Which is the most reliable SSD at the moment?

Rikki · 16 Nov 2011 at 10:09

Going to make the jump from magnetic to flash based storage but having read horror stories about them just stopping wrking with no advance warning I want to aim for something that might not be the fastest thing on the planet but has a good rep for not failing.

In the past I think it was the Intel ones that were supposed to be very solid but is that still the case?

Looking for a 120gb unit as I generally keep my main C: drive pretty clean of stuff.

Thanks

Rik

Frenzy · 16 Nov 2011 at 10:16

Crucial M4, as it says in the many other threads

TFC · 16 Nov 2011 at 10:31

Without doubt M$

Trisdov · 16 Nov 2011 at 12:51

Reliablility isnt an issue anymore mate.........OCZ vertex/agility is the way to go 100%

Rikki · 16 Nov 2011 at 13:11

Trisdov said:
Reliablility isnt an issue anymore mate.........OCZ vertex/agility is the way to go 100%

How so fella?

From 6 months ago ...

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

"… I feel ethically and morally obligated to let you in on a dirty little secret I've discovered in the last two years of full time SSD ownership. Solid state hard drives fail. A lot. And not just any fail. I'm talking about catastrophic, oh-my-God-what-just-happened-to-all-my-data instant gigafail. It's not pretty.

I bought a set of three Crucial 128 GB SSDs in October 2009 for the original two members of the Stack Overflow team plus myself. As of last month, two out of three of those had failed. And just the other day I was chatting with Joel on the podcast (yep, it's back), and he casually mentioned to me that the Intel SSD in his Thinkpad, which was purchased roughly around the same time as ours, had also failed.

Portman Wills, friend of the company and generally awesome guy, has a far scarier tale to tell. He got infected with the SSD religion based on my original 2009 blog post, and he went all in. He purchased eight SSDs over the last two years … and all of them failed. The tale of the tape is frankly a little terrifying:

•Super Talent 32 GB SSD, failed after 137 days
•OCZ Vertex 1 250 GB SSD, failed after 512 days
•G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 251 days
•G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 276 days
•Crucial 64 GB SSD, failed after 350 days
•OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days
•Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 15 days
•Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 206 days
"

PhillyDee · 16 Nov 2011 at 13:19

I have had 2 SSD's, both of them corsair reactors. Both failed. I have had enough and am sticking with mechanicals for a while yet!

Frenzy · 16 Nov 2011 at 13:20

LOL, I had my crucial m225 since 2009 and it was on pretty much constantly as an OS drive. It failed only last month.

I've had mechanicals in that time aswell and some have failed sooner!

Anyway you don't buy SSDs for storage, anyone who does is ignorant.

StonedPenguin · 16 Nov 2011 at 13:23

I've had 1 SSD - OCZ Agility 2 90GB for about 6 months and its been absolutely fine.

mrk · 16 Nov 2011 at 14:45

I am sure newer gen SSDs are far better than the older ones mentioned above....

Even still, I'll be running regular Acronis image backups on to my current WD Black HDD so if the SSD does fail then it's a simple case of swapping drives and booting up again, just a lot slower....

At least until RMA!

opethdisciple · 16 Nov 2011 at 15:06

Rikki said:
How so fella?

From 6 months ago ...

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

"… I feel ethically and morally obligated to let you in on a dirty little secret I've discovered in the last two years of full time SSD ownership. Solid state hard drives fail. A lot. And not just any fail. I'm talking about catastrophic, oh-my-God-what-just-happened-to-all-my-data instant gigafail. It's not pretty.

I bought a set of three Crucial 128 GB SSDs in October 2009 for the original two members of the Stack Overflow team plus myself. As of last month, two out of three of those had failed. And just the other day I was chatting with Joel on the podcast (yep, it's back), and he casually mentioned to me that the Intel SSD in his Thinkpad, which was purchased roughly around the same time as ours, had also failed.

Portman Wills, friend of the company and generally awesome guy, has a far scarier tale to tell. He got infected with the SSD religion based on my original 2009 blog post, and he went all in. He purchased eight SSDs over the last two years … and all of them failed. The tale of the tape is frankly a little terrifying:

•Super Talent 32 GB SSD, failed after 137 days
•OCZ Vertex 1 250 GB SSD, failed after 512 days
•G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 251 days
•G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 276 days
•Crucial 64 GB SSD, failed after 350 days
•OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days
•Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 15 days
•Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 206 days
"

Surely all of these are well withing the warrenty period?

•Super Talent 32 GB SSD, failed after 137 days
•OCZ Vertex 1 250 GB SSD, failed after 512 days
•G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 251 days
•G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 276 days
•Crucial 64 GB SSD, failed after 350 days
•OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days
•Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 15 days
•Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 206 days

PhillyDee · 16 Nov 2011 at 16:15

Even so, who wants drives that keep failing?
I may look into a new SSD next year, until then, I will stick with what I have.

Xelene · 16 Nov 2011 at 19:32

The Intel drives have the best reliability. I just use mine (Crucial) as cache. If it fails, it fails - tell the controller to stop using it as cache, throw it away and buy another one.

(Intel not budget consumer editions I mean)

g0th2000 · 16 Nov 2011 at 20:07

Well, my Vertex 2 has just started playing up so that makes my list:

Crucial M225 - failed RMA replaced with a C300
Crucial C300 - failed RMA replaced with an M4
OCZ Vertex 2 - failed coming out of sleep (known issue that seems to plague all sandforce drives - they're simply not fit for purpose)

All the above were used in different systems.

M4 is the best choice simply because it doesn't have a track record of failure (yet). I'd say it's pretty impossible to say a drive is a good 'un until it's been in the market for a year.

I don't particularly look forward to getting my Vertex replaced with another Sandforce :/

jbloggs · 16 Nov 2011 at 20:47

Bought 2 x 80GB Intel X25-M G2's on 23rd September 2009, sold one a few months ago and using the other in my desktop...

Lunatic Dreyfus · 17 Nov 2011 at 12:04

Another vote for the x25-m. Mine must be getting on for a couple of years old now, and it's performing better than ever since the latest firmware update.

Wucked · 17 Nov 2011 at 12:21

Probably a toss-up between the Crucial M4, or one of the Intel SSD's which also have a decent reputation. But if its just reliability you want then you still cant really beat RAID5 + a good DR plan.

Monkeh · 17 Nov 2011 at 14:46

Another x25m user here, had it as a boot drive in my main pc since August 2009 and still running sweet - I've kept the firmware and Intel SSD toolbox up to date and like Dreyfus has said the latest firmware has noticeably tidied up the performance on it.

The Kingston on special today looks tempting, but tbh not sure I cba to reinstall everything for the sake of 40gb.

mrk · 17 Nov 2011 at 14:48

You don't need to reinstall everything

Admetos · 17 Nov 2011 at 15:02

This is why my boot/apps are on a 500GB WD Raid Edition drive. I then use the SSD's for temp files, readyboost, indexing, page file etc. Machine is fast once it's got going and if an SSD fails there's no user data on it!