SSD shopping! Who's reliable?

Looking for an SSD finally, the WD green is getting slower and slower these days and the Samsung backup disk I have has the G-Sense error rate climbing higher.
Just unsure which brand is reliable. I hear the Kingston V300's just plain suck now with some sort of "wear protection" that kicks in under heavy activity?

Right now I'm sitting at 166Gb used on my OS drive, BUT I did a fresh install of Windows7 not too long ago so I'm missing a fair amount of games.
I'm thinking of 256Gb or maybe 480Gb?

Budget is $150 CAD MAX, however if it's really worth it I'll save up for a better/bigger model no issue there.
Not in a rush to buy an SSD anyway, just want to get an Idea of what to buy when I'm ready.


*Note: In case you are wondering I heard back from G0dm@n on the M500 I pm'd him on. They might all be sold to a friend who runs a shop. (hopefully not )
Just letting everyone know, not trying to hurt his image at all.

Samsung 850 evo...OCZ Trion 100, both solid. Mushkin has good offerings on their phison controller...

^ Agree

Sandisk is good as well

I'd go with the 850 EVO, personally, but the other options EarthDog listed are very nice as well.

In the past I've had great experiences with Mushkin support, FYI.

Crucial at all?

What about the Marvell controllers? or SandForce?

Most are just fine.. you are talking about a couple % difference failure rates between most of the popular drives. If you want reliability, stick with Intel and Samsung. But the Patriot drives, Mushkin, OCZ, Sandisk, all good as well.

EarthDog said:

Most are just fine.. you are talking about a couple % difference failure rates between most of the popular drives. If you want reliability, stick with Intel and Samsung. But the Patriot drives, Mushkin, OCZ, Sandisk, all good as well.

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Lol I kinda figured

How long to these SSDs last anyways? 5 years?
I'll pull up a list of SSDs I'm looking into and you all can give me your opinions on them.

Warranties are 3-5 years depending on the model. There have been plenty of 'endurance tests' done by various websites to show how many writes these drive have... for example: http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

You can post them up, or check the reviews for yourself. The SSD Review is a great resource for this kind of thing.

Kingston, Mushkin and Patriot are using the same controllers and what is weird all are using even the same casing for their SATA SSD.
Crucial and Sandisk are using Marvell and their SSD are generally better in higher queue read/write than Phison ( not really important for games ). Both have good warranty but Sandisk has longer on their highest series.
The longest warranty has Samsung but I've heard that RMA can take some time. Samsung has also probably the fastest SATA SSD right now if we look at random transfers which are the most important in daily work.
Forget about SandForce till LSI release new controller. Intel is working with them so I guess there will be something good but they are focusing on PCIE SSD lately.

In home or even server ( not large database ) environment every SSD should stay alive for at least 3 years. Most SSD have 3 year warranty. Only Sandisk and Samsung have longer ( 5-10 years ).

That's one of the most insane tests I've seen for SSDs. Would be interesting to see then introduce newer models in an ongoing test to see how newer hardware compares.

I like my Intel and Samsung drives, I had some older Intels 320 series didn't last, and a couple of Kingston years back that were just junk, but the 520 upwards series Intels I've nothing go wrong with them, and the Samsung 850EVOs are just awesome for my laptop drives. I know there is something wrong with the Power on Hours, cause it shows 920620 hours for this 520 series, which I know is impossible, Might be 9206.20 hours, but the Intel SSD Toolbox doesn't show the decimal point. Only had 776GB writes and 3.11TB reads, 0 reallocated sectors still shows 90% life (I'm guessing there is a % supposed to be there). Reserved space is at 10, not sure what that refers to, maybe 10GB? I got it shortly after it was released for an OS drive in an older laptop, that laptop died and put in this newer one for games works great.

Do each of the brands make their own SSD or are they rebranded like most RAM memory chips?

Its the controller, NAND, and firmware that differ among SSDs. Some use the same controller, and even NAND, but the firmware is different. Others use different controllers (Phison, LSi, Sandforce, etc)...

you can find a nice S3700 200Gb for that price.....drives are rated for 10DWPD for 5 years.

Even desktop SSD are rated like for average server workload ( excluding larger database servers ). I mean all SSD have at least 3 year warranty and if nothing unexpected happens then should live at least 3 years. Average time in which most users are replacing desktop PCs is about 3 years.
At the end if you care about data then you have backups anyway. Regardless how good is SSD, it can always fail as it's only electronics. Remember that SSD in most cases won't show any issues and can instantly die. HDD usually show SMART errors etc.
Longer warranty is only saving you from costs of buying new SSD but won't save you from costs of data recovery and lost time.

cw823 said:

you can find a nice S3700 200Gb for that price.....drives are rated for 10DWPD for 5 years.

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I do like the Intel SSD's and I hear they are good drives as well.

Here's my list, thoughts? I figure all of these drives would be about the same reliability wise +/- few months..
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167333 <- I love the way Intel SSDs look
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156066 Successor to the M500?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820228135 TLC.. Is there really a difference vs MLC?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820173011 Nice speed from SanDisk
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226688 Silicon motion controllers decent?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA9H53GD6540 3-D Vertical memory? Good price right now too!

Just picking what I think looks good.
So for best reliability, Intel and Samsung. Save a few $$ and not really risk much are the other brands. Correct?

Silver_Pharaoh said:

I do like the Intel SSD's and I hear they are good drives as well.

Here's my list, thoughts? I figure all of these drives would be about the same reliability wise +/- few months..
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167333 <- I love the way Intel SSDs look
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156066 Successor to the M500?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820228135 TLC.. Is there really a difference vs MLC?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820173011 Nice speed from SanDisk
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226688 Silicon motion controllers decent?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA9H53GD6540 3-D Vertical memory? Good price right now too!

Just picking what I think looks good.
So for best reliability, Intel and Samsung. Save a few $$ and not really risk much are the other brands. Correct?

Click to expand...

yeah I'd say Intel > Samsung > everyone else (crapshoot)

I've had Intel, Micron, Samsung in that order.
All drives have worked great. The original 80GB Intel drives are still running to this date that I know of (sold off to a friend). Micron drives are still running (about 3-4 years old) and working strong (128-256GB drives) - 256GB is in the laptop. Now I have a 512GB (840 Pro) and 256GB (850 Evo) in my main rig.

I really haven't had any issues with SSD's. The IT department at my company hasn't had issues with it, except the Micron's requiring firmware upgrades to avoid a running hour glitch.
Overall there are many choices out there, and any major issues with them have been ironed out by now.

If I'm looking for drives, its Samsung/Intel is primary choice, Micron comes in next.

Silver_Pharaoh said:

I do like the Intel SSD's and I hear they are good drives as well.

Here's my list, thoughts? I figure all of these drives would be about the same reliability wise +/- few months..
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167333 <- I love the way Intel SSDs look
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156066 Successor to the M500?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820228135 TLC.. Is there really a difference vs MLC?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820173011 Nice speed from SanDisk
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226688 Silicon motion controllers decent?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA9H53GD6540 3-D Vertical memory? Good price right now too!

Just picking what I think looks good.
So for best reliability, Intel and Samsung. Save a few $$ and not really risk much are the other brands. Correct?

Click to expand...

Intel is good but as good as some other series. I guess I would pick something with longer warranty.
Crucial SSD are solid and they have great support even though warranty is "only" for 3 years. Right now I have MX200 M.2 and BX100 SATA and both work without issues for longer. I also had MX100 ( which is about the same as MX100 ) and couple of M4.
BX = lower series but somehow not much cheaper than MX. MX are middle series. M500 was the highest as it had additional features like encryption etc. Now lower series also have that and there is no M SSD but I heard there will be M600 in some time.
Crucial cares about stability and if any issue appears then they fix it pretty quick.

My choice would be:
- Samsung - the fastest, good quality and longest warranty ( also not bad price ) but depends from country support can be slow
- Plextor - fast and stable but usually expensive
- Crucial ( MX ) - stable with great support and inexpensive but slower than Samsung

Simply right now I would pick Samsung or Marvell controllers. I'm still not convinced by anything else even though Phison isn't bad. There is new Mushkin Striker review on the front page which is based on the highest Phision but as I said earlier, random write isn't the best and there is clearly something wrong with firmware even though sequential bandwidth is about as high as max SATA III bandwidth and simply can't be better.

TLC = in theory lower endurance than MLC. TLC means 3 bits per cell while MLC in most cases is 2 bits per cell. In real it means that TLC will write data more often in each cell what causes shorter life per cell. In server SSD there was also SLC but most new server SSD are MLC. I guess because of too high SLC price and MLC is not much worse. In servers barely anyone is using single drive so on large RAID it's much easier to buy 1-2 spare SSD than pay much more for SLC. I don't know what about now but some months ago difference in price between SLC and MLC was about 100-200%.

Fyi...

Silver_Pharaoh said:

Budget is $150 CAD MAX

Click to expand...

$152.98

$2.98 over budget but free shipping & 10 year warranty



Have no personal experience with drive...

Rightr now the Samsung 850 EVO (500GB) can be had for $147US with code AFMSSD0125C. I do not know if that is available for Canada or how it works out in CAD but that's the lowest price I've seen for that drive.