Best 120GBs SSD outhere?

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

The Vertex2 is a very nice SSD, I've the 100G after my 100G Vertex LE died.

 

[lehtv]

I replaced a Vertex2 with a Samsung 830 on my SATA II motherboard, I haven't run any benchmarks but in everyday use; Photoshop, Premiere, MS Office, the speed seems about the same. It's reliability that made me go with the Samsung.

Did you run into problems with the Vertex 2? I've had one for 1,5 years, it's been working fine, don't really see a point in replacing it until it craps out

 

[VirtualLarry]

What do you folks think about the SanDisk Extreme 120GB SSD? It's SandForce gen-2, but with SanDisk's own 24-nm Toggle NAND, which is supposed to be fast.

The 240GB sized drive was reviewed by StorageReview, and got some kind of award.

I have a 120GB here that's not in a system yet.

 

[Crag_Hack]

I was hopin you would say it was faster... There's no other component of the computer can be upgraded for cheaper... don't wanna go with a new mobo and CPU

 

[Hellhammer]

You might be interested in this thread - they are basically testing various drives until death with some extensive use - the samsung is performing admirably so far. Interestingly, the Kingston/Intel 40GB X25V has also done quite well.

Quite a long thread - the first page has a quick table of what has been done to date - go to the last few pages for a summary of where the 830 is currenty.

Edit: - Lets try this again and actually provide the link ... http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm

If your interested that is.

Yeah, I've seen that thread before. We'll probably run some similar tests once TLC SSDs hit the market.

Sorry to thread steal but what about the ~60Gb models with between the Samsung 830 and Crucial M4, in terms of speed and reliability?

Thanks

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/534?vs=426

Samsung 830 is a clear winner.

Hellhammer, the Tom's Hardware link I gave you measures 40% Throughput - 30% PCMark - 20% I/O. Anandtech doesn't have a comparable bench. Do you think a measure like that is a good indicator of overall performance? If so AT should create a similar bench.

It tells more than a single test but it doesn't exactly reflect real world usage. I would give more value to their Ipeak tests because they mimic real world usage, just like our Storage Suites.

I got one more question for you guys... I have a SATA 2 Mobo. I know there's backwards compatibility for SATA 3 drives but will the Samsung 830 still be a good choice? This guy thinks that a Vertex 2 SATA 2 drive would perform better than an Agility 3 SATA 3 drive (this drive has 525 and 475 read/write while the vertex 2 has 285/275) on a SATA 2 mobo. Does this claim have any credence to it? I would think that the agility 3 would outperform the vertex 2 considering its higher specs even on a SATA 2 mobo. Does the pairing of a SATA3 drive with a SATA2 mobo create a situation where the read/write/io specs are not all to consider when purchasing a drive - that perhaps a SATA 2 drive might outperform a better SATA 3 drive on a SATA 2 mobo?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/152?vs=372

Agility 3 seems to be faster, though the difference is not big.

 

[Crag_Hack]

Two ?s for you hellhammer. When you say storage suites you're referring to the Anandtech Storage Bench right? The thing that I like better about the TH bench is it combines several stats into one. Unless one of the Anandtech Storage Bench stats reflects overall performance more accurately than several different stats wouldn't AT benefit from a combined stat like at TH? That way one can get a measure of performance from looking at one stat instead of multiple ones.
Also do you think it's worth it for me to upgrade from a 90 GB vertex 2 to a 128 GB Samsung 830 even though I'm stuck with a SATA 2 mobo?
Thanks so much for your help!

 

[Hellhammer]

Two ?s for you hellhammer. When you say storage suites you're referring to the Anandtech Storage Bench right?

Yes.

The thing that I like better about the TH bench is it combines several stats into one. Unless one of the Anandtech Storage Bench stats reflects overall performance more accurately than several different stats wouldn't AT benefit from a combined stat like at TH? That way one can get a measure of performance from looking at one stat instead of multiple ones.

IMO it's not the overall performance that matters, but the real world performance. For example Vertex 4 is blazing fast when you look at synthetic tests. However, there is one aspect where it totally sucks: sequential reads at small transfer sizes. That's something you won't see if you use apps like CrystalMark to benchmark the drive. Unfortunately consumer workloads mainly consist of IOs that are small in size and especially light usage is very read centric.

It's impossible to squeeze all data into one graph because workloads differ. One drive may be better suited for heavy usage, whereas some other drive is better for lighter usage. I don't know the specifics behind TH's desktop graphs (what throughput for instance) so it's hard for me to say how good measure of overall performance it is.

Also do you think it's worth it for me to upgrade from a 90 GB vertex 2 to a 128 GB Samsung 830 even though I'm stuck with a SATA 2 mobo?
Thanks so much for your help!

I don't think it would be worth it. SATA 3Gbps is the bottleneck for Vertex 2 already and you wouldn't be gaining much capacity either (would be different if you were looking at 256GB drive).

 

[Crag_Hack]

Will I see any improvement with the Samsung 830? I have 140$ of birthday gift cards to use at newegg The ios are much better and that isn't limited by the sata interface bottleneck is it? Obviously it would be better with SATA 3... but will I see benefit at all with 2...

 

[F1shF4t]

What do you folks think about the SanDisk Extreme 120GB SSD? It's SandForce gen-2, but with SanDisk's own 24-nm Toggle NAND, which is supposed to be fast.

The 240GB sized drive was reviewed by StorageReview, and got some kind of award.

I have a 120GB here that's not in a system yet.

I've got the 480GB and 120GB ones. The 480 is slower than the 120 and 240 sizes, only 15MB/s 4k random write. Otherwise no issues so far.

There's a 120GB version being tested here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm/page202
Its at over 550 Host/400 NAND writes.

 

[Hellhammer]

What do you folks think about the SanDisk Extreme 120GB SSD? It's SandForce gen-2, but with SanDisk's own 24-nm Toggle NAND, which is supposed to be fast.

The 240GB sized drive was reviewed by StorageReview, and got some kind of award.

I have a 120GB here that's not in a system yet.

We have a 240GB review unit. A review will be up at some point, but there are quite few drives in the queue at the moment.

Will I see any improvement with the Samsung 830? I have 140$ of birthday gift cards to use at newegg The ios are much better and that isn't limited by the sata interface bottleneck is it? Obviously it would be better with SATA 3... but will I see benefit at all with 2...

Well, I think the main question is, do you have any good use for the Vertex 2? Any other computer? Or how about using it for games for instance? Personally I wouldn't upgrade unless I could find some use for the old one, especially because the difference in performance won't be big.

 

[perdomot]

The Samsung 128 GB SSD is on sale again for $85 at Newegg with the promo code EMCYTZT1974. Can't beat this deal.

 

[ronbo613]

Did you run into problems with the Vertex 2? I've had one for 1,5 years, it's been working fine, don't really see a point in replacing it until it craps out

It's actually a replacement for the original that died after about two weeks. This one is starting to have "operating system not found" errors and sometimes it doesn't boot at all, same thing the first one did before it croaked, so.....

 

[balane]

I have experiences with a number of OCZ drives as well.

I had an original Vertex 120GB and it was good for 3.5 years until one day the OS wasn't found on boot. I was able to put a jumper on the pins and enter Engineer mode, I think that's what it was called. In that mode I was able to flash a new BIOS to it and it has operated fine since then, about another year I guess. Still running fine today.

I bought two of the Vertex LE 120GB drives (Renamed Vertex 2 drives.) for really cheap off of eBay. They were new. I've been running them for about 1.5 years. They are fast and have caused no issues so far.

Recently I got a 120GB Agility III drive for $69 on a Newegg Shell Shocker deal. It was just too cheap for a SATA3 120GB drive that I couldn't pass it up. It's crazy fast, ATTO shows 550MB/s write and 575MB/s read at its peak. I hope it lasts a long time because I really like the drive, especially considering what I paid for it.

I don't go out of my way to get OCZ drives or anything but thanks to their poor reputation I seem to be able to pick up a number of them for really great prices. Other than one snafu with the original Vertex drive they've all been 100% and all are still running in computers today that I use frequently. And I must say that the 120GB Agility III for $70 is one of the best bang per buck improvements I've ever put in my computer. I wish now that I had bought a few of them.

EDIT: I have used other SSD drives in the past too. Kingston, Corsair, Intel and a Mushkin. All have been fine too. A PSU went bad and burnt the Intel drive up but I can't blame the drive for that.

.

 

[Crag_Hack]

Hellhammer - what's the deal with the revodrive and z drive? z drive looks to be enterprise and way out of price range lol... revodrive though is affordable. Would a Samsung 830 be preferable? Perhaps more reliable and better trim/garbage collection or whatever? This guy's only 200$. What's the ups and downs?

 

[Hellhammer]

You're right, RevoDrive is aimed for enthusiasts whereas Z-Drive is strictly for enterprises. That 120GB RevoDrive is basically the same as two 60GB Vertex 3s in RAID 0. As always, RAID 0 doubles the risk of data loss because all data will be lost if one of the members of the array fails.

Unless you're doing something very IO heavy, a single SATA 6Gb/s SSD will be more than enough.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Wow I am amazed that Intel® SSDs have gotten discounted so quickly. We still have the lowest returns in the industry and most of our drives have a 5 year warranty. In the past you could have said that we were priced too high but with the price drop we had 2 weeks ago we are very completive on price with other quality SSDs.