SSD - Solid State Drive, Help wanted?

Stinicker

Ok, after spending much of the summer slowly but surely gathering the parts and getting my computer ready I eventually today merged two computers and about 6 years of data!

In 2009 I bought a 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA2 32MB 7200RPM Hard Drive, which I was using in my old Dell as a dumping ground for old TV shows, films and the like. The old Dell is well past its time and I am going to use my Medion as my main pc going forward.

In the meantime I bought a WD 2TB disk and installed it into my Medion and it became the new dump so to speak and I took all my files and put them on it and I have about 1.6TB of data with another 200GB of stuff to come over esentially filling it.

I emptyed out the Samsung into the WD and cleaned and formatted the Samsung, I then removed the 640GB WD which was the original Medion drive and swapped it for the Samsung and installed Win7 64 on to the Samsung just tonight and what a disaster that way!

The noise oh the noise, contstantly cycling and scratching talk about a let down I was hoping to have a nice 3TB of storage on the system instead all I get is what must be the noiseiest hardrive ever made, I don't think it is failing or anything as it was rarely used and the Dell case being bigger and plastic rather the Medions metal muffled the sound alot more.

So no SSD is clearly the way forward or else to go back to the WD 640GB Drive which was as quite as a dove compared to this Samsung monstrosity.

Sorry for the rant, now my questions? Which are the best SSD manufacturers? I am willing to spend up to €200 but want the SSD drive to be fast and hold 80GB to 120GB or if someone knows a bigger SSD all the better!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated besides having to listen to this Samsung nightmare.

the untitled user

Just to fill you in on my own experience:

I took a punt on a Corsair Force Series 3 120GB and have had a mixed experience with it so far. Performs admirably, but drops every now and then (causing a BSOD), though I've yet to get around to trying their new firmware update. But even though I've had problems it doesn't put me off it, the productivity boost gained more than compensates for the decrease in stability for me.

Dropping seems to be a fairly common complaint among owners of the recent sandforce controllers (OZC Agility and Vertex 3 being others using the same controller). Many cite Intel's offerings as being the most reliable available.

Fnz

The Crucial M4 range seems to be up their with the best. Recent firmware has brought the performance up to par with OCZ's (more expensive) Vetrex 3 range.

keno-daytrader

I have had this in for a few months now, best upgrade Ive done on a computer!

Crucial CT128M4Solid State Drive2

Monotype

Crucial's SSDs are about the best for reliability.
It wouldn't be as fast as the sandforce ones (although these have highly inflated figures in some areas). If you wanted a sandforce based drive, go for one of the more reliable brands like corsair.
Alternatives are Intel's (which were a bit expensive for what you are getting last time I checked but generally reliable despite one setback) and samsung's very recent drives which look good so far and hopefully are bit more tested and are free from disgraceful issues that have plagued most of this generation's SSDs.

JMcL

keno-daytrader wrote: »

I have had this in for a few months now, best upgrade Ive done on a computer!

Crucial CT128M4Solid State Drive2

+1 for this. Put it into a recent build, and it's superb

vibe666

fyi, for anyone looking at getting an ssd, sandforce have finally tracked down and fixed the cause of the reliability issues with some of their controllers that have caused so many headaches for ocz, corsair (and others) ssd's etc.

http://www.sandforce.com/index.php?id=189

looks like there should be updated firmwares out now or very soon.

Serephucus

I don't know about you Stinicker, but I have two of those 1TB drives in my machine, as well as two 2TB variants, and they're both very quiet. All mechanical drives are going to make noise when seeking - the ones that don't will be slow.

If you think the Spinpoints are bad, see if you can find someone with one of the old Raptors; those things were loud.