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Which SSD is the best?

T

techstaholic

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2011
4
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I plan on purchasing a 2011 17 inch macbook pro and installing 2 SSDs in it and putting the in RAID 0. I'm not sure which to go with, though. I 've heard that these are the best, but does anyone have a prefeerance? thanks.
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro
OCZ Vertex
Kingston HyperX
 
Those are among the worst, all are based on SF-2281 controller which is known to have problems. Take a look at Crucial m4 and Samsung 830.
 
techstaholic said:
I plan on purchasing a 2011 17 inch macbook pro and installing 2 SSDs in it and putting the in RAID 0. I'm not sure which to go with, though. I 've heard that these are the best, but does anyone have a prefeerance? thanks.
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro
OCZ Vertex
Kingston HyperX
Click to expand...

The 17" seems to have troubles with SSDs in the Optical bay running SATA III. Also, I wouldn't recommend a RAID0 SSD config. I'd simply get a large SSD. I myself have the OWC. I bought it exactly a month ago. Read lots of horror stories but have not suffered any problems at all. I see people complain about virtually every make and model out there. Past problems likely had contributing factors including Apple's own firmware.

Whomever you buy from, just make sure you understand their support policy should something go wrong. I still consider SSDs to be bleeding edge technology. And by that I mean, I hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

For myself, if I ever do encounter a problem, I'll echo it to the group. I think we only see the bad news on forums. So the good news, at least for me, is that I am running the first 30 days flawlessly.
 
Interestingly enough, the Apple Geniuses (whether you love 'em or not), recommend the OWC SSDs. (Not necessarily all Apple Geniuses, but the ones at my local Apple Store.)

Just got a 240GB OWC Electra myself, which will replace the 120GB stock SSD in my 15" 2011 MBP.
 
For system drives they are probably the fastest. They are all SandForce controllers.
I would recommend the Samsung over any other for a general use SSD in a Notebook. It got very good Idle power consumption. Unlike the Sandforce reaches peak performance also when unpacking stuff or moving/copying around big compressed movie files and stuff. It is otherwise pretty bad in load power consumption and not quite as fast with system level data but that part is negiligible.

As far as relyability goes when you really read into that matter you realise there is a lot of talk but very few real facts. It just people quoting rumors of rumors.
The general situation seems to be they could all be better and most of the time it is firmware bugs which are corrected eventually. Make Backups in any case.
 
terzinator said:
Interestingly enough, the Apple Geniuses (whether you love 'em or not), recommend the OWC SSDs. (Not necessarily all Apple Geniuses, but the ones at my local Apple Store.)

Just got a 240GB OWC Electra myself, which will replace the 120GB stock SSD in my 15" 2011 MBP.
Click to expand...

Chime in once in a while and let us know how the drive is doing. Congrats!
 
After searching and reading around this forum and the net, I decided to go with a 256gb Crucial M4. Should get it by Fri/Sat along with the Crucial 8gb ram kit I ordered. Can't wait!
 
Philthy84 said:
After searching and reading around this forum and the net, I decided to go with a 256gb Crucial M4. Should get it by Fri/Sat along with the Crucial 8gb ram kit I ordered. Can't wait!
Click to expand...

Let us know how it goes. What MBP do you have?
 
What about the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB 2.5" HD?

Looking for a little help. Newegg has the Momentus 500Gb Hybrid Drive for $90. Is this a good drive for Early 2011 MBP (i5 2.3 Ghz). I don't want to shell out a lot of $$$ for a decent size SSD but I would like to replace my OEM 320MB HDD to at least 500GB. Reading mixed reviews from Newegg and Amazon is making me hesitant to order this drive. So I decided to see if people on this board have had any experiences or thoughts on this particular drive. Thanks for all of your help!
 
there is no "best". I prefer OCZ myself, I've never had issues with them and their CS is great imo.
 
I've owned 7 OCZ SSDs

2 - Vertex 60GB
2 - Vertex 2 60GB
1 - Vertex 3 120GB (MAX IOPS)
2 - Vertex Plus 120GB

None of which have ever failed. I even sold both Vertex 60GB and both Vertex 2 GB to friends who are still using them years later.
 
You'll probably be fine with the Crucial, but you'll probably be fine with most. As stated, everyone has/has had troubles.

I purchased an OWC Extreme 6G 240gb and had troubles. OWC was awesome with their communication, troubleshooting and eventual cross-ship return. Since receiving the replacement, I've had no problems using it with my late 15" 2.5ghz MBP and am getting very good speeds, faster than before and it was fast with the bummer drive.
 
I currently own 7 SSDs and have owned a total of 8. I have had very good experiences with Sandforce controllers to date. My only issue with an SSD was the Indilinx controller from G.Skill that started experiencing severe stuttering. The support from G.Skill was slow, but eventually received a brand new drive with a Sandforce controller, which I immediately sold on eBay. The complaints about OCZ should be largely resolved. I'm fairly active in their forum and noticed a huge drop after the 2.15 firmware. OCZ is very responsive with firmware updates, more so than any other SSD manufacturer. OWC has amazing customer service and extensively test their components with Macs.

1 - 240GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro
1 - 480GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G
2 - 240GB OCZ Vertex 3
3 - 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS

My favorite drive is the Vertex 3 MAX IOPS. Its incredibly fast at anything you throw at it because of the 3xnm synchronous Toggle NAND. The benefit of the Sandforce 2281 is excellent garbage collection which leads to great durability and no hacks to enable trim in OSX (because its not necessary).
 
MapleMacMan said:
Looking for a little help. Newegg has the Momentus 500Gb Hybrid Drive for $90. Is this a good drive for Early 2011 MBP (i5 2.3 Ghz). I don't want to shell out a lot of $$$ for a decent size SSD but I would like to replace my OEM 320MB HDD to at least 500GB. Reading mixed reviews from Newegg and Amazon is making me hesitant to order this drive. So I decided to see if people on this board have had any experiences or thoughts on this particular drive. Thanks for all of your help!
Click to expand...

I tired an sad and had all kinds of trouble. Decided to try the Seagate Momentus XT about a week ago. Nice drive. My computer boots in about 25-30 seconds. Everything seemed quicker. No complaints except I paid $149 for it:)
 
I've been using the OWC Mercury Extreme 6G 480 for two months now. So far it's been flawless. Love the drive.
 
I had the first Momentus XT 500GB and in the beginning it was fast to boot but several months later it started get slower and slower. Also, I was running out of space. I heard about the 750GB upgrade and that it was faster than the 500GB version, but it was pretty pricey. This made me think of a dual setup HDD/SSD. With the price of XT that I would use to pay for a 128GB SSD, I could get a better performance and some more space. I got a little compulsive however at checkout and went up to 256GB. I did much research and best one I found seems to Crucial m4. Unfortunaly, I didn't know about problem it had with max usage. But, that was actually addressed and fixed in firmware 0309.
 
I use an Intel 320 series 120GB Sata II in my optical bay and the Apple 120GB in the HDD bay. no problems from either of them, apple ssd seems to read a bit faster but my intel dominates on the write portion.
 
I had several OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs and they served me quite well. Recently I bought 2 OWC SSDs and they are excellent as well. Both companies have good customer service.

Hellhammer said:
Those are among the worst, all are based on SF-2281 controller which is known to have problems. Take a look at Crucial m4 and Samsung 830.
Click to expand...

The OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G now uses the SF-2282 controller which doesn't have the issues that plague the SF-2281 series. It also uses 32nm Toggle NAND.
 
alphaod said:
The OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G now uses the SF-2282 controller which doesn't have the issues that plague the SF-2281 series. It also uses 32nm Toggle NAND.
Click to expand...

The only difference is that SF-2282 supports more NANDs per channel, that doesn't make it free from issues. Toggle NAND has no effect either.
 
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