Help picking out an SSD.

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WildMonkey

Gawd
Joined
Nov 1, 2007
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887
Two things about me:
1. I don't know Jack about SSDs (never had one)
2. I'm cheap.

Given these two conditions what is the best value (not necessarily the cheapest, but that's a good start) hard drive, speed and price wise in the 120-128GB range?

I think I want to stick to SATA III drives, unless convinced not to go there. Also, I might want to take advantage of the Black Friday deals.

Thanks.
 
I was in the same boat a few weeks ago, after reading here and various other forums for a few days I bought a crucial M4 120, couldn't be happier with it.
 
I heard that there were huge differences in performance in the SATA II gen. But the SATA IIIs are all pretty much the same. True?
 
WildMonkey said:
I heard that there were huge differences in performance in the SATA II gen. But the SATA IIIs are all pretty much the same. True?
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I think you are confused.

The SATAII or III Interface has NOTHING to do with the drive's speed.

Whether the drive can go SATAII or III is dependent upon the drive itself.
 
WildMonkey said:
I think I want to stick to SATA III drives, unless convinced not to go there.
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If you stick with SATA III drives then your decision will probably be easier since almost all of them are good drives. And that leaves you with Crucial m4, Intel 510, Samsung 830 and the myriad of SandForce 2200-based SSDs. Since you mentioned value / price, you can nix the Intel option.

But there are plenty of good late-generation SATA II drives if you're willing to sort through the wheat and the chaff. Some of those you might be able to get with a good sale (like the Intel 320s seem to be on sale today at NE and Amazon for about $1 / GB after rebate, albeit it's not the safest option out there).
 
If the drive is for non OS purposes save money with a Sandforce drive, otherwise stick with Crucial or Intel.
 
So what's better? Something like an Intel 320 160GB SSD SATA 2 or a Crucial M4 64GB SSD SATA 3? I'm going to use the drive for OS, and I'll end up paying about the same.
 
i bought 2 crucial m4 64gb for 80 bucks each on a shellshocker deal not too long ago. Threw em in a raid-0 and just love the speeds :eek:
 
Jump on that Intel 320 rebate deal and get a 160GB drive for $155 at either Newegg or Amazon. You'll notice the extra size a lot more than the extra speed from SATA 3.
 
Forceman said:
Jump on that Intel 320 rebate deal and get a 160GB drive for $155 at either Newegg or Amazon. You'll notice the extra size a lot more than the extra speed from SATA 3.
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+1

I just jumped on that deal today for my wife's laptop at newegg. It also comes with free bf3 right now, so you can either play the game or sell it for $20-30 if you don't need it, manking the deal even better.
 
I have never owned a SSD and I just jumped on that Intel 320 - 160GB drive w/ BF3. I figure I don't mind waiting for a rebate, it basically is forcing me to not spend that money. And I will try and sell BF3 for at least $20, making it $135 after all is said and done. I can live with that.
 
If you want the absolute fastest then get a Samsung 830 or Crucial M4 IMO, the 120GB versions are both $210 right now but the 830 comes with Ghost and Batman Arkham City so it's the better deal. The biggest compatibility issues with Sandforce drives (which are even faster) seem to be solved but I still wouldn't trust them, tho there's some good deals on the Agility 3.

If you can live with something more modest, the Intel 320 is selling for $1/GB everywhere (after MIR) regardless of whether you opt for the 80GB, 120GB, or 160GB. The latter comes with BF3 at Newegg, making it an even better deal. The 320 is slower primarily because it's based on an older controller, not because of a SATA bottleneck. SATA speeds are only gonna have an impact on sequential transfers (large file copies, game installs, etc), they won't bottleneck random read/write speeds which is what you really buy a SSD for (most of what the OS does is random I/O).

The 320 is just slower in general because it's based on the same 2+ year old controller design as the X25-M, but at current prices it's a very good value and regardless of anything else it's still a big upgrade from a HDD if you multi task a lot or just want a boost to the overall feel of your PC.
 
Just a heads up for those who might buy the intel 320. The rebate site is going extremely, extremely slow, so you have to be patient.
 
Well the Samsung 830 64MB comes with Batman Arkham City and Norton Ghost for $95, no rebate needed.

Or dishing out $280 for the much slower Intel 320 + Battlefield 3, and hopefully in 2-3 months I'll get a rebate for $120.

It doesn't seem very appealing to get the 320, if you think about it. Unless someone says otherwise I think the much better deal is the 830. Then again, I've never used an SSD.
 
The 830 would be a damn fine first SSD. You could always sell Batman AC for a quick twenty and that nets your drive down to an even better price.
 
Usually 64GB SSDs are slower than their bigger counterparts. Even the 128s can be slower than the 256 ones. Also, 64GB is just too small in my opinion.
 
The Intel 320 might be slower in benchmarks, but I doubt you'd notice the difference in real world usage. I went from an Intel X-25M (the forerunner to the 320) to a Crucial M4 and it really isn't noticeable in everyday use.
 
Meh, Windows+Office takes up like 17GB... I think 64GB is cramped but certainly not unusable, heck I've been using a 40GB Intel drive on my netbook without much trouble. Even with a 1.5GB hibernate file and accounting for some spare space so as to not fill it up, I've still got some 9GB to play with after OS/apps, enough for some movies when traveling.

It's true that the larger drives preform better tho, and altho the Intel rebate is unusually large it's also Intel, I would think they wouldn't pick a flaky 3rd party to handle rebates (specially for such a large promo).
 
64GB is usable, if you're going to spend a lot of time deciding what can or cannot go on your SSD. My Windows install and apps take up around 90-100GB. To me, 160 gives you enough storage for your OS+apps and some room to grow too.
 
Impulse said:
I assume you're including games in that figure?
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None that I can think of. It's an x64 install with Office, Lightroom, Photoshop, Office and various other apps. FWIW, Desktop/Documents are on a separate partition.
 
What the heck is taking up that much space then? Is it an old install (lots of Sys Restore points) and/or do you have 16GB of RAM (would account for 32GB in between the hibernate & swap files)?

Because otherwise that's like 70GB between Photoshop/Lightroom and whatever other misc apps, I didn't think those two could take up that much space... Even taking those assumed 32GB into account, that's still like 45GB between PS/LR (and anything else besides Win/Office).
 
I get by with a 64GB Kingston V100 SSD, not the fastest or biggest, but I've had it for a while and it's a lot better then an old school HDD.

Check your system to make sure you have hibernation disabled, and no restore points, and all that fluffly backup crap. I remember seeing one day I only had like 10GB free (when I should have 30) I found that windows hibernate had a crap ton of 1GB files all over the place.

Looking to upgrade to a 128GB higher end SSD here soon if I can sell my 3TB drive.

Would be nice to have a 64GB drive that's able to take a bit of physical abuse using it solely as a data backup device.

I keep a 500GB drive in my safe with all my important stuff on it, but one bump at the wrong speed or angle and all the data is gone.
 
Impulse said:
What the heck is taking up that much space then? Is it an old install (lots of Sys Restore points) and/or do you have 16GB of RAM (would account for 32GB in between the hibernate & swap files)?

Because otherwise that's like 70GB between Photoshop/Lightroom and whatever other misc apps, I didn't think those two could take up that much space... Even taking those assumed 32GB into account, that's still like 45GB between PS/LR (and anything else besides Win/Office).
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Thanks to your comments, I took a look at what was using the storage. Had about 10GB of stuff in temp (gonna have to figure out why Windows isn't clear it out on reboot).
About 35GB is from a VM. Most of it is an undo disk. Normally I revert after a week, but things have happened that forced me to keep it up for 2 weeks. Regardless, I didn't think my VMs were sitting on C. I set it up on D. If 7 allows it, I'll move everything to D this week.
 
Ahh, sounds like that VM and temp stuff account for exactly the space difference I was rounding out, heh. The VM would probably benefit from being on a SSD if you have a large enough one tho (and actually use the VM enough to merit it).
 
Impulse said:
Ahh, sounds like that VM and temp stuff account for exactly the space difference I was rounding out, heh. The VM would probably benefit from being on a SSD if you have a large enough one tho (and actually use the VM enough to merit it).
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I mostly use it to VPN into work (otherwise it kills my connection to the rest of my network). It'd be faster, which would be nice, but that's a lot of storage for something I use, on average, 1 week a month.
 
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