TR Forums

Firstly: I've decided to jump on the bandwagon, and after a quick look around, was prepared to pay the premium for reliability of a 120GB Intel 520 (£150 from OCUK).

After checking my Windows + Program Files sizes, (170GB together), realised I should suck it up and go for a 200+GB drive. Thing is, the Sandisk 240GB drive is only £160. AND, from a shop that's ~15mins drive away (whereas OCUK charges £8 for shipping), so as good as the same price as the half-sized intel drive.

Question is, has anyone used/experienced a Sandisk drive? Are they decent? Drive failure won't be the end of the world, but I really don't want any hassle from it.
Storage Review make the argument that:

When considering variables beyond SSD performance like endurance, compatibility and reliability, we generally find those who own key storage technologies to have an advantage. Though some SSD companies do a good job of assembling other people's components, there's substantial benefit when in SanDisk's case, you have both the NAND fab and engineering knowhow that competitors don't. Drive reliability tends to be better, but from the consumer perspective, a great advantage may be responsiveness to issues via rapid firmware updates. When evaluating an SSD, such support is important, especially in this enthusiast SSD category.

I'm hesitant, because I don't read much about their drives, and there's no TR review yet

Secondly: Can you set up a drive to boot from a backup partition? Ideally, I'd like to have the SSD (Windows + programs) backed up maybe once every two weeks, but to a partition that is bootable, should the SSD go dark. Possible?

mikehodges2 wrote:

Secondly: Can you set up a drive to boot from a backup partition? Ideally, I'd like to have the SSD (Windows + programs) backed up maybe once every two weeks, but to a partition that is bootable, should the SSD go dark. Possible?

If the SSD "goes dark" then none of the partitions on it will be available. There are failure modes that might affect just one partition, but most of the ones that you really worry about (like firmware failures) are going to affect the entire drive. A backup that becomes unavailable precisely when you need it isn't much of a backup.

Sorry, probably should have specified, back up to a second drive (probably to a new F3 I'm thinking of getting at the same time!) So, once backed up, I could boot from either drive.
Obviously there's RAID1, but I assume it needs to use similar drives (or would one SSD, one HDD work without losing ssd performance, wih the hdd acting as the backup drive?) I can't afford/justify two SSD's.

Without a model number it is hard to answer your question, but these are the two SSDs at Newegg, the reviews are not that many but a good start....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... rchInDesc=

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As far as I'm aware, there is only one model of 240GB Sandisk Extreme... The 'ultra' was their first drive, a sort of proof of concept (hence the relatively poor spec). The 'extreme' came after, a more competitive attempt. Something like that, anyway

SanDisk is using Toshiba 24nm Toggle Flash. They entered into an agreement with Toshiba to purchase part of their fab, a sort of Asian IMFT (Intel Micron Flash Technologies... or was it Fabrication Technologies?).

I love the hell out of some 24nm Toggle, but if you can find a Crucial M4 for around the same price, that might be a good option too. Alternately, if you have the option, Mushkin's Chronos Deluxe is using 32nm Toshiba Toggle, and it's quite inexpensive here stateside in a 240GB flavour.

Going to bump this with a new question, rather than start another thread.

Would I notice a difference under everyday use if I were to hook up the drive to a PCI-e SATA3 card, vs my onboard SATA II?

If so, are there any SATA 6Gbps add in cards that also have USB3?