Good sub $300 SSD (considering Vertex)

[Intrepid]

I'm looking for an OS drive, something to run OS, Office, SPICE, and CAD software very very fast. Things like long simulations are killing my 32gb raptor.

I do run Windows7.

I'm thinking the 60GB OCZ Vertex or possibly a Crucial 64GB drive.

I want to avoid theJMicron controller and have an SSD that will also last a while, if it will just die out slowly I might as well get a 150GB velociraptor.

There are a few others our there, I hear Kingston has worked out the kinks in the JMicron chip and their new offerings are superb, any experience with these?

[Shiggity]

Intel, OCZ, or SuperTalent.

All have good controllers that don't stutter and all have TRIM support with new firmware releases.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667 - Info on TRIM

[Ashura]

Vertex 60GB is a good choice. If you need space, OCZ Agility 120GB can be had around that budget as well. It's a little slower than the Vertex but still blazing fast compared to your raptor. You can also try to find a X25-M G2 80GB that isn't being price gouged in the $200-$250 range. Another option is getting two of the Kingston X25-M G2 40GB drives in RAID0 for around $200 total.

All will have some way to alleviate performance degradation, if not right this second then down the line at some point.

Even if Kingston has worked out the kinks with their new JMicron drive, I would avoid it. Why bother dealing with it when you have perfectly good unblemished alternative controllers to choose from?

[Intrepid]

So how long would it be before the drive slowed down to the speed of a very fast platter drive. In some tests they don't seem to have that much gain as they are new, with the exception of a few random read/write cases which seem to be what makes the SSD so appealing.

[Evilsizer]

umm access times will never slow down, always .1ms maybe .2ms... i think your talking about transfer rates though, if you get the right drive that supportes either TRIM or GC. you put your computer to sleep and never have to worry about that unless you use, i think it was 75% or more of the ssd's space...

[visbits]

umm access times will never slow down, always .1ms maybe .2ms... i think your talking about transfer rates though, if you get the right drive that supportes either TRIM or GC. you put your computer to sleep and never have to worry about that unless you use, i think it was 75% or more of the ssd's space...


I'm using over 80% of my SSD storage and I've not experienced any performance decrease after 2 months of 24/7.

[Airbornederekc]

Intel drive hands down has the best performance. Price is right around 250. Big thing about the Intel drive is that they designed it themselves from the ground up with an Intel controller.

[HDCHOPPER]

Indelix & barefoot has come along way ...Vertex has support

and the ever present gorrila in the room Intel drives ....

[Intrepid]

I remember the intel drives, I remember stacks of them in testbeds at Intel's test engineering group :) I wanted!!!

[SuperDave1685]

I'm looking into possibly getting a SSD myself. I'd say Intel's X25-M G2's right now myself. Just because they were built from the ground up and seem to have relaivley good support and good performance. Not to mention the SSD Toolkit that's availalbe from Itnel for their SSD's