I need some help picking out a new SSD. I have a 120 OCZ for my boot drive and it has been great, but it's time for a bit more room on my boot.
What's the best drive you guys can recommend for a max of $200? I've read alot about Samsung drives and Kingston's being really good. But there is so many options.
Well, most any modern SSD saturates SATA III bandwidth completely in terms of sustained transfer speeds, and random i/o has gotten so fast it's difficult to tell SSD's apart in day to day operations, so I'd pick the largest capacity drive you can grab for under $200 that has a minimum of a 3 year warranty.
In my personal experience, I have a difficult time distinguishing boot times on Windows 7 from a variety of SSD's in a variety of hardware configurations. The only ones that noticeably lagged was my Crucial M4, but that was heavily bottlenecked by a 1GHz AMD C-60 APU in a low-power netbook, and my previous 60GB OCz Agility 3, which was just a slow, budget SSD ($150 for 60GB was an AMAZING deal at the time) from the early days of SSDs, where SSD's suffered from shakey firmware - my OCz Agility 3 wouldn't be detected, even through my BIOS, from time to time until after I updated the firmware. What surprised me is that my old laptop with a 60GB Corsair Force F60A booted up Windows on par with the rest of my computers. I do notice a difference with Linux as Linux does boot up much faster than Windows, and the fastest one I've used is a 240GB Crucial M500 mSATA SSD on my laptop, equipped with a Core i7 4810MQ (2.8GHz - 3.8GHz) and 8GB of RAM, followed closely by my desktop equipped with a 256GB Curcial MX100 and a 4.5GHz Core i5 2500k, but I think POST might play a factor in my perception, as my laptop is much quicker to go through POST.
I know you said max of $200, but for just a bit over at $211 Crucial has the 512GB MX100, which is a very solid drive. http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX100-adapter-Internal-CT512MX100SSD1/dp/B00KFAGCUM
Otherwise, Mushkin has the Enhanced Chronos in the 480GB flavor for about $185 over at Newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226372
However, if you want a high-performance SSD, for me, it would be a toss up between the Samsung 840 PRO, or the Plextor M5P Extreme, each at the 256GB capacity. Personally, for around the same price, I'd much rather take doubled the capacity at slightly slower, but still very quick over the fastest 256GB drives around that are going to be bottlenecked by the SATA interface.
+1 That's a great price on the Mushkin
You should raid 0 your ocz to get 256gb
I was just reading that Raid 0 provided minimal d2d performance benefits, and that it greatly increases the chance of data loss. Raid 5 would be better but you will need 3 drives.
You can get a 256GB Samsung 850 Pro Series for $199.99 and it is one of the best SSD's on the market.
-LinuxForYou
+1 for MX100
Raid 0 has always made me a little nervous, if all I did was game than I'd do it just for the wow factor, but I have a lot of important files for work and such.
Wow, Thanks a ton! Lots of good info and I didn't even know it was possible to get that much ssd storage for that cheap. It's crazy how much price has dropped just in the past two years. I agree too, as far as speed, I think i'd be happy with any ssd speed.
Toss up between these 3: Which would be the most reliable..
I know Logan recommends these like crazy, plus the 240gb comes with a free copy of watch dogs, added bonus!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239046&cm_re=hyper_x_ssd-_-20-239-046-_-Product
Crucial MX, Great price, but is it reliable?
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX100-adapter-Internal-CT512MX100SSD1/dp/B00KFAGCUM
Samsung 850 Pro Series: Little more money, but is it more reliable?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147360
I would argue the 850 Pro, since Samsung backs it up with a 10 year warranty, while the other two only provide 3 year warranty, but, really, most any decent SSD is more reliable than any hard drive. My OCz Agility 3 is still kicking, with no signs of dying any time soon, despite my having that thing 90% filled for 3 years, and I now have in my VE200 doubling as storage and booting a multitude of ISOs.