Thinkpads Forum

Excuse me for ask this but you are a community with a lot of knowledge.
I have finally been able to go back to mac full time and I am holding a very powerful MBP with 750GB that I am not going to use more likely I want to remove it and replace it with a SSD.
My question is wich one meaning the one you think is more reliable and will give me the best result I hope you have the time to response because this is not a question outside the the perimeters of computing it can help windowes or macis.

This is an interesting question because SSDs are so new how much can you really tell about their reliability? Intel seems like the obvious choice, but they've had their own firmware issues of late. People rag on OCZ drives, but I have them in all three of my desktops and have never had an issue with any of them.

As far as the performance goes, I can't really tell much of a difference between any of them. I recently upgraded my R60e from a 16GB Kingston S100 to an 80GB Intel G2. Other than having more space, they both performed about the same. It's the latency that makes SSDs magical for most tasks and that doesn't vary much from one to the next. They're all very quick.

Thank ZaZ I will take your advice.

As per the research I did over the last few months the reliable ones are without the SandForce controller.

Top of the line & good price that were part of my short list:

- Samsung 830
- Crucial M4

There were several other series that were well regarded but this is what I shortlisted.

Wow thank's prices has come down a lot since them even so for surfing what the different and so much work and then again I will love to have the Air with 8GB the low$ one I think is the perfect machine and that has 128.
I will do the mini except the new one may have SSD I hope waiting for them soon.
Anyway is good coming back here ones in a while this is a very good forum.

crashnburn wrote:As per the research I did over the last few months the reliable ones are without the SandForce controller.

Top of the line & good price that were part of my short list:

- Samsung 830
- Crucial M4

There were several other series that were well regarded but this is what I shortlisted.

I would respectfully disagree, sir.

Sandforce bugs were all worked out by October 2011 firmware updates. The BSOD issues on the Samsung 830 series were not worked out until the end of January 2012. Also Samsung 830 will not support firmware updates on MACS OS X or Linux, or anything else other than Windows 7.

Don't get me started on Crucial m4. Probably the 2nd worst SSD that I have ever had to deal with. Even the latest firmware causes problems. When folks on their support forum are recommending techniques on how to downgrade to old firmware, you know there is a problem. I have had countless customers with problems with that drive.

To add to all that, the Samsung 830 and Crucial m4 do not compete with the Sandforce drives in sustained write performance and in random read performance. Samsung 830 is not a bad drive by any means, but I would avoid the Crucial at all costs.

Now that prices are dropping the gap between the Intel 520 series and other drives is starting to drop as well. The 520 gets you a fast Sandforce controller with Intel firmware that went through a year of development / debugging. It's a very nice drive and what I'd recommend to folks looking for a new SSD.

Seems like Samsung has the most solid overall specs. and performance.
My preference is Intel though.
Like ZaZ said, SSDs are all pretty much the same in terms of speed other than some microscopic differences. It is reliability that makes the biggest difference here now, but that's starting to become a tie game as well.

See your budget and choose one that first hits your mind. That's likely to be the best choice.