240GB SSD for £150

[DMcGuigan]

Just seen a nice little advert on facebook for the Kingston 240GB HyperX 3K SSD with WoW MMO Mouse Bundle. Currently going for £147.99 on eBuyer. They've only got 7 left, but there's a few more suppliers.

 

For that price, I can't see a reason not to pick them up, especially as you can just sell the mouse on for a nice price if you don't have a need for it.

 

Links:

 

eBuyer

Other Distributors

 

Appears to have quite a few places in Europe to buy from!

[localzuk]

I have one of the 120GB versions of this. Excellent little things. My machine flies.

[Arthur]

Even better...

 

256GB Crucial M4 for £129.94 (inc. VAT)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004W2JL2A

[glennda]

My Samsung 830 256 arrived about 10 mins ago - I've gotta work out how to clone the drive from my laptop which is 320 to the smaller drive - ideas people?

[localzuk]

Even better...

 

256GB Crucial M4 for £129.94 (inc. VAT)

Crucial CT256M4SSD2 256GB M4 SSD: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

 

Nowhere near as high performance though.

 

My Samsung 830 256 arrived about 10 mins ago - I've gotta work out how to clone the drive from my laptop which is 320 to the smaller drive - ideas people?

 

Clonezilla?

[Arthur]

Nowhere near as high performance though.

That's a bit of an exaggeration!!!

 

http://i.imgur.com/fDaHf.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/MMD59.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/Rhmq0.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/3PFSg.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/tvD54.png

 

In practice, SandForce based drives running a mainstream client workload do very well and typically boast low average write amplification. However if subjected to a workload composed entirely of incompressible writes (e.g. tons of compressed images, videos and music) you can back the controller into a corner.

 

To simulate this I filled the drive with incompressible data, ran a 4KB (100% LBA space, QD32) random write test with incompressible data for an hour and a half, and then ran AS-SSD (another incompressible data test) to see how low performance could get:

 

I usually run this test for only 20 minutes but after seeing an unusually resilient performance by the 240GB drives I decided to extend the test period to a full 90 minutes. Performance does drop pretty far at that point, down to 103MB/s. TRIMing the drive does restore some performance but not all. If you have a workload that uses a lot of incompressible data (e.g. JPGs, H.264 videos, software encrypted data, highly random datasets etc...) then SandForce just isn't for you. (Source)