Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, morphine, Steel
Madman wrote:Is the failure rate mentioned @ http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/0 ... scale.html real?
Would it be a good idea to just go with Intel 320 120GB to have a reliable drive, or the reliability is not an issue anymore?
Madman wrote:Would it be a good idea to just go with Intel 320 120GB to have a reliable drive, or the reliability is not an issue anymore?
parism wrote:For me, reliability is a must. My mobo only supports SATA II so I was limited to these bandwidths looking fon an SSD.
Madman wrote:It seems that I'm going with Intel 320/120GB as well.
Backups might be an option, but if you backup every 2 hours you loose any edge SSD might have, and if you don't, 1 week of coding is actually quite a lot to loose.
halfline wrote:Intel makes by far the most reliable SSDs. They are not the fastest nor the cheapest, but probably the most reliable. I say "perhaps" because Samsung also has a decent record, but the 830 is relatively new.
http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html
Madman wrote:It seems that I'm going with Intel 320/120GB as well.
Backups might be an option, but if you backup every 2 hours you loose any edge SSD might have, and if you don't, 1 week of coding is actually quite a lot to loose.
DPete27 wrote:Kingston, Corsair, OCZ, Mushkin use Sanforce conrollers. The Sandforce BSOD bug was "fixed" in late October 2011. I haven't seen or heard much complaining since then. I own a Vertex 3 with the latest firmware fix and haven't had a problem, even when trying to persue the BSOD path. Most of the BSOD's were able to be fixed by resetting power to the drive, I believe data loss was uncommon. If you grab a sandforce drive, get a Kingston HyperX, Corsair Force GT, OCZ Vertex 3, or Mushkin Enhanced Chronos as they use synchronous NAND and will not suffer as much performance-wise in incompressible reads and writes. Asynchronous NAND SSD's (Corsair Force3, OCZ Agility 3) tend to run cheaper and may still be a good solution if you aren't a power user. The majority of percieved SSD benefits are in response times which you'll see in any SSD regardless of NAND type or controller compared to a mechanical hard drive. Sandforce drives excel at compressible data reads and writes.
Crucial uses a marvell controller. They used to be considered the safe and cost effective choice (as opposed on intel being safe and expensive). However, they have recently found that the Crucial m4 is prone to a BSOD bug after 5,000 hours of use. A firmware fix isnt due out for a couple weeks according to this article. I would imagine that if you bought an m4 now, they would have a firmware fix out by the time you hit 5,000 hours of use. The Crucial m4 represents more of an even keel performance across various types of reads/writes/access times as opposed to sandforce ssd's that can be much better at some things but worse than the Crucial m4 at others.
Samsung 830 SSD's are making a big impact, but I hesitate to grab one since they've only been on the market for a short time. They do seem to be a nice compromise between Sandforce and Marvell drives.
You can glance over this article from TR on some of the major SSD's if you'd like some numbers to look at. Also, remember that SSD's are highly parallel in that the more capacity a drive has the better its performance will be. I like to use a general rule of thumb that you don't get "optimal" performance until you get over the 90GB mark.
Chrispy_ wrote:If you're worried about reliability get an Intel who have 2% RMA rates.
The rest have higher RMA rates in the 3-5% range, but that's hardly different to mechanical disks. I think there's just more whining and press coverage about SSD's because
a) They have firmware that users themselves can flash. People don't generally bother flashing mechanical disks because they don't support any new windows features like TRIM or have complex firmware. Anyway, flashing anything increases the risk of bricking something
b) They cost 10x more per gigabyte. People don't worry about a $40 hard disk. "Meh, I'll get another one". When your $400 SSD dies, you feel outrage simply because you feel something that expensive should be high quality. In this case it's not, it's the same quality as a cheap $40 hard disk, it's just that the underlying technology is far more expensive to produce.
halfline wrote:Intel makes by far the most reliable SSDs. They are not the fastest nor the cheapest, but probably the most reliable.
My personal opinion is to wait for the Intel 520. It's coming out relatively soon (Q1 2012) and it will marry both the reliability of Intel with some very high speeds (it's probably a SF2 w/ custom firmware).
thegleek wrote:So Q1 2012 has arrived! Are there any retailers (ie: Newegg, Micro Center --- do people go anywhere else these days! lol) selling these 520's yet?
I heard they will be available in 5 capacities (60gb, 120gb, 180gb, 240gb, and 480gb).
just brew it! wrote:I would add to that:
c) The lack of moving parts -- and how that is supposed to result in vastly improved reliability -- has been one of the selling points used by SSD vendors. When reality diverged from the marketing hype, people felt cheated.