"Cheap" SSD's...

almighty_gir

http://www.scan.co.uk/shops/kingston/hyperx3k

ordered this yesterday, got it today, very nice little upgrade for my machine would highly recommend it!

only did it as i thought the price was (finally) reasonable enough for what is essentially a glorified boot drive.

just formatted/installed windows and all that jazz... yeah, very very snappy!

cptSwing

Yeah, SSD's make a significant difference. Recommendation from me as well. Don't buy an OCZ Vertex2/3 though, or anything with a Sandforce controller really. Lots of problems reported (I had to reflash and 'secure erase' mine as well just last week, in order to stop it from "timing out" of my system after 5 minutes or so. Ghosts in the machine.)

sulkyrobot

I thought the newer Sandforce controllers were fine?

m4dcow

I have a vertex 3, and after updating my firmware it has been rock solid. I guess the chipset got a bad rap with OCZ rushing to release without being ready for primtime.

cptSwing

Possibly, I don't want to spread any rumours. Apparently OCZ's newer SSD's have a slightly better track record. Then again, many Vertex2's have only started failing recently, from what I gathered in my desperate searches for a fix without having to RMA.

Mike Yevin

i just recently bought a vertex 3 and couldn't be happier. right now newegg has a deal on a 120gb model for just over 100 bucks.

Rwolf

My Cosair Force GT SSD failed after 6 months, Unfortuantly I had all my game saves on it... All gone sob! Skyrim, ME3, Simcity, etc.

My fault, since I usually changed my documents folder to my data drive. (SSD was the OS drive)

Zephiris

I've got the OCZ Vertex 3 since sometime last summer and I haven't had any problems with it (other than wishing for more discspace ^^ ), I never regretted buying it.
Nice to see SSDs are finally beginning to become more affordable.

MrOneTwo

I plan to buy SSD. How does it look with this whole 'ssd failing'? It just stops working ? You have to erase everything from it (its still formatting on ssds ?) to make it work ?

Rwolf

Mine plain out died. Cannot detect, or tell if it even powers up (no moving parts) = No chance of file recovery.

My other regular hdds that have failed, I've managed to pull of files before they went kaput.

MrOneTwo

I did educate myself a bit some time ago and people even now say that it is a problem (ssd dying). Since drive going to shit = your stuff going to shit its sounds pretty scary. I always keep files on separate partition (at least) than my windows in case I need format. SSDs aren't cheap. Yeah they are worth the money but not cheap. I will probably buy one , one way or another. People use them and nobody died...

BTW I just read cool article about ReRam technology which boosts SSDs performance 10 times and its life spawn 7 times. Its not here yet of course and its not cheap but just throwing some knowledge ;p

JamesWild

http://www.guru3d.com/article/ocz-agility-3-review/3
Wow, write cycles have gone DOWN since I had a SSD that failed in three years? Lol, good luck. You honestly think those review sites have the SSD for a year or two before they release a review to know if they last that long under heavy use? Nope.

Software like Photoshop with their frankly bloody odd scratch disks (reinventing the page file wheel) are SSD murder with constant small writes that accumulate very quickly in heavy use.

I'm sorry to do this, but please, "educate yourself".

SSD is in no way a scam, and for a lot of users absolutely great. I wouldn't recommend one to anyone doing heavy work though as a lot of software was never written with SSD wear in mind. Levelling and OS-level caching can only do so much.

slipsius

my OCZ vertex 3 crapped out. I got two. a 60 gig for my OS, and a 120 gig for my games and what not (faster loading? why not.) The 60 gig crapped out, fast. Was getting BSOD CONSTANTLY. So i dropped the 60 gig, put my OS on my 120 (with all my main programs), then picked up a 2TB HDD for my games and shit. Been running way better, ever since.

iniside

sulkyrobot wrote: »

I thought the newer Sandforce controllers were fine?

They are not. It's about firmware. And most companies fail at it. Marvel controllers in SSD's are safer choice.

I can recomned Intel 5xx or Crucial M4.

Tokusei

nice, I have a vertex3 120gb but I'll grab one for my other box with a price like that ^^ cheers

MrOneTwo

I thought about Crucial M4 128gb. Its not Sandforce. It would be shame to throw all those money at a time bomb.

MM

i been running these without any issues at all

OS drive:
OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227727
^mine came in a box pack though unlike the above plastic pack.

Photoshop scratch disk and windows page file dedicated drive:
OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-90G 2.5" 90GB SATA III MLC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227759

i have a separate 750gb & 2TB drives from storage and game installs.

if you get BSODs then you may not have AHCI mode enabled either in bios or windows registry depending on your system config.

google AHCI mode: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&ei=lBneT5j8CcH76gHXw6z_Cg&ved=0CAUQBSgA&q=AHCI+mode&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=1d62f2a36ee5bdd6&biw=2368&bih=1254

Joseph Silverman

the tires and brakes on my car wear out quicker, cost more, and are comparatively much lower end than my ssd. who cares if it wears out in 2 years? still very worth it on my minimum wage pay.

almighty_gir

yeah i pretty much have OS+software on the SSD, everything else on the 2TB hard drive, that's max files, psd files, everything...

that way, in the event of an SSD failure i'm not losing anything at all. and i benefit from the speed increase of the SSD in all but one area; loading files i work with regularly.

although i'm thinking of just making sure that when i'm done working on a model/sculpt/whatever for the day i'll just make a backup on the hdd, and keep "working" files on the SSD as well, although even now the load times are minimal on opening files.... so yeah.

woot to ~11 second boot into windows

JamesWild

perna wrote: »

If you wish to rely on anecdotal rather than scientific evidence, that is your choice, but otherwise you need to provide hard data that backs up your claims.

"Hard data" like the reviews you posted done by reviewers who probably owned the drive for a week or two?

They wouldn't have a bad reputation if they didn't have a tendency towards failure. The SSD laptop I had that failed. All the memory sticks.

Flash has its purpose but I would NEVER rely on it for a boot drive or for software in its current state.

MrOneTwo

More sarcasm in this discussion than info ;p Each time I read something about ssd people complain that they tend to malfunction. 'People say , huh ?' - you are one of those people perna but with different opinion... unless you are something more than 'one of the people'.

'Wrong. People even now say that SSD drives give you ebola.' - ohhhh i see what you did there...impressive.

almighty_gir

perna wrote: »

gir: I keep all currently active projects on the SSD (photoshop and mudbox files at several hundred megs take quite a while to load otherwise). Keep in mind you should be backing up your work regularly anyway, so might as well do it off of the SSD. Because:



And in case of a HDD failure you lose everything, so do backup

In my experience, Cobian backup (free) has been very good: http://www.cobiansoft.com/index.htm

i'll look into it, i have an awful lot of stuff backed up on my FTP as well. thanks for the link man.

uncle

What's the point of this discussion? Everyone is already doing daily backups, right?

Right?

Target_Renegade

Was thinking of getting one of these, or possibly a 120GB~ish drive. The SSD is going to be used for games and whatever else I want to run real-time. Is there any point in having an SSD drive and having games on another drive? Unless it's a memory issue won't games run a lot faster on the SSD drive? Can understand, with games like Sim City/Civilization/Total War, an SSD drive won't make much of a difference, but with FPSs, when it comes to reading files for a level, HDD to RAM transfer should make a significant performance improvement.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-internal/solidstate/128gbandabove/sdssdx-240g-g25.html

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-internal/solidstate/128gbandabove/mz-7pc256neu.html

cycloverid

For price/performance, I highly recommend getting the Crucial M4. I got one a month ago, and this thing is just awesome. And, it has gone down $30!

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-CT256M4SSD2/dp/B004W2JL2A/ref=pd_cp_e_0"]Amazon.com: Crucial 256 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT256M4SSD2: Electronics[/ame]

The 256GB is at a great price right now. Unless you're really tight for cash, getting anything less than 256GB seems silly to me (I read somewhere their performance starts to fall off at around 75%+ capacity).

MrOneTwo

So thanks for making it clear to me perna For someone who is still in college and counts every penny its important to not be forced to buy new SSD because the previous hit its expiration date. I know everything wears and gets old but well used HDD can last really long time. Even if it hits the floor you can try low level format (saved me once). I need to read about this stuff. Before it was too expensive tech for me so I didn't care.

Now i just need to make some cash and buy this wonder thingy!

firestarter

I have a new laptop with a Transcend (who the fu..?) SSD drive in it, and I found it revolutionary in speed. Don't be scared embrace the new flesh.

dii

Is there any perceptable difference in performance between SSDs? Or can I just buy the cheapest SSD I can find and be about as well off as if I had bought one of the top performers?

cycloverid

dii wrote: »

Is there any perceptable difference in performance between SSDs? Or can I just buy the cheapest SSD I can find and be about as well off as if I had bought one of the top performers?

There's a big difference in the actual numbers. The old SSD's get about half the performance (because they're on Sata 3gb/s instead of 6). But, compared to a standard hdd, it's going to feel like a big boost no matter what.

MikeF

i've got a vertex 3 60gb that i got back in november 2011. It hasnt failed me yet, dont know if i'm just lucky or it came loaded with the latest firmware.

well worth the improved speed thats for sure

m4dcow

iniside wrote: »

They are not. It's about firmware. And most companies fail at it. Marvel controllers in SSD's are safer choice.

I can recomned Intel 5xx or Crucial M4.

Intel 520 series uses sandforce controllers. They took awhile to get to market likely because Intel has much better testing procedures and thus less issues with firmware.

Wheras OCZ et al wanted to get their stuff out the door first and used consumers as firmware beta testers. The Crucial M4s had issues with firmware months after they released, yet they don't get as much shit as OCZ sandforce based drives.

dii

dii: I think you know the answer to that. It wouldn't hurt you to read a few reviews before buying.

edit: Make a list of the cheapest products in your area and look them up on review sites for comparison.

I was hoping to get some insight from a graphic artist.

The reviews I've looked at are somewhat meaningless to me as the "Real world" tests test things like virus scanning and backing up steam games... Most reviews state that performance will varry between application and since I'm not familiar with how photoshop/zbrush/3ds max utilize the hard disk which makes it difficult for me to relate any of this information to my daily use.

Even more arbitrary is benchmark scores, Tom's Hardware has benchmarks for the Crucial M4 and Samsung 830, the Samsung 830's score is almost 30% better which looks significant in a graph but what's that mean to me? Fractions of a second launching photoshop?

They're $100 apart and it'd be nice to know that what I'm getting for the price isn't just a higher benchmark and the ability to run a virus scan in 6.5 minutes instead of 6.6. I'll take your advice though and keep reading...

cptSwing

m4dcow wrote: »

Wheras OCZ et al wanted to get their stuff out the door first and used consumers as firmware beta testers. The Crucial M4s had issues with firmware months after they released, yet they don't get as much shit as OCZ sandforce based drives.

Might well be it. And those that don't believe that it happened to me, the OCZ support forum speaks volumes.. (specific to my SSD, the Vertex2).

But yeah. In the end I followed their instructions and reflashed firmware and secure-erased and now it's been working fine for a week. However, despite having backups it's still a pain reinstalling windows and countless programs and I'm not sure whether this should accepted as "to be expected".

dii

Perhaps a more intelligent way for me to have phrase that question would have been: Has anyone upgraded from a slower SSD (especially one of the slower current market SSD) to a faster one and seen a noticeable improvement in performance of their work related programs?

Though ignoring that if you're willing to suggest a solution specifically for me I'd greatly appreciate it: My budget is $300 and I'm on an old Q6600 quad core, ASUS P5K Premium mobo, 4gb DDR2 memory, a gtx260 and some archaic 7200RPM 200 gig hard drive. I'm mainly looking for something that will improve my performance in photoshop/zbrush/3dsm, specifically helping eliminate the intensive bottlenecks I get where my hard drive grinds for several minutes when working with large files in ZBrush (especially when clearing masks and adjusting upper subdivision levels) or swapping between the multiple applications I have open. Anything that would improve the brush performance when working with large resolution canvases in Photoshop would be useful too but the bottlenecks are my primary concern.

I figured an SSD seemed like the best solution but obviously I'm willing to buy whatever combination of parts is going to get me the best performance in the most cost effective way possible. If I could keep the drive size above 100 gigs that would be a plus.

katana

I Also have the OCZ V3 running. Gawd I love that fast boot time. I've had it for about 8 months with no trouble at all and no need to update the firmware. I think they were or are a chance pick when it comes to QC.

It was overly expensive though.

dii

@perna thanks man I'll start there then

Futzy

4gb isn't that much for the kind of stuff people do here, and that sounds like the problem you're specifically running in to. It won't make your stuff faster or more responsive, like an SSD will but it will solve those problem's you're having. With $300 I would get a 256gb Crucial M4 and 8gb of RAM. 16gb on DDR2 just isn't priced well at all.

iniside

dii wrote: »

Is there any perceptable difference in performance between SSDs? Or can I just buy the cheapest SSD I can find and be about as well off as if I had bought one of the top performers?

From user standpoint ? No there is no diffrence between SSD that are not older 2 years. Benchmarks "diffrences" focuses on linear file read speed. And this matters... If you coping HUGE files or chunks of files between SSDs. Unless you are planning to assemble high-demand Database Server it's irrevelant.

What you must look at is IOPs (how many operations per second SSD can handle), for most modern SSD is about 60k, and it's only attribute that matter for user.

almighty_gir

lol, thread went asplode... i was just trying to point out a good (great?) deal haha.

and don't sweat it Perna, stuff like this can just happen, at least there's a voice of reason in the madness, sorry it had to be you!