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

«‹›2 »

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

I just picked up my first SSD, an 80GB intel 320-series. It's going to go into my laptop, I'll just do a fresh win7 install on it. Prior to that, I'd like to make sure that it has the latest firmware.

I have a SATA to USB 3 dock on my desktop PC. Should that work fine with intel's SSD toolbox software? Or should I just stop being lazy and plug it directly in via SATA?

# ¿ Feb 2, 2012 20:37

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:55

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

MrBigglesworth posted:

She is never off of AC power and the reason I went to 256 is because her old drive was a 320GB of which she was already up to 107GB of usage. And, she can afford it. She isnt heavy into games, just light video, email/facebook and photos (of which we have external and online storage) But even doing that now on 5400 is ASSSSS slow because the disc is always being accessed and taking forever to load poo poo because of 5400rpm speeds.

Not that it matters much if you already ordered it, but 32GB of that 107GB that's used might be space allocated to the recycle bin. It might have been that a 120GB SSD would be completely adequate to meet her storage needs.

If cost isn't a concern, I suppose that doesn't matter, but that should be a shot in the arm to that laptop.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2012 20:53

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Scored one of the 128GB Crucial drives this morning to throw into my desktop. It's chugging along with a pair of 2TB slow-rear end drives in it, and is constantly grinding. I've disabled the SATA3 controller on my mobo, because I didn't want to see its bios screen when I booted and it didn't matter with super slow platter drives, but now I'll feel bad if I'm not using it to its full advantage.

Looking forward to a massive speed increase on this thing. And I'm glad to see SSD's come down to earth on the prices.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2012 18:44

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

bigger thicker loads posted:

I'm selling a 128GB Samsung 830 in this thread right here if anyone is interested:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3474700

Speaking of, Newegg had this down to $140 yesterday, which is good news as far as price drops. Previously, Samsung had intel-esque premiums on their drives. We'll probably be below $1/GB for most SSD's by the end of Summer.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 20:00

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Bob Morales posted:

Oh, I know. But people have also been giving the Agility 3's the green light.

OCZ has an important role in the SSD world, and that is to drag prices down by the competent SSD vendors. You're already aware of their history and practices, if you want to gamble on one of their drives, please do.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2012 18:19

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

CLAM DOWN posted:

I'm considering picking this up from NCIX for $99 for my first SSD and I'm really wary, I've never thought about doing this before. Do you guys find yourself with a lot of space issues for everyday things? I'm coming from a 1tb Caviar Black main drive here so I'm hesitant as hell, despite the great price for this.

Do what everyone else does, and keep your big media files on your HDD and your OS and a few frequently used apps and games on your SSD.

# ¿ May 10, 2012 22:13

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

You really shouldn't be paying over $1/GB anymore for an SSD.

$199 for a 256GB Cruial M4. Even amazon's price on it is only $220.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=365476&CatId=5300

OCZ's drives are going for even less, but...well...you know. Regular SSD prices dropping so fast means SRT is kinda useless, and hybrid drives are really only for those who just need a large drive in a single-drive bay notebook.

# ¿ May 18, 2012 16:01

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Sorry for posting the tiger direct deal, guys, I didn't know they were that lovely. Amazon is down to $210 for the drive, and is a much better vendor.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-CT256M4SSD2/dp/B004W2JL2A

# ¿ May 19, 2012 05:13

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

I had to upgrade my desktop within a week of seeing what it did to my laptop.

In the good news, we've just seen significant price drops across the board. It's very easy to get a decent 120/128GB SSD for $99 now.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2012 19:41

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Dominoes posted:

I'm going to buy a ~240GB SSD to replace my 120GB one. Uninstalling games before installing new ones is becoming a pain. Which one should I buy? This Corsair for $250?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443
The 256GB M4 might be a tad slower, but it would be imperceptible. It's $199.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2012 23:35

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Argyle posted:

The prices continue to fall: Crucial M4 256GB is $179.99 on Amazon today.

That's a god drat steal. Anyone that doesn't have a SSD yet should spring for that drive.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2012 19:36

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

HalloKitty posted:

Obviously nobody from Microsoft reads SHSC..

They probably just put out a competitive bid on the supply of drives. I'd love to hear how this plays out, but we won't. OCZ is going to be running full blast shipping out drive replacements though.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2012 22:07

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Stumpalitious posted:

The other day I got an OCZ Vertex 3 120GB for 70 bucks on newegg. I know they're not exactly the most reliable drives, but for 70 bucks I'm willing to give it a shot. Should be coming in today or tomorrow, so stoked to put Windows 7 on a SSD and have sweet boot times. Hopefully it works!

Good luck, though if you come back in here asking how to fix your bluescreens, you'll end up getting more pointing and laughing than help.

OCZ is often the price leader, but not by much anymore. The person a couple posts above you spent $20 more for Intel reliability, which would have been money well spent.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2012 18:09

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

It's a good idea to always run the latest firmware available. You don't need to, but you should, especially if you're at a point where you could afford data loss if it occurs.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2012 19:06

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Red Robin Hood posted:

So when my M4 gets here how do I see what firmware it's running? Is that BIOS only or can I look for it in the device manager?

You can also look at the device properties under the device manager. One of the tabs will have a series of info, you'll see something that looks like this:

code:

xxx_____________________0309
xxxxxx ________________________0309

# ¿ Aug 22, 2012 16:13

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Red Robin Hood posted:

Hasn't failed me or anything but how easy is it to get a warranty replacement if I didn't purchase my M4 from Crucial, or Amazon or anything?

Standard RMA, probably. Click NO and follow the steps.

http://www.crucial.com/support/rma/index.aspx

# ¿ Aug 29, 2012 19:01

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Budgie posted:

I'm not going to buy it, but JEEBUS!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-048-OC

�44 for a 120GB SSD, going to be a lot of people who get burned later by an OCZ drive.

120GB vertex 3 can be had even cheaper in the US, $60 shipped (w/rebate). Good luck to those who try, I wouldn't.

The only positive thing about OCZ is that they drag down the prices of those producing reputable products.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2012 19:25

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Mister Fister posted:

Interesting product from Sandisk, a cache only SSD to speed up your crappy HDD

http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/05/sandisk-readycache/

Kind of a silly product with strange restrictions. Proprietary software that works with win7 only?

Cache, readyboost, SRT, all these solutions seem kind of lame when just using a regular SSD for your system drive gets you better performance in all instances. And now that a decent 120GB+ SSD can be had for under $100, I'm not sure why anyone would go for one of these.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 18:24

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Jamsta posted:

There's a dude in the comments section for that article saying the same thing - not you is it?

If you need 500gb+ of storage space, and convenience of SSD speeds, this is what it's good at.

Until SSDs are cheaper than HDDs, this is a decent compromise technology.

Not me, but he must be a very bright fellow.

But that's the thing - you don't get SSD speeds across your 500GB drive. If you've got a few 10GB games installed on there, you're not going to see SSD launch speeds and unreadable splash screens. If you're editing 5GB video files, you're not going to see SSD speeds. You may end up with slightly faster boot and increased windows performance, but it's not a solution that pans out like people would hope.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 18:55

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

I've seen the OCZ Defense Force posting in other tech forums and deal sites, claiming that the drives are solid investments. Newegg also has a hearty legion of these dudes posting 5-star reviews for the drives.

The funniest is when you see a 5-star review, talking about how his first (DOA) drive was returned within a week and the replacement is humming along just fine.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2012 16:28

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Alereon posted:

Seagate is pretty much the OCZ of harddrives though. They've had a few very high profile and many more not-so-high-profile firmware bugs, often resulting in data loss. They also make at least one line of external harddrives (GoFlex Desk) that can't possibly work (and don't), because they are sealed and the drives inside overheat and shut off before you can transfer more than a small amount of data. They seem to have an almost OCZ-like disregard for the quality of the products they produce, and given their history of buying bottom-tier manufacturers (Maxtor), it could be a match made in heaven.

I'd never heard that analysis of Seagate before, I had always thought they produced consistently decent products. They never had a failure on par with IBM's Deskstars (Deathstar) or even WD's 1TB Green drives. And Maxtor actually had a pretty good reputation through the 2000's, especially with system builders. Conner was the only brand I knew of that actually made shoddy hard drives, but they were acquired way back when.

Regardless, I'd hate to start seeing consolidation in the SSD market, especially now that we're seeing competition drive prices down significantly. I've almost given up on seeing hard drive prices dip to where they were last spring, too few players mean that everyone wants to keep prices up.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2012 18:34

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Flipperwaldt posted:

Was this the thing with the time-out issues in a raid setup or something else entirely?

It's just that my dad told me today he was looking to buy one of these for his desktop (no raid).

I think it was a firmware problem in the WD10EARS drive, it was pretty widespread, and I believe WD may have fixed it. I don't think the current green drives have any known issues.

The point was that I hadn't heard of any widespread Seagate problems, or had any reason to believe them to be a 'tainted' brand. If they grab up OCZ, I'd expect them to put some quality control practices to use, though they'd be better off to ditch the OCZ branding and just put Seagate on everything.

Very odd that WD and Seagate aren't players in the SSD market by now. I see WD had a few "industrial" drives, but no consumer products. Maybe an acquisition after things get sorted was always part of the plan.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2012 19:13

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Cold on a Cob posted:

Are the Crucial M4 512 GB ssds any good? They seem to be cheap enough that I could get away with just using one of those instead of an SSD and a HDD, but if the performance really sucks compared to other SSDs then maybe not worth it. Neither the original post or the charts at Anandtech mention or include these drives, unless I missed something.

They're terrific drives, and very fast. Other drives might have a performance edge, but it's imperceptible in daily use and will only show up in benchmarks.

I have an m4 that I've been very pleased with in every way. It's well-liked here and considered one of the most reliable brands.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2012 19:04

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

BusinessWallet posted:

Is it worth getting two 830's and putting them in a RAID 0? I need about 360 gigs of space.

There are only downsides to raid 0 in this case, you wouldn't see a performance difference. Does it have to be a single volume?

# ¿ Sep 26, 2012 20:22

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Martytoof posted:

Unhappy to read about OCZ's reliability since I replaced all our workstation OS drives with OCZ SSDs on the advice of our hardware reseller

Which model did they send? How many workstations? Looking forward to the post-mortem reports.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2012 20:58

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Did you know that Monster (yes, that Monster) has a SSD? The price is about 1/4 of what I'd expect, and it's missing the marketing copy that boasts of herculean feats of data transfer speeds, far exceeding the competition.

http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Digital-Daytona-2-5-Inch-858019003457/dp/B008VD4TMS

Anyway, it's probably just another Sandforce clone, but this is the first I've seen of it.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2012 04:47

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

shodanjr_gr posted:

Is this not working any more?

It should show 199, look for the green promo text under the item title.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2012 19:22

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Martytoof posted:

Yeah no I mean I'll get a different brand SSD to RAID with the OCZ.

Do the users store docs on a server? If you have consistent workstation hardware, just keep a couple imaged spares around to swap in when disaster strikes.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2012 02:24

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

That should be an indicator of the value.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2012 05:37

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

HalloKitty posted:

For those in the UK, the Samsung 830 256GB has just hit �129.99 on ebuyer.
http://www.ebuyer.com/398216-samsung-256gb-830-series-ssd-mz-7pc256b-ww

Yes, it's cheaper than anywhere else by a decent margin right now.

I picked up the same drive for $150 (USD, of course) yesterday, some company was clearancing them through ebay. This will replace my 128GB M4, which will now live in the PC I'm building for my parents. Lucky them.

I'm not sure why Samsung (or their vendors) are clearing out the 830, it's still a top-tier device with great reliability. Get 'em while they're hot.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2012 16:19

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

ShadowHawk posted:

Amazon tells me the Samsung 840 is out as a newer model of the 830...does anyone have any good comparison points for them? Current prices are 9 dollars more for 128gb, 30 dollars more for 256 gb, and 50 dollars less for 512gb, so I have no idea.

The 830 just as fast in practice as the 840 pro. Spending more for the 840 gets you no benefit, unless the primary app you run is some silly benchmark program.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2012 16:45

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

My 830 shipped with Ghost, which I didn't realize wasn't the full version. Then I realized I had one of these.

http://www.amazon.com/Cavalry-Retriever-EN-CAHDD2BU3C-ZB-Standalone-Duplicator/dp/B003ZDLATE

I duplicated my 128GB SSD to my 256GB SSD, booted up, let disk manager take up the rest of the disk space on the fly, and it was quick and painless. Day-to-day, it's just an awesome USB3 sata drive dock. Highly recommended.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2012 21:37

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Lando131 posted:

I'm looking to upgrade to an SSD for the first time and have been keeping track of this thread for a year or so. Newegg has what looks like a pretty good sale today, a Crucial M4 256MB 7mm for $170.

I was hoping to get either an M4 or a Samsung 830, but the recent firmware issues on the M4 make me a bit hesitant, but the price seems so good it'd be foolish to wait. That said, is there any known issues with the 7mm architecture as opposed to the 9mm on the M4?

The m4 is still an excellent drive. I built a win8 system around one and used it on a sata2 controller with a 2010 amd processor. It boots in 2 seconds after POST and is instant in all operations. It's been solid as hell for me and most others here.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2012 15:40

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Hogo Fogo posted:

Hello.
I will be getting my first ever SSD (Samsung 830 256GB) and I wonder: Should I plug it into the Intel 3.0 Gb/s connector or the Marvell 6.0 Gb/s connector? The manual states that "The SATA6G_E1 connectors are for data drives only." but I intend to use is as an OS drive. I am confused, thanks for your help.

It probably said something about ATAPI drives not being supported after that, right?

Plug your SSD into the 6Gb/s adapter. You won't notice much of a difference, but some operations might be faster. It should work fine.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2012 18:53

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Josh Lyman posted:

How convenient that Arstechnica gets a sample of the regular 840 and AnandTech gets a sample of the 840 Pro.

Didn't both of Anandtech's 840 pro's die? Feeling pretty loving :smug:

about having bought an 830 last month.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2012 17:42

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Alereon posted:

Like it says in the OP, do not buy the Samsung 840. It's new, it's the first drive using a new type of Flash memory, so if you buy it you are taking an exceptional risk.

Edit: I made some tweaks to the OP to raise the increase the noticeability of the Samsung warning and to add the recent changes in endurance to that section, it needs a revamp though.

It's not just a good idea to avoid it because it's new, it's a good idea to avoid it because several review units have failed. 830 is an exceptional drive, and most everyone here that owns one (me, too) have been very happy with them.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2282016

# ¿ Nov 22, 2012 20:43

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

No one has had BSOD problems with the Samsung 830, right? I put one in about a month ago, and this weekend, I started getting BSOD's pop up every 30 minutes or so. Mem tests are running fine, and I'm doing the Sandra burn-in test with no issues, it's just random computing that pops the blue screen, and it looks like SSD's are frequently the culprit.

Is there a util I can run to test for SSD errors? I'm pretty sure I'm on the latest firmware.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2012 05:16

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Trotski Icepick posted:

Did you check the Firmware with the Magician Software that's shipped with the drive? The O/S Optimization part advises you to turn some stuff off like Indexing and Superfetch etc, it will atleast allow you to check some settings. I have the 830 240Gb and haven't had any problems, but it came shipped with the latest firmware (CXM03B1Q).

Yeah, I'm on the latest, which appears to have been released in February.

I ran the optimization as well as the benchmark util, just for kicks, to try to force a bluescreen, and everything seems solid. I'm currently under the assumption that the SSD isn't the problem, and I'll just blame my wife for using Calibre, the most unstable app installed on our PC.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2012 17:49

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

simcole posted:

Is the consensus still out on the Samsung 840 drives?

I think the thread has been cautious enough with the 840's to let up on the recommendation embargo. It hasn't shown failure rates high enough to worry about.

Newegg's reviews of the 840 (non-pro) have a significant amount of data points showing that it's a pretty safe buy. Same with the pro, if you're willing to pay more for performance.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2013 00:44

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:55

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Has anyone thrown a SSD into a p4-era computer? I threw together a p4 (3ghz HT, I think) PC together for the inlaws, and it's dog loving slow, even with a fresh install of Win7(32) on it. I think the HDD is an old 10k drive, I expected it to be quicker, but it continually grinds, even with 3GB of RAM.

I'm wondering if the investment will pay off. I'll probably only do it if I can get a dirt cheap 64GB SSD or something like that.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2013 19:21

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

«‹›2 »