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Best SSD 120-256gb: price/speed
- Thread starter scmarcos
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Depends on if you want SATA 2 or 3. Probably the best price 256 SATA 2 drive would be Samsung or Kingston. SATA 3 is faster if your doing slot of copying or moving heavy files. But for normal web, email and photos, you probably won't see much if any difference. Also SATA 2 has been proven to be more stable than SATA 3 at this time. Obviously in the future it will be more stable. If you value your data, best to go with SATA 2 now and look to upgrade once SATA 3 matures.
I've had no problems with a Crucial M4 in a 2011 15" MBP. It is VERY fast
I will probably go for the 128 gb Crucial M4 (180 euros with expedition is perfect)!
With the new firmware did you experience any bench-balls or hibernate issues?
Thanks a lot!
Not yet, no. It will happily sleep and wake up again. I've been using it for about a week now, so I would have expected to see problems if they were going to happen.
the thread starter is in Europe, so while they will ship here, it adds to the costs significantly. Then there are customs charges, taxes, etc.
We counted several thousand reviews on Newegg.com. Conclusion: Reliability of Sandforce drives is significantly lower than Crucial, Intel and Samsung.
For Sandforce drives about 20% of the reviews mentions RMA worthy problems. For Crucial, Intel and Samsung it's about 5%.
Whether the Sandforce drive was from Corsair, OCZ, Mushkin or others did not really matter for reliability.
To assume OWC is more reliable is one assumption I wouldn't make. They use the same controller, design and NAND as Corsair.
For Sandforce drives about 20% of the reviews mentions RMA worthy problems. For Crucial, Intel and Samsung it's about 5%.
Whether the Sandforce drive was from Corsair, OCZ, Mushkin or others did not really matter for reliability.
To assume OWC is more reliable is one assumption I wouldn't make. They use the same controller, design and NAND as Corsair.
That being said which is the better of the two, Crucial 300 or Samsung 470? Both 256gb.
It seems Crucial M4 firmware 2 has more success with Macbook Pro than C300. It's also a little faster.
So Crucial M4 is the fastest, Samsung 470 has the lower failure and problem rate.
Samsung 470 also has slightly lower power consumption and better GC (this wouldn't be important when TRIM is running).
Having used a vertex 3 for the last two and a half months I recently re-installed stock SATA 2 SSD that my 17" i7 came with. I can tell you that the difference is barely noticeable. Reliability is far more important.
Hopefully that changes with Lion.
But when the price is the same and there are no obvious reliability issues with the M4 compared to the C300? Why go for SATA 2 when a SATA 3 version is available?
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C300 is SATA 3 and an excellent drive, ran one in 2009 and 2011 15" MBPs with no issues. Vertex 3 is also good, have two of those in a 2011 15".
Or you could get an Intel SSD - for reliable data loss!
fat jez said:
C300 is SATA 3 and an excellent drive, ran one in 2009 and 2011 15" MBPs with no issues. Vertex 3 is also good, have two of those in a 2011 15".
Or you could get an Intel SSD - for reliable data loss!
Difference is barely noticeable....? So there is no point in me upgrading from a Vertex2 to a Vertex3 SSD in my 13" 2011 Macbook Pro?
Or is the increase in speed worth it?
First of all, these are both SATA 3 drives. Apple's support for SATA 3 is very spotty on the MBP's (do a search). For older mbp's SATA 3 will run as SATA 2 anyway, so there is really no point. The new ones have had terrible problems. I used a vertex 3 in my SATA 3 port for two months with occasional hiccups (beachballs), but I got so sick of it I just put the old SATA 2 drive back in. No more hiccups, and the machine is just as responsive.
When faced with a choice between reliability and speed, always choose reliability.
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No, it's not. But, it seems that the SATA 3 issues mainly affect only the 17" i7. Do some research and decide for yourself. In my opinion there is very few things that you will do with your machine that will make the increase in speed appreciable.
It's barely noticeable unless you do a lot of file copies from a very fast source.