense to make use of flow charts and huge bold links that go to separate posts.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 20:23

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The SSD Megathread - Don't buy OCZ/Toshiba, Kingston, or Crucial drives, read the OP