First time SSD buyer

steve258

steve258

steve258

Soldato
Joined
3 Jan 2006
Posts
5,009
Sorry for another one of those ssd suggestion threads, I've read the ssd sticky and it's very informative. But I just want people's opinions on the following drives and on which option to go for, any of the three drives I can acquire over here:

Intel x25-v 40Gb in raid 0 - 2 of these cost exactly the same as the mainstream 80Gb so was thinking why not. I assume these are not like the G2s where TRIM still work in raid0, but according to the anandtech review as long as you leave out 10% space it shouldn't be too bad even without TRIM. But will I really notice the benefits with it as an OS partition?

Intel x25-m G2 80Gb - Seems to be one of the forum favourites, I don't think I can go wrong with one of these. Plus in the future if I feel like it I can always add another one in for TRIM raid0 goodness.

Crucial C300 64Gb SATA3 - People don't seem to have bad things to say for it. The SATA3 support is nice when I upgrade especially when it gives extra 100mb/s seq. read speed. I won't be upgrading anytime soon though and again, will I notice the extra transfer speed with it as an OS drive? How do these compare to Intel reliability and endurance wise? Also will the 128mb cache give any advantage over the Intel ones?

Thanks for your time.
 
It all depends on what you use your computer for. If its mostly for gaming, surfing and work then the write speed doesn't matter. In which case Intel and Crucial, the ones you listed both have 70MB/sec write speed.

If you're going to be using your hard-drive for data intensive work, then maybe considering a Sandforce based drive like the OCZ Vertex 2E will be your best choice.

I've just bought a C300 64GB (20 minutes ago :D) - I'm going to use the HDD for booting Win 7 and a few games. The SATA 6Gp/s is a benefit, when you do upgrade a while from now, you know you can take full advantage of your existing hardware. There are no disadvantage I can think of for not choosing Sata 6Gp/s drive.
I have a SATA 3Gp/s motherboard myself, so you should be fine.
 
Thanks, still haven't made up my mind though. I thought the latest intel g2 ssds have trim support in raid when used with intel ich10, as per the ssd sticky?
 
steve258 said:
Thanks, still haven't made up my mind though. I thought the latest intel g2 ssds have trim support in raid when used with intel ich10, as per the ssd sticky?
Click to expand...

The sticky is incorrect, Intel released a driver update that allowed the controller to pass TRIM commands from a controller set to RAID in the BIOS, this was to allow you to have normal platter hard drives in a RAID array and then a single SSD not in RAID to still be able to receive the TRIM command.
 
I have a Crucial 64GB M225 that I am pleased with although a friend of mine who also had one wasn't so chuffed when his drive packed up. Good news is Crucial seem to offer good support and they sent him out a C300 as a replacement which he says is quicker still than the M225 so I would be happy to go with Crucial again in the future.
 
Thanks for the reply guys but went for the 2x intel 40gb raid0 option a couple of days ago. The performance is excellent, as I can see in the benchmark. But I have to say having gone from 2x500gb raid0 the performance isn't as profound as people claim it to be. Maybe I just expect too much.
 
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