solid state disks

• Mama wrote on 2011-03-06 02:11
  anyone know the best brand of solid state disk available at the moment? The most bang for the buck, I mean.
  
  I'm looking for one that's $200>
  
  probably going to go for 64gb since it'll be used as a boot drive.
• Yoorah wrote on 2011-03-06 02:22
  SSDs are actually kind of in the middle of a tech transition atm, with the new SandForce controller series coming out and stuff, which is going to be featured in a few of the manufacturers' upcoming products. But I'm guessing you're upgrading a older system? In that case, I'd just go for a reliable Intel-made SSD, like the X25-M G2. There's an 80GB version under $200 CAD.
  
  I should note that there are SSDs with higher performance for the cost, though. They are made by companies with lower quality standards, however, averaging with a 1.5-2% failure rate compared to Intel's 0.5%.
• Osayidan wrote on 2011-03-06 02:31
  We use two brands at work, OCZ and Intel.
  OCZ you get more for your money, and still very high reliability especially on their better models like vertex and agility. (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227688)
  
  We use OCZ when the customer needs high speed and capacity. Intel we use when the system needs to be ridiculously reliable.
  In our benchmarks OCZ has more random read/write speeds than intel.
  
  With both brands we've never had a failed drive so far, so either way you go you should be safe.
• Yoorah wrote on 2011-03-06 02:36
  OCZ is actually one of the least reliable brands, with a failure rate of about 2.93%. :( Interesting stats here: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/810-6/taux-pannes-composants.html
  
  You can check how some of the current SSDs stack up against one another here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review
• Osayidan wrote on 2011-03-06 02:41
  I use reviews for stuff I don't get to try out for myself but for OCZ and Intel I have first hand experience on a fairly regular basis so I must say they're awesome. It's a rapidly growing market so I'm sure others will pop up and competition will be strong (which is great for us).
  
  There's also the OCZ revodrive that we built a few servers with for clients without the budget for a TMS ramsan 10 or 20.
  I don't think they have any under 200$ though.
• Mama wrote on 2011-03-06 02:43

  Quote from Yoorah;361391:

  OCZ is actually one of the least reliable brands, with a failure rate of about 2.93%. :( Interesting stats here: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/810-6/taux-pannes-composants.html
  
  You can check how some of the current SSDs stack up against one another here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review

  
  
  oh gosh O.O
  thank you both for the info! I think i'll go for the intel for now, unless I convince the person who's getting it to wait for the SandForce to come out to push the prices lower. he's a performance freak who's building a high performance computer, but doesn't want to spend more than 200 for the ssd. (will only use it to boost stuff so a relatively small size is ok)
  
  or OCZ, if I can find a good deal :d
• Osayidan wrote on 2011-03-06 02:46
  If the person is a performance freak tell them to look up revodrive and they will probably be willing to spend about 60$ more for the power of about 2 and a half SSD's in raid0.
• Mama wrote on 2011-03-06 02:50

  Quote from Osayidan;361405:

  If the person is a performance freak tell them to look up revodrive and they will probably be willing to spend about 60$ more for the power of about 2 and a half SSD's in raid0.

  
  
  ya, he linked me a revodrive ssd that he wanted that cost like over 3k dollars which made me punch him where it hurts.
  *goes to hunt for sales*
• Osayidan wrote on 2011-03-06 02:55
  This is their lower end one, it's as good as 2 SSDs in raid0 plus the added benefit of being right on the PCI-e slot.
  http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227597&cm_re=revodrive-_-20-227-597-_-Product
  
  Probably costs less than buying 2 SSDs of the same capacity and decent performance to do the RAID yourself.
• Mama wrote on 2011-03-06 03:10

  Quote from Osayidan;361420:

  This is their lower end one, it's as good as 2 SSDs in raid0 plus the added benefit of being right on the PCI-e slot.
  http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227597&cm_re=revodrive-_-20-227-597-_-Product
  
  Probably costs less than buying 2 SSDs of the same capacity and decent performance to do the RAID yourself.

  
  
  *stares at write speed*
  /dies
  
  edit: what's this RAID support?
• Osayidan wrote on 2011-03-06 03:24
  RAID is making 2 or more hard drives work together in a variety of ways for performance, redundancy or both.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
  
  RAID 0 is having 2 or more disks working together as one large disk, write/reads are spread accross each disk which pretty much increases perfomance by the specs of the drives multiplied by the number of drives. It's not an exact calculation but it's very close to that.
  Revodrive is pretty much 2 SSDs built onto a circuit board, in RAID 0, connected directly to PCI-e to bypass the bottleneck of SATA.