SSD OCZ OWC totally confused

[ejosepha]

Originally Posted by derbothaus

This is true, however, when I get a new Mac I will not have to buy a new SSD. On a SATAIII connection the drive will almost double it's transfer speeds. New Mac and new SSD (sort of) I will be getting something new within the 5 year warranty. Most people will.



All Mac Pros are limited to 280ish MB/s because of the SATA link speed. There are other factors and it appears the CPU has too much to do with the HD benchmarking in Xbench.
The thing about benchmarks is that you really need to perform accepted benchmark tests. There are standards out there for a reason. HDtach, 3dMark, Luxmark, Cinebench, etc. If you use anything else you can't really do an apples to apples comparison without buying all the tech and having it your home so you can test it against your Xbench. Becasue no one uses Xbench as a serious benchmark.



Because those numbers are not listed as sequential and random scores. They are total bandwidth scores. How much data can travel down the pipe in an optimal circumstance. The drive has to do a lot more work when performing the sequential and random tasks.



They are only consistent within Xbench and have very little barring on reality.



You don't need TRIM with Sandforce based SSD's. In fact it sometimes slows them down. You are automatically protected from performance degradation because you bought an OWC SSD. It has protection built into it's chipset. Which is why OWC pushed them for Mac's. In earlier SSD market they were some of the only drives that worked well on a Mac. Other manufacturers are starting to develop on board garbage collection or whatever you want to call it. So the options are now more broad.

Thanks for the details. I wonder if the the Samsung 470 is considered to have a decent enough Garbage Collection to invest in, since I don't have Windows installed. Or the GC in Intel's 320? Any other SSD that would fit the bill I would be more than open to.

(By the way my Mac Pro has the 3.2 Hex installed. The OWC SSD was originally in last year's Macbook Pro. The Xbench scores are a bit better now than then, but not that much.)

[dknightd]

Originally Posted by mikefla

I highly recommend the OWC SSD drives, . . . snip . . . I am a reseller for OWC.

-Mike

I have nothing bad to say about OWC, or their drives, but it does not surprise me a reseller would recommend them. In fact I would not expect anything else Kudos to you for disclosing, and offering a discount

[cjgonzales1900]

Originally Posted by derbothaus

The OP does not have a SATAIII controller so Crucial M4 will not hit 415MB/s.
I'd get from OWC as they are extremely Mac friendly and offer a 5 year warranty. My Mac Pro hits 280MB/s Read and write easily on SATAII with OWC SSD. No problems so far.
The M4 is in the same ballpark as the new OWC and OCZ's but SF-2200 is faster according to every place that has tested them both.

I agree OWC is by far the best I have seen. I currently own one and plan on putting another in my MP.
The standard OWC SSD only comes with a 3 Year warranty. If you want the 5 year you have to buy the more expensive version.

[derbothaus]

Originally Posted by cjgonzales1900

I agree OWC is by far the best I have seen. I currently own one and plan on putting another in my MP.
The standard OWC SSD only comes with a 3 Year warranty. If you want the 5 year you have to buy the more expensive version.

Oh. I did not know that. I thought it was for all the drives. Thanks for the heads up. It looks like the 6G and the 3G Enterprise Pro RE drives are the only 5 Year ones.

[MacinJosh]

Originally Posted by philipma1957

do yourself a favor and buy this ssd



http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Intel-SSDSA2...ht_2213wt_1189


the company is a real seller the drive is stable the drive works the drive is simply far more reliable then the owc or the ocz drives.

+1 Got it. Love it.

[telequest]

Originally Posted by dknightd

I have nothing bad to say about OWC, or their drives, but it does not surprise me a reseller would recommend them. In fact I would not expect anything else Kudos to you for disclosing, and offering a discount

diglloyd swears by OWC SSDs ... and also discloses his business relationship.

i've been running an OWC 120GB SSD as my startup/apps drive for about 6 months and all good so far.

[handheldgames]

If you have a Sandforce based SSD or are considering purchasing one... Read the comments on this post over at Anandtech. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4453/t...-midrange-king

[TeaZy]

Originally Posted by handheldgames

If you have a Sandforce based SSD or are considering purchasing one... Read the comments on this post over at Anandtech. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4453/t...-midrange-king

Interesting review.

I'm now thinking that intel 320 160GB or intel 510 120GB are a better choice, as suggested by people in this thread. Mainly due to the increased reliability and avoiding the sand force driver problems.

Are intel drives easy to update the firmware on a mac?

I might wait for lion to be released and see how trim is working with them.

[philipma1957]

Originally Posted by TeaZy

Interesting review.

I'm now thinking that intel 320 160GB or intel 510 120GB are a better choice, as suggested by people in this thread. Mainly due to the increased reliability and avoiding the sand force driver problems.

Are intel drives easy to update the firmware on a mac?

I might wait for lion to be released and see how trim is working with them.

I push intel. OWC at least will work with you if the ssd dies. They also admit to some ssd problems with macbook pro 17 inch 2011 models you have to give them credit for an honest effort.



OCZ is hated by a lot of unhappy customers. here is a set of reviews of a 3.5 inch newegg was selling 90 sold with 19

1 star reviews!


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...scrollFullInfo


read reviews for intel 0 1 star reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-053-_-Product

[johnnymg]

Originally Posted by handheldgames

If you have a Sandforce based SSD or are considering purchasing one... Read the comments on this post over at Anandtech. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4453/t...-midrange-king

Nice find! That looks like my next SSD.

VERY happy with my OCZ Vertex 2 (32 nm). Works GREAT in my 2010 MP. VERY fast read/write times and never a problem when sleeping the computer.

cheers
JohnG

[handheldgames]

I really want to like Sandforce based drives... But I'm not willing to be part of their Paid & Public BETA... I keep on hearing.. "It's fixed in the latest firmware".. REALLY?!?! Why wasn't it tested and fixed before the product was shipped? I swear Nintendo has better quality assurance on their retail games..

These kinds of issues really shouldn't be happening in a released product. And if it's released and they know about it and they are still selling it.... SHAME!!!!!

[derbothaus]

Each manufacturer is different. SF gives you all the tools. If you are OCZ and you ****** up your firmware you can only blame them not SF. OWC so far has no failures or at least a "normal" amount.

[handheldgames]

Originally Posted by derbothaus

Each manufacturer is different. SF gives you all the tools. If you are OCZ and you ****** up your firmware you can only blame them not SF. OWC so far has no failures or at least a "normal" amount.

Take a read over in the MBP forum. That's far from the case.

[derbothaus]

2 people. Better issue a recall. I consider that normal actually. How many have they sold? To me this is fear based nonsense. Until it happens to me if course, then it is the end of the flippin world

[pazz]

The IOPs Vertex 3 is looking perfect. Just concerned with the reliability. Spending that sort of money to be screwed around by an SF controller can't be fun.

[kennyjxlee]

Originally Posted by mikefla

I highly recommend the OWC SSD drives, they are fast, high quality and come with a 3 year warranty. OWC is a very good company at addressing warranty issues. I am using one right now. They are very fast! And you can enable TRIM support under LION and I believe Leopard. If you are interested in purchasing one I can probably save you a couple dollars, I am a reseller for OWC.

-Mike

I'd like to buy an OWC SSD, the 115GB 3G one. Mike you able to get a discount?

[Einz]

Interesting article on SSD reliability.

http://foliovision.com/2011/06/26/me...sd-reliability

[derbothaus]

Not an article. A rant.
One dudes opinion and a little conjecture thrown in to paint a wide picture alluding to all SF controllers but really he's complaining about his own OWC customer story (maybe he's a dick) and the rest is OCZ failures. Hyperbole.

[Tommy1]

I highly recommend the OWC SSD drives, they are fast, high quality and come with a 3 year warranty. OWC is a very good company at addressing warranty issues. I am using one right now. They are very fast! And you can enable TRIM support under LION and I believe Leopard. If you are interested in purchasing one I can probably save you a couple dollars, I am a reseller for OWC. -Mike

I know this is an old post but I need an external SSD do you still have discount connections? thank you,
Tommy

----------

Originally Posted by mikefla

I highly recommend the OWC SSD drives, they are fast, high quality and come with a 3 year warranty. OWC is a very good company at addressing warranty issues. I am using one right now. They are very fast! And you can enable TRIM support under LION and I believe Leopard. If you are interested in purchasing one I can probably save you a couple dollars, I am a reseller for OWC.

-Mike

Sorry mike I am botching this blog thing.. do you still have connections on the OWC external 120 ssd?

[scottrichardson]

I have the 240GB Extreme Pro in my mac pro as a boot drive.

If you want more speed, why don't you buy two 120GB ones and set them in RAID 0. You should get 350 - 400MB/s then!

[hfg]

I run a pair of smaller 3G OWC SSD drives as RAID-0 to get great read and write speeds in my 2008 Mac Pro as the boot device. The 2 drives are bracket mounted in the 2nd optical bay and connect to the 2 SATA-II ports on the motherboard. Power is via a Y-sata-to-molex cable.

It is working great so far and leaves my 4 drive bays free and available for hard disks (running a pair of 1TB disks as RAID-0 for photo, music, video, etc. data libraries).


-howard

[JDW]

I have nothing against OWC. What I post now is simply FYI. Furthermore, I have been a happy customer of OWC for many years. Nevertheless, when you do have a problem with an OWC product, it becomes a big, slow and costly problem, especially for those of us who live outside the US. Thankfully, I've only had one of those horrific experiences, but it just happened to be with an OWC SSD, hence my post here today.

I had a bad experience with their LEGACY SSD series, when used in an old Apple Wallstreet. You can read my experience over at the 68kMLA here:

http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=18154

It was not long after my experience they removed that particular drive from sale. Suffice it to say, I will continue to buy RAM and spinning platter hard drives from OWC, but I am more reluctant to do so with their SSDs. Certainly, there are many of you out there with good experiences with OWC SSDs, and good for you. Maybe I was just VERY unlucky. But if so, who is to say that bad luck won't continue if I buy another SSD from them in the future, even one that has a regular SATA interface?

Anyway, it's FYI.

Best wishes.

[ColdCase]

SSD is a moving and commodity type product, as they squeeze more memory into their packages and improve speed, stuff happens. There will be batch to batch variations and infant mortality is high. The landscape has changed a lot since this thread was started.

Six months ago I evaluated a number of higher capacity SSDs for a RAID 5 application. I wanted to like the OWC model but it did not fair well (perhaps that SF controller). The SF OCZ actually performed more reliably, but throttling was an issue. At the time Kingston and Intel provided the best overall performance and reliability/stability. But Intel could not ship product with enough capacity. The Kingston drew a lot of power when writing, however.