SSD Advice ? (Never had one before.)

[stix]

Thinking I might try out a Solid State Drive. Never had one before.
Will probably install in a laptop or netbook to try and boost performance, or a desktop as a system drive only.

Wanting to keep the cost down but get quality components, and don't need large capacity unless that would help slow performance degradation.
Currently using SATA II HDDs, in SATA II supported equipment, and don't yet have hardware that supports SATA III.

Wondered if this drive is still a good choice (on sale with e-mail coupon code):
"Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SV300S37A/120G"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721107

Some negative comments by new egg buyers suggest that the manufacturer has downgraded the quality/speed of the memory used in the drive since it was first available, producing inferior performance. There are also lots of good comments.

CDRLabs review from January 2013 is here:
http://www.cdrlabs.com/forums/house-review-kingston-ssdnow-v300-120gb-ssd-t25791.html

Any thoughts and/or suggestions would be most appreciated.

[Ian]

The Kingston V300 was one of the best bangs for your buck when it first came out. Then the company switched to slower/cheaper NAND without telling anyone and people got mad because the performance wasn't nearly as good.

The best choice for an entry level SSD is the Samsung EVO 850. The 500GB and 1TB drives are awesome and are what I have in my computers. The 120GB and 250GB drives have the same problem as other TLC NAND based drives though where the performance drops once the SLC cache is full.

If the EVO 850 is out of your price range, there are other decent TLC NAND-based drives out there. If you're hooking it up to a SATA II port, you probably wouldn't notice the difference in performance anyway.

The Phison S10 controller seems to be a good choice for TLC nand based drives. Given, there are some duds, but drives like the OCZ Trion 150 perform surprisingly well. I've also heard good things about the Zotac Premium Edition, but I have no idea how their support compares to the bigger brands. The Plextor M7V and Crucial MX300 also look to be contenders but its too early to say yet.

Are there any other drives you've been looking at?

[stix]

Thank you Ian for your response, suggestions, and clearing up the questions I had about the drive I mentioned.

I haven't considered any other drives at this point, but I'm open to further suggestions.
The Samsung 500 GB EVO 850 at a cost of $150 is more than I want to spend for now, if this is the one you are are talking about:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147373

Not exactly clear to me what you mean here:

.... The 120GB and 250GB drives have the same problem as other TLC NAND based drives though where the performance drops once the SLC cache is full.

Do you mean the Samsung EVO 850 in the 120GB and 250GB sizes will not perform as well as the Samsung 500GB and 1 TB drives? I don't understand why.

I found an interesting article related to this topic here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2998497/storage/tlc-nand-ssds-the-crippling-problem-storage-makers-dont-advertise.html

Are there any SSDs in the under-fifty-dollar range that would be worth bothering with? Can anyone suggest a specific drive?

[Ian]

That article does a pretty good explanation of what TLC NAND based SSDs are doing. With the 500GB and 1TB versions of the 850 EVO, the SLC cache is big enough where it never really empties. If I remember right, there are also enough channels so that if it were to empty there really isn't much of a drop. The drop with the smaller drives is pretty big though:



Typically, the higher the capacity, the smaller the drop in performance. Though in the case of the Crucial BX200, its pretty big no matter the capacity.

Keep in mind though that you'd need to be doing a lot of writes to fill up that SLC cache. For the average consumer, this probably isn't going to happen. And even if it does, you'd have to be writing say a file that was 5-12GB in size (depending on the capacity and/or cache size).

If you're looking at a sub-$50 drive, you're probably going to be limited to ones that are 250GB or less. If thats okay, it may be worth paying an extra $10-15 and get one with MLC NAND. The difference in price isn't that much at that capacity.

[Dartman]

We put a 120 gig one, and a 500 gig data drive running win 10 pro. Boots fast and all the big stuff and initial video captures go on the 500. First one I've ever used too but made sense and was part of the package of new and used parts my buddy set up for me.
I'll probably go a bigger version eventually so I can run more of my main programs directly from the ssd drive, and the cache getting full on the smaller versions certainly makes sense.
Haven't had any obvious problems yet that I can blame on the ssd, win 10 has some issues with the video drivers but the hardware is rock solid, just mostly older but top end stuff.

[stix]

Thanks again Ian, and Dartman.

So what's the big fuss about TLC over MLC if it has the performance plunge drawback with a small cache, cost?

Looked around a bit, and have a few possibilities.
Naturally, all but a few of these are outside the target price range.
I have no experience with these brands, except for Crucial and Kingston (memory and flash drive products) and the occasional AMD cpu.
Have noticed CDRLabs has reviewed some of these or similar.
Any of these stronger candidates than the others at this stage in the game, or have I missed any good options?

ZOTAC Premium 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC (SSD) ZTSSD-A5P-240G-PE
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820016002

PNY CS2211 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC (SSD) SSD7CS2211-240-RB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178970

HyperX Savage 2.5" 240GB SATA III (SSD) SHSS37A/240G
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104552

Crucial MX200 2.5" 250GB SATA III MLC (SSD) CT250MX200SSD1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148948

Crucial MX200 mSATA 250GB SATA 6Gbps Micron 16nm MLC NAND (SSD) CT250MX200SSD3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148951

[Ian]

Is this going in a desktop or laptop? The reason I ask is that some drives are better when it comes to power usage. The available encryption methods also varies.

[stix]

Probably going in a netbook or laptop, and If I'm not impressed with that, will put it in a desktop. I rarely run the portables on battery power, and if I do it's for relatively short periods of time. Don't know that I need encryption, or haven't had a need up to now.

Also, I still prefer window 7, but I wouldn't think that would matter.

[Ian]

The Zotac Premium, Kingston Savage and PNY CS2211 are all powered by Phison's S10 controller. All perform really well with the major differences being the firmware, NAND flash and warranty.

The Mushkin Striker is also powered by the S10 but at the 240gb capacity its sequential write speeds are a lot slower for some reason.

The Crucial MX200 is also a great drive. It performs as well as the Phison based drives and is packed full of features. It also supports a bunch of encryption methods as well as low power modes like DevSleep. The MX300 should be out any day now so you'll probably see sales on the MX200.

The Radeon R7 doesn't perform quite as well as the drives above, especially when it comes to random writes. It's controller is also getting a bit dated at this point. The ARC is based on a similar platform. It's slower than the R7 but its controller offers more features.

I think its safe to say that at this poing you should stay away from the Kingston V300 unless you can get one for REALLY cheap.

I really can't say much about the Transcend SSD340. If I remember right, there's a newer model now (SSD370?). Same goes for the ADATA Premier SP550. I really haven't anything good or bad about it that makes it stand out in my mind.

[stix]

Thank you very much for your thoughts Ian.
Much appreciated that you share your knowledge of these things.
It would otherwise be an expensive experiment for me with some surprises no doubt.

Darned if the "PNY CS2211 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC (SSD) SSD7CS2211-240-RB" isn't back up to $85 on Amazon.
Almost bought one Saturday nite on sale for $70.
It seems like by the time a decision can be made, the whole playing field has already started to change.
I'm editing my original list above and will keep and eye out for other options as well.

Still wondering if there is any particular reason CDRLabs hasn't reviewed any Intel SSD products?

[Ian]

Still wondering if there is any particular reason CDRLabs hasn't reviewed any Intel SSD products?

No reason in particular. I don't have as much time as I used to to go and track down marketing people and hassle them for review samples.

[stix]

The Zotac Premium 240GB listed above is on sale at Amazon for about $65, but with no knowledge of their support I'm hesitant. Kind of difficult to find specific warranty info online. I called their USA Customer Service, said I was considering a SSD purchase and wanted to ask about their service/support. The person I was speaking with then asked to put me on a brief hold, and came back and said "I think the SSD drives come with a 2 year warranty". When I said retailers advertise the warranty as 3 yrs, she said you have to register the product with Zotac within 30 days of purchase to get the 3rd year "extended" warranty". At least I was able to get a live person on the phone, in California, fairly quickly, and was only on hold very briefly. The company is based is Macau.

I notice there are firmware updates for some SSDs, so that would be another question.

There's a review of this drive at http://www.myce.com/review/zotac-ztssd-a5p-premium-ssd-review-78191/

[Ian]

Thats more than I got from Zotac. I reached out to them a couple of months ago via email and got no response. That did not give me a good impression of the company.

There don't seem to be a lot of firmware updates for SSDs. I'm guessing companies are afraid of data loss.

[jesser]

I have a Samsung 840 Pro series and absolutely love it. Reliable and fast

[jesser]

there are many options depending on your needs and budget. http://pc4u.org/best-ssd/

[stix]

Thinking of getting one of these:

Western Digital WDS250G1B0A

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820250078

any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Ian]

It's decent for a TLC NAND based SSD. It really comes down to what else is available at that price.

[stix]

thanks for your thoughts, Ian.

[Ian]

I should point out that WD has two versions of the Blue SSD now. One with 3D TLC NAND and one that's planar TLC NAND. I haven't checked to see which one is better.

Have you looked at the ADATA SU800 at all? It's still one of my favorite TLC NAND based SSDs. It's got good endurance and the SLC cache is actually big enough where your performance won't drop off all the time.

[stix]

Took a look at ADATA SU800 on new**g. Not encouraged by the buyer reviews.

What would be the SSD brands with the best warranty service when a problem comes up with their product?

[Ian]

That's a good point about the warranty. In that case, you might be better sticking with WD/SanDisk or going with Plextor, Toshiba/OCZ, Crucial, etc.