SSD replacement on SATA 2

[dusk007]

My Vertex 2 died its of sudden death syndrom.
Because Amazon is great even after 5-6 months I get money back (apparently all of it which surprises me positively, but still remains to be seen), I decided to go for a different SSD of the same price.

Now I am wondering which of the current SSDs does best on my still SATA II 2010 MBP.

I looked at some benches on storagereview and am undecided between a crucial m4 and an intel 330. OCZ Octane seems also great value and shouldn't have Sandforce Vertex like reliability but it sucks at power consumption.
The latter would be cheaper if I go for 180GB but Sandforce is much better at high IO. Server workload which I do often need when testing stuff locally.
With the m4 I would go straight for 256GB which would finally solve all space issues my 180GB vertex 2 worked but more space would be more comfortable. No speed difference with incompressible stuff is very nice.

Does anybody have SATA 2 benches for these two drives. Or similar ones like Vertex 3, Agility 3. m4, Intel 330 or 520.
AS SSD and xbench?

 

[lamboman]

Forget the Agility 3, it's merely an asynchronous NAND Vertex 3. Your needs sound quite specific, but you haven't stated exactly what kind of "server workload" it'll see. I'd take a good long look at Anandtech Bench. Out of those, Vertex 3, m4, and Intel 520 will be the quickest, but with SATA 2, any advantages of the Sandforce drives will not be present, probably making the m4 the quickest drive in this scenario.

 

[dusk007]

pretty random cloud DB systems that I use for running code against. It is just for testing and benchmarks. Not all that important. Most of the speed comes from ram use anyway with those DBMS. Yet it stuns me that the m4 is rather poor compared to the Sandforce based once on those server tests on storagereview.

I wonder how badly a Sandforce does under SATA 2. Incompressible speed goes way down but since SATA 2 limits at around 250mb/s it might be just about the same.
The Intel 330 seems very affordable and should also get me most of the advantages of a 520 since the top speeds is limited by SATA 2 anyway.

I think I will just get the m4 since you never really hear anything bad about it and it is not too expensive.
I want my SSD speed back but Amazon is great. No charge for sending them the packet, very helpful chat service they even do the work for you. Money back after 6 months.

 

[lamboman]

You know that all of those models will be quicker than the Vertex 2, so no concern there As you've said, the SATA 2 limits change things a bit, making the m4 the better choice. Great price and warranty alongside superior reliability make it a great choice. If it were SATA 3, the choice would be a bit more difficult!

 

[bozz2006]

I came to the decision to order the Crucial M4 based on reliability and Mac-friendliness. I have a SATA3 computer but I think the same holds true for SATA2. Pick up a 256GB M4 for $249.