Which SSD drives are people using now?

[bossman]

Hi all,

Just wondering which SSD drives are using now and how much they are paying for them and where from?

 

Would like peoples thoughts on size of drives they use i.e. 64Gb or 128Gb for desktop.

 

Any pitfalls we should look out for, we currently use Kingston SSDNOW 64Gb, not the fastest or cost effective hence the post.

 

Appreciate all comments

 

Thanks in advance

[Michael]

I've used some Sandisks, they're fine too. 64GB generally should be big enough for the OS and applications. I'd only buy larger as and where required.

[VeryPC_Tom_M]

We've tested a few different brands in house.

 

Personally, I'd stick with Intel, but where cost is a matter of importance, I'd look at Crucial.

[Arthur]

Mostly Samsung 830's since they are both fast and very reliable, but we have a few SanDisk Extreme's too.

 

It's probably worth mentioning that the 830's have been superseded by the more expensive 840 & 840 Pro Series now.

 

Would like peoples thoughts on size of drives they use i.e. 64GB or 128GB for desktop.

We buy 120GB/128GB drives.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Arthur

[sonofsanta]

Our 100 new PCs over the summer are on Crucial m4s, any new ones we've bought as and when (e.g. upgrading SMT, keep 'em sweet) have been Samsung 830s, which is what I use at home as well. Get 'em while you can as their price right now is astonishing, and as @Arthur says, about to be replaced by the similar 840 or the pricier (better) 840 Pro. The 840, though, uses TLC flash not MLC, so may well wear quicker... too new to tell right now if their controller cleverness keeps the lifespan up, but all things being equal TLC dies much faster than MLC.

 

Always 128 as well. Our Win7 install is very close to 64Gb so worth the extra money for the buffer. 128gb perform better than 64gb anyway.

 

Don't forget your SATA3 connections where possible - about double the speed on sequential transfers on a Samsung 830 when I tested it.

[Oaktech]

Has anyone used the Seagate Momentus Hybrid drives yet? I need a drive upgrade for my home laptop and for the price a 750gb hybrid seems like a cracking deal!

[zag]

Wouldnt touch anything other than intel

 

We buy the 60GB 330 series for £48.99 ex vat from insight.

 

Intel Solid-State Drive 330 Se... SSDSC2CT060A3K5

 

Easily enough space for our desktop images.

[jamesfed]

Has anyone used the Seagate Momentus Hybrid drives yet? I need a drive upgrade for my home laptop and for the price a 750gb hybrid seems like a cracking deal!

 

I've got one in my desktop PC (500GB 4GB flash) works a treat however only as far as OS boot and lighter applications go - things like games and so on just don't benefit from it in the way that it would with a SSD.

[flyinghaggis]

Our 100 new PCs over the summer are on Crucial m4s, any new ones we've bought as and when (e.g. upgrading SMT, keep 'em sweet) have been Samsung 830s, which is what I use at home as well.

 

I've just ordered a Crucial M4 128Gb SSD for my home laptop so will post an update letting people know how I get on with it once it arrives. How'd you get on with the 100 in your PC's. Any failures/faults?

 

I really need to update my home desktop actually as it's still running an 80Gb Intel X-25m which is only really good for basic apps and the OS. I'll probably upgrade it to a 512Mb model next year at some point.

Edited December 4, 2012 by flyinghaggis

[sonofsanta]

I've just ordered a Crucial M4 128Gb SSD for my home laptop so will post an update letting people know how I get on with it once it arrives. How'd you get on with the 100 in your PC's. Any failures/faults?

 

None so far - not quite as fast as the Samsungs if you benchmark them, but before those PCs were added to the domain (and getting slowed down by the NIC waking up, polices applying etc.) they were booting to desktop in around 12 seconds <3

[Wolfmatty]

I'm using SanDisk really good get a 7.3 on windows index score with the SanDisk SDSSDX-120G-G25 120GB Extreme model

 

You can get them from amazon link below;

SanDisk SDSSDX-120G-G25 120GB Extreme SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5in Internal Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

[pcstru]

A mix here of Cruical M4's and Kingston SSD Now. We're finding Win7 on student PC's struggle with 64GB, so have settled on 128GB for those. We have some 256 M4's kicking about for ... err ... R&D purposes.

[Oaktech]

I've got one in my desktop PC (500GB 4GB flash) works a treat however only as far as OS boot and lighter applications go - things like games and so on just don't benefit from it in the way that it would with a SSD.

 

Thanks for that, I'm only interested in OS files/boot time really, I have lots of photos to store on the conventional drive, it sounds ideal.

[bossman]

@all:

 

I have been looking at the Samsung 830s and as has been stated they are very fast compared to others, they cannot be beaten on price I don't think, may try a couple first to see what we get.

 

Thank you all for your comments and for any other people's comments hereafter

[pete]

Crucial M4 (work and personal) and Intel 320s (work) (the now-discontinued enterprise-rated ones with the battery backup onboard).

 

Haven't had problems with either brand so far, but we've yet to scale out to amounts where I'd expect some attrition due to dodgy batches.

[sonofsanta]

This article may be relevant with considerations of size: AnandTech - Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs

 

Leaving 25% of the space unused results in both quicker & more consistent performance. If you're running a modern OS with TRIM support then you shouldn't need to do much beyond "leave that bit empty" - partitioning shouldn't be necessary, strictly speaking.

 

So on a 128Gb drive, use no more than 96Gb and enjoy the benefits.

[zag]

This article may be relevant with considerations of size: AnandTech - Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs

 

Leaving 25% of the space unused results in both quicker & more consistent performance. If you're running a modern OS with TRIM support then you shouldn't need to do much beyond "leave that bit empty" - partitioning shouldn't be necessary, strictly speaking.

 

So on a 128Gb drive, use no more than 96Gb and enjoy the benefits.

 

Yep thats why the Intels are so good. Notice they don't advertise the full amount of space. The 60GB they sell actually has more chips inside improving performance and reliability.

[sonofsanta]

Yep thats why the Intels are so good. Notice they don't advertise the full amount of space. The 60GB they sell actually has more chips inside improving performance and reliability.

 

That article says that Intel's new DC S3700 (enterprise grade SSD) actually has

264GiB of NAND on-board but only exposes 186GiB of it (200GB advertised capacity) as user accessible storage

It's probably also why Intel drives always cost more

[CHR1S]

Has anyone used the Seagate Momentus Hybrid drives yet? I need a drive upgrade for my home laptop and for the price a 750gb hybrid seems like a cracking deal!

 

Used one in this very laptop for the last year, initial speed difference was noticeable, however with the drive almost full and random usage id say its no different to a good quality HDD.

[flyinghaggis]

Used one in this very laptop for the last year, initial speed difference was noticeable, however with the drive almost full and random usage id say its no different to a good quality HDD.

 

I've heard fairly mixed reports about them as well to be honest. The general feedback seemed to be that it's no match for an SSD. You can get a 128Gb model for around £50 these days so unless you really need a teragbyte of storage on your laptop there probably isn't much point IMO.

 

Having said that I only use my laptop as a portable device. If you're laptop was your main computer I could understand you might not be so keen to make that compromise.

Edited December 4, 2012 by flyinghaggis

[CHR1S]

I've heard fairly mixed reports about them as well to be honest. The general feedback seemed to be that it's no match for an SSD. You can get a 128Gb model for around £50 these days so unless you really need a teragbyte of storage on your laptop there probably isn't much point IMO.

 

Having said that I only use my laptop as a portable device. If you're laptop was your main computer I could understand you might not be so keen to make that compromise.

 

 

Yes this is my portable workstation, so it was a compromise. Its quick enough for what I do, and will certainly be quick enough until we see sensible prices for 500Gb+ SSDs anyway.

Im slowly moving my locally stored VMs onto a microserver so I wont need them with me all the time.

[3s-gtech]

Mix of Crucial M4 (most commonly) and Kingston V200+. Very happy with both - our base images are small (even with CS5.5, Office etc) so 64GB drives have been fine, only half full or so. More is always better though. I'm also running them on everything from SATA 1 (mobile Intel 945) to SATA 3 interfaces - still gives a huge speed boost on the old connection.