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Fastest 120GB SSD

dave343

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 17, 2000
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I'd like to pick up a 120GB SSD although I'm extremely confused as I've never followed the SSD market. Looking at my local retailer's website, it seems every manufacture has 3-4 120GB SSD's, and I'd like to grab a fast one but don't know where to start. Apologies in advance, I know this question might come up alot, I appreciate the answers. Thanks.
 
I have an OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS and it's blistering fast. And yes, I know that they don't exactly have a reputation for reliability, but it is possibly the fastest available. I've had zero issues with mine.
 
I have had my Vertex 3 120GB for like 1 week installed with zero issues so far, I hear they are one of the fastest too. I hear the the new 2.15v firmware solved the issues they were having with them. My boot time is 12 seconds! I barely get to see the 4 windows orbs and it's at the desktop before they meet together to form the windows logo!
 
My boot time is 12 seconds! I barely get to see the 4 windows orbs and it's at the desktop before they meet together to form the windows logo!

Yeah isn't that sneaky? They're just about to coalesce on the logo and then "doh!", the screen swaps over.

My Ubuntu is the same way.

Splash screens are obsolete. :D
 
After 1 week of my first SSD and I'm still amazed by it! My mechanical HDD was such a bottleneck and since I never used a SSD I wasn't even aware just how different it would be. It just seems that everything I do is like 10x faster! I do a lot of file extractions, video encoding and gaming. Heck even my load time on games is cut in half. I can NEVER do back now
 
The Cruical M4, why is the read/write 415mb/175MB/s when most other SSD's are Read/Write 555mb/510mb ?
 
Those are sequential read / writes which the SandForce drives can be better at especially when the data being written is highly compressible data.

Check out the AnandTech Bench site for SSD comparisons. Some do better than others in different workloads.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/65
 
My primary workstation now has a 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS and it is SCREAMING fast. Now that the 2.15 firmware is out it has squelched all of the issues that the previous firmwares manifested (freezes, BSODs etc). It has been rock solid since I updated it about 2 weeks ago.
 
Revo drive 3?
The true top dog, and is a bit silly is the ioDrive.

I think the PCI kinda beats the pants off of everything out there, but i think revo drives are notorious for dieing in short order so its buyer beware. Other than that the Cruicial M4 and Patriot Pyro/Wildfire one of the fasted SSDs out there. But really we are splitting hairs here over a 2% difference between drives
 
As far as 120GB SATA drives go, I think the "fastest" would be the Vertex 3 MAX IOPS, but my preference would be the m4 128GB drive, because of it's reliability (or because of the unreliability of other controllers? :O :O)
 
search the forums, these threads are every where every other day.
This and keep in mind that the larger drives go faster than the smaller drives.

Your budget is the MOST important thing.
 
Thread title needs to be adjusted:

Fastest 120GB SSD for Sequential Read Performance
~or~
Fastest 120GB SSD for Small Random Read Performance
~or~
......
 
I have to agree. I've seen no noticeable correlation between a drives sequential performance and how fast it accomplishes things like installing/booting Windows. I did a reinstall on my buddies 80GB Intel G2 last night, and while it's considered a much slower drive than say the M4 I installed to earlier in the day, especially in terms of sequential writes, I'd need at least a stopwatch to tell the difference in the actual experience. In short, they are both effin fast.
 
I would also say go for good mix of reliability, speed, and value. In real world usage its difficult to notice the difference between the top SSD's.

The Crucial M4 has been a good choice because of its price/performance and so far its been pretty reliable.
 
the fastest is the vertex 3 max iops, patriot wildfire, mushkin enhanced chronos deluxe
 
I picked up the Corsair 120GB GT, installed Windows 7 using IDE mode, then changed to AHCI (I did this because I wasn't aware I should have installed using AHCI.)

TBH, the system is snappier, but not as fast as I was expecting... After the post screen, it sits at the AHCI boot for 5-10 sec's, then the windows logo animation it sits there for a good long 5 seconds, then before the desktop it sits there for a good 5 secs, and finally the desktop apears. Compared to a WD 500 Black I've used... I can't say I notice a massive difference, it's just snapier and quiet :D

I was hesitant in going the SSD route to begin with knowing performance degrades over time, and hearing about keeping drive maintenance... if there's truth to that. If HD prices wern't so darn high I probably would have just grabbed a 1TB Black, would serve me well.
 
I was hesitant in going the SSD route to begin with knowing performance degrades over time, and hearing about keeping drive maintenance... if there's truth to that. If HD prices wern't so darn high I probably would have just grabbed a 1TB Black, would serve me well.

being a solo disk, it will trim, so it will lose no performance
 
So the PC is starting to BSOD at random times... the latest time it was idle with nothing running in the background... I'm running memtest on the kingston 8gb but I doubt that's the cause.
 
I just picked up a 128 and 256 GB Corsair Performance Pro, enjoying them quite a bit so far.

The differences between various SSD models that have decent performance isn't nearly as great as the difference between any decent SSD and a regular hard drive. So I wouldn't get too hung up on performance numbers.
 
So the PC is starting to BSOD at random times... the latest time it was idle with nothing running in the background... I'm running memtest on the kingston 8gb but I doubt that's the cause.

What firmware version?
 
I just picked up a Samsung 830 256gb series to pair with my raided 64gb kingstons. Like some one else said, the difference in performance increase is not very noticeable when comparing SSDs, of course this all depends on the applications you are using, but if it is for normal windows, you won't notice much of a difference.
 
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