Words of wisdom -- think twice before choosing your SSD

[mrgiapanta]

OCZ Vertex (standard) 120GB can be purchased at Amazon right now for $339 (US) after $20 rebate. I paid about $400 a year ago so $339 seems like a bargain to me!

Mark

Just a note.
It shows that $20 rebate can be applied only if you purchased the product by April 16th.

 

[Mark Booth]

Just a note.
It shows that $20 rebate can be applied only if you purchased the product by April 16th.

Just a note.
You must be clicking on the "Rebate forms for recent purchases", which is older rebates, instead of clicking on "Get forms", which is for the current rebate. Must be purchased by April 30 with current rebate.

Mark

 

[AshStorm]

I bit on the OCZ Vertex 120g (Standard) last night.

For those shopping for it, if you have a MICROCENTER local to you, you can pick it up directly from the store for $339 and it also has a rebate to bring it down to $319 if that matters to you (Rebate is good from April to March in comparison to the Amazon one).

Of special note for anyone who is picking up this specific SSD...
MAKE SURE YOU FLASH IT TO FIRMWARE 1.5. I didn't delve into it too much but I'm under the impression this firmware fixes some of the issues Mac users were having with it. Directions and files are on the ocz site.

The one I purchased from Microcenter already had the 1.5 Firmware.

 

[bafonso]

I bit on the OCZ Vertex 120g (Standard) last night.

For those shopping for it, if you have a MICROCENTER local to you, you can pick it up directly from the store for $339 and it also has a rebate to bring it down to $319 if that matters to you (Rebate is good from April to March in comparison to the Amazon one).

Of special note for anyone who is picking up this specific SSD...
MAKE SURE YOU FLASH IT TO FIRMWARE 1.5. I didn't delve into it too much but I'm under the impression this firmware fixes some of the issues Mac users were having with it. Directions and files are on the ocz site.

The one I purchased from Microcenter already had the 1.5 Firmware.

Why not get the intel 160gig then? small price difference...

 

[AshStorm]

Heh I seriously considered the Intel 160g.

I got caught up with the hype of getting my first MBP this week and wanted instant gratification in buying the SSD immediately. The Intel X-25M G2 was unfortunately $499 at Microcenter.

I also had read a few decent things about the garbage collection in OCZ with the Vertex (Standard).

Size wise it's perfect for my first SSD. I have a Desktop PC so the only non-work / non-education things I'm going to keep on the MBP are Wow and Starcraft 2 OSX Beta so I'm not going to be using any of the storage for Bootcamp.

 

[Jaro65]

The 512GB model is. It may not be the fastest but it's the cheapest especially with a discount and will be under the famous Mac warranty and customer care and is guaranteed to work, obviously.
It's what I will get, whilst there are some good stores in the UK, all the drives cost more, in fact the OCZ and Kingston and a Corsair are the only other 512GB SSDs I can find. And they have no guarantee to work correctly do they?

Not worth the hassle in my mind.
You also won't be able to extend the warranty on an aftermarket SSD to 3 years. Not easily anyway.

The Kingston SSDNow V+ that I got comes with a 3-year customer warranty.

 

[Mark Booth]

Why not get the intel 160gig then? small price difference...

Intel X25-M G2 160GB: $450
OCZ Vertex 120GB: $320

Intel X250M GC 160GB cost per GB: $2.81
OCZ Vertex 120GB cost per GB: $2.66

If you can get by with 120GB, it's the less expensive way to go.

I have a full-size OS X 10.6.3 system installed on my Vertex 120GB, along with Photoshop, Aperture 3, 10GB of iTunes music/movies, the full iLife and iWork suites, and a few other 3rd party apps (SuperDuper, a few games, etc.). I still have 69GB free space remaining on my Vertex 120GB.

Not everyone needs anything larger than 120GB.

Mark

 

[dyn]

It's actually the mid 2009 unibody refresh that has the "broken" Sata 3gbps controller/wires. I have one and had to "downgrade" from 1.7 to 1.6 firmware to Sata 1.5gbps speeds so my Intel G2 ssd can work correctly without constant beachballs. The first gen unibody (2008) were actually pretty much problem free.

I wasn't talking about those 2 machines but about the early 2008 MBP. The chipset it uses is capable of sata300 speeds but Apple limited this to sata150. Probably due to stability issues or overheating or something like that. Apple could have done the same with this notebook as they did later on with the EFI update for the unibody model you're talking about but they didn't (probably by then this notebook wasn't supported any more). Other notebooks that use the same chipset as the early 2008 MBP does are capable of using the sata300 speed, so why not the early 2008 MBP as well?

I'm very happy that Apple went to the much more reliable Intel Sata controller on the new 15/17 MBp's

The controller in my early 2008 MBP is an Intel controller, not every Intel controller is that reliable.

 

[magbarn]

I wasn't talking about those 2 machines but about the early 2008 MBP. The chipset it uses is capable of sata300 speeds but Apple limited this to sata150. Probably due to stability issues or overheating or something like that. Apple could have done the same with this notebook as they did later on with the EFI update for the unibody model you're talking about but they didn't (probably by then this notebook wasn't supported any more). Other notebooks that use the same chipset as the early 2008 MBP does are capable of using the sata300 speed, so why not the early 2008 MBP as well?


The controller in my early 2008 MBP is an Intel controller, not every Intel controller is that reliable.

Oh, I didn't know that the previous MBP prior to the first unibody also had capped Sata 150 speed controller. I'm wondering why Apple seems to purposely do this. Never had any issues with SATA 300 in even the cheapest $200 windows laptop from BF Best buy.

 

[cek15]

Intel X25-M G2 160GB: $450
OCZ Vertex 120GB: $320

Intel X250M GC 160GB cost per GB: $2.81
OCZ Vertex 120GB cost per GB: $2.66
Mark

You must have great deals of disposable income to buy an X-25m G2 160 at $450. In Nov. 09 I bought 2 to raid for $460 each, and I purchased a third two days ago for $360.

The X-25m is a proven performer and at the current prices you can get them for (anywhere from $360-$390), they're a good value proposition too.

 

[tmiw]

The X-25m is a proven performer and at the current prices you can get them for (anywhere from $360-$390), they're a good value proposition too.

Where are you getting them for $360-390? They seem to be $430-450 at the moment.

 

[Mark Booth]

An Intel X25-M 160GB at $360 would be a good buy. I highly recommend anyone that can find one at that price to go for it!

That is, of course, if you don't mind taking it out of your Mac and installing it in a PC to run TRIM.

Mark

 

[cek15]

Just in the last two weeks Mwave/eWiz had them for $399 after instant rebates with free shipping, and there's also the $15 manuf. rebate.

Most of the other 3rd party e-tailers followed suit:

http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/intel...-solid-state-drive-SSDSA2MH160G2C1/13903.aspx

Look at eBay. Tons of people picked them up at that price and are selling them for $399 + free shipping knowing you can get the 8% Bing, but they pocket that difference anyways.

I bought mine in a bid war for $360 + $5 shipping. Newegg, which has always had incredibly high pricing on the X-25m's, is even at $425 or something. You know you can get a better deal than $425 when that's where Newegg is pricing.

 

[Mark Booth]

Just in the last two weeks Mwave/eWiz had them for $399 after instant rebates with free shipping, and there's also the $15 manuf. rebate.

Most of the other 3rd party e-tailers followed suit:

http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/intel...-solid-state-drive-SSDSA2MH160G2C1/13903.aspx

Look at eBay. Tons of people picked them up at that price and are selling them for $399 + free shipping knowing you can get the 8% Bing, but they pocket that difference anyways.

I bought mine in a bid war for $360 + $5 shipping. Newegg, which has always had incredibly high pricing on the X-25m's, is even at $425 or something. You know you can get a better deal than $425 when that's where Newegg is pricing.

That is, of course, if you don't mind taking it out of your Mac and installing it in a PC to run TRIM.

Mark

 

[tmiw]

That is, of course, if you don't mind taking it out of your Mac and installing it in a PC to run TRIM.

Which would only be relevant if Windows had support for HFS+. Otherwise you'd only be TRIMing the Windows/Linux partitions.

 

[brentsg]

And some interesting Anand news from a day or so ago, currently on his front page. The Sandforce drives are definitely beta material.

"SandForce made news last week, but for some not so great reasons. It turns out that the production firmware on SF-1200 drives drops random small file write performance by a decent amount on drives presently shipping.

Those impacted include Corsair and OWC. Corsair is handling it by sticking with the RC firmware and providing a workaround for a known issue with the earlier firmware. OWC on the other hand has quietly updated its website to reveal the new (lower) specs of the drive."

 

[MBHockey]

That is, of course, if you don't mind taking it out of your Mac and installing it in a PC to run TRIM.

Mark

Intel's controller on the G2 is quite good at keeping track of which blocks have been written to ensuring only a small amount of performance degradation even without TRIM.

The reason OCZ is toting garbage collection as a wonderful new feature is because prior to the GC firmware, without TRIM, performance degradation was a big problem because the controllers they used weren't nearly as good as intel's.

Lastly, you can't run TRIM from windows on an hfs+ formatted drive...

 

[dyn]

Oh, I didn't know that the previous MBP prior to the first unibody also had capped Sata 150 speed controller. I'm wondering why Apple seems to purposely do this. Never had any issues with SATA 300 in even the cheapest $200 windows laptop from BF Best buy.

It's actually the same story as with the amount of memory that is supported by the hardware. The early 2008 MBP should be able to use 8 GB when you look at the specs and at other notebooks using the same hardware but in reality it doesn't. It becomes very unstable when using more then 6 GB of RAM. Something similar could be the case with the sata controller. Things like the design of the pcb, the revision of the chips, voltages used, EFI, etc. might be different from others and might be the explanation why there is a 6 GB memory and a sata150 limit in that particular MBP. Manufacturers tend to put those limits in their machines to make them stable and reliable.

Something similar happened with the mid 2009 MBP. In the EFI it was limited to sata150. Users complained about it and Apple came up with an EFI update that got rid of that limitation. Users quickly found out why there was a limitation in the first place: the sata controller did some really crazy stuff because it became very unstable (mostly with high speeds). This led to a lot of users downgrading the EFI version from 1.7 to 1.6. The ssd simply were too fast for the controller so it probably overheated and became unstable causing a lot of problems. Limiting the speed to sata150 prevented that from ever happening. The only problem was, that Apple seem to have some bugs regarding sata in EFI 1.6 as well. The mid 2009 MBP wasn't a great notebook regarding sata. I think Apple had the same problem with the early 2008 MBP but it didn't support it any more at the time so it didn't release any new EFI update. But if they did, they probably would have seen the same problems. Mind you, this is all theory people came up with to explain the problems. You can find more about it on different forums, for example OCZ's.