SSD Choice Advice

I have no intention to take a chance on their P256 after reading the hundreds of thousands of complaints in the internet on their SSD drives.

i haven't seen any single case of failure from P256 reported from internet while all other models have failure case reported including intel X-25M, ocz vertex etc.
 
Everyone's mileage varies based on the SSDs controller logic.

The common thread with all SSDs (current as of this post) is that 2 writes are necessary to write to a single page instead of one for each place that the alignment of the drive doesn't match the NAND page. Usually, you will not see a performance hit until after you've used the drive for a week or so. It is known to cause short drive pauses if used as the OS drive.

Real world experience is about the same, aligned or not. You will usually only notice the performance hit when shifting large files around and in benchmarks.

Jason
 
i haven't seen any single case of failure from P256 reported from internet while all other models have failure case reported including intel X-25M, ocz vertex etc.

Have you been on the Corsair forum? You cannot simply judge it by the P256 model either. Many people cannot afford that drive, so they select one of the smaller and there are just as many failures with those drives as any other. Corsair has good customer support though and they handle the problems quickly. I can say the same for OCZ, yet I cannot for Intel. I still love my beloved Intel, though.

Jason
 
Have you been on the Corsair forum?
Jason

yes, lots of X-series failure show up there, indilinx controller is problematic for reliability issue, even ramguy recommends P series. there are some P-series failure reported in small capacity drives but not in P256, newegg user review has lots of P256 feedback, but only macbook/lenovo compatibility issue gets low ratings,
 
Hey, what do you know, Corsair released the first TRIM update for Samsung drives.

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=83708

The new Samsung firmware for P-Series SSD's!
The new Samsung firmware and updater tool have completed internal qualification and BETA testing and has been released.

A couple important notes and warnings: Even though this has been released there are still some reasons why it may not work for everyone:

[1] You will need to use a System or MB that will boot and run Microsoft DOS 6.22 or 7.0 and be able to see a SSD Drive set to IDE Mode. (You cannot use a RAID card or an on board controller set to RAID and run this update)

[2] This tool will only work on Corsair P64, P128, and P256 drives.

[3] This tool WILL ERASE the contents of the drive. All data will be lost. You must back up your DATA prior to doing this update.

[4] This tool has been qualified on X86 Based Hardware ONLY with the above listed restrictions and limitations..

[5] This tool must be run from a bootable USB drive. There have been some users in the BETA program that used other methods but at this time they would not officially be supported.

[6] This update has been developed by Samsung to enable Windows 7 Trim Support on NTFS-formatted SSDs. We do not recommend or support its use on any other platforms.

Please read the Firmware Download Guide (attached) and if you are not able to follow these steps as outlined we would not suggest running this update. This utility is supplied as-is, and is NOT guaranteed to run on all systems, regardless of operating system, CPU, drive format, or other factors. Using this utility WILL ERASE the contents of the SSD being reprogrammed. Use this utility at your own risk; Corsair can not be responsible for any damages other than to the P-Series SSD, which is covered under Corsair’s standard warranty. Note that using this utility does not impact in any way the warranty on your P-series SSD.
 
Here's the way I see Corsair. I haven't seen a co. that has this deg. of massive recall, the only thing that come close is those GM cars, and look what happens to GM.

This deg. of failure is shocking. The management and the quality control is zero. And I don't agree w/ the customer support is good neither. This is clearly a case of jumping into the bandwagon w/o proper testing.

Read the threads from their own forum. Those customers are angry and there is no solution to fix the problems. That doesn't sound like good customer support to me.

who's to say 6 mth. down the road this kind of failure won't happen to the P256? They are not the only 1 who make SSD. If they were a public co., their stock would tank to the pennies by now.

Then there is the so-called "overlap" for a lack of better words. People who know about this, is not going to buy Corsair memory, I won't be surprise if I read in the news in the very near future that they go belly up.
 
Depending on your motherboard, you don't need to do much. With an Intel mobo, set your drive in AHCI, install Intel's AHCI drivers and you're set. If you're using an Nvidia or AMD based mobo, set the drive in AHCI and use Windows 7's built in AHCI drivers. Also, make sure you have the latest firmware for your drive.

Are you sure about that? I believe you have to use Windows 7's built-in drivers in order for TRIM to function.
 
Does this mean the Samsung 256GB SSD might become a worthwhile purchase?

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, wonder if Kingston's V+ line is getting this update, generally they're cheaper then the P series.
 
As for advice, DON'T GO CORSAIR. Both the P128 and X128's have failed repeatedly for me - even after multiple RMAs and replacements. I have no idea what causes these failures, but they either fail immediately or after a few weeks of use. Their support forums are full of similar SSD failures and immediate responses to customers to simly RMA the drives. After sometimes long waits the replacement drives come with an eventual recurrence of the same problems.

I think Corsair makes great PSUs, nice high-end RAM and I love their Obsidian case. But purchasing their SSD drives was a horrible and expensive mistake. I wish I could recover some of the $$ spent on these Corsair SSDs to get Intel SSDs instead.
 
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what brand and which model do you recommend then?

Among all brand, Intel is the only choice. For any current software problem on TRIM, depends on your OS, either wait and buy it later, or wait for a stable working ver. of TRIM that works w/ your OS, and see the feedback in 3 weeks, if the feedback is good, download that version and order the drive at the same time
 
As for advice, DON'T GO CORSAIR. Both the P128 and X128's have failed repeatedly for me - even after multiple RMAs and replacements. I have no idea what causes these failures, but they either fail immediately or after a few weeks of use. Their support forums are full of similar SSD failures and immediate responses to customers to simly RMA the drives. After sometimes long waits the replacement drives come with an eventual recurrence of the same problems.

I think Corsair makes great PSUs, nice high-end RAM and I love their Obsidian case. But purchasing their SSD drives was a horrible and expensive mistake. I wish I could recover some of the $$ spent on these Corsair SSDs to get Intel SSDs instead.

Would you still consider Corsair for memory and PSU?

On a sidente, I have no personal issue w/ Corsair. The thing starts when I do a search at ebay last mth. on SSD. And I notice some Corsair drive that the prices are too good to be true. They have no reserve price on it, it starts at $0.01. That's when I get suspicious. So do a yahoo search on the problems of corsair, and guess what? You don't need to go too far, just w/i their own forums is flooded w/ angry customers. That's when I deleted my Saved search at ebay and understand why they are soooooo cheap
 
Would you still consider Corsair for memory and PSU?

On a sidente, I have no personal issue w/ Corsair. The thing starts when I do a search at ebay last mth. on SSD. And I notice some Corsair drive that the prices are too good to be true. They have no reserve price on it, it starts at $0.01. That's when I get suspicious. So do a yahoo search on the problems of corsair, and guess what? You don't need to go too far, just w/i their own forums is flooded w/ angry customers. That's when I deleted my Saved search at ebay and understand why they are soooooo cheap

i ordered intel 160G G2 but still tried to find some cheap corsair ssd for my two netbooks, unfortunately all corsair ssd in ebay now are overpriced, only BUY NOW price.
 
Don't buy Corsair SSDs. Get the Intel SSDs recommended on this thread and nearly every other SSD recommendation thread in all of [H]ardforum.

As I said before, Corsair makes other great components - but they just haven't done well with their entire line of SSDs. Avoid them if you want to avoid trouble.
 
unfortunately i already have two P256 in use but fortunately no trouble so far, when intel has 320G G3 on sale i could then put these two corsair in netbooks.
 
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