SSD Question

Anonymous_0172 · 30 May 2012 at 15:14

Hi, I'm building a completely new system soon and have a question or two about SSDs.

Is it best to get 2 SSDs (1 for the OS, and another for data etc.) or just one larger drive?

Currently looking at Crucial M4 or OCZ Vertex 4, any advice?

Emphacy · 30 May 2012 at 15:21

It's best to get a single SSD for your main OS, although they're big enough for a few extra applications and games that you'd prefer to load considerably faster.
A larger secondary drive would be best for storing your music, films etc. It'll also be used for SSD caching so again speed things up a little.

The M4 is a good choice although the new firmwire for the Vertex 4 makes it somewhat faster than the M4.

ed79 · 30 May 2012 at 15:29

Generally the larger SSDs have faster write times (due to having more memory chips I think).

E.g. Crucial M4 128GB
- Sequential Read (up to): 550MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Sequential Write (up to): 220MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s)

Crucial M4 256GB
- Sequential Read (up to): 550MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Sequential Write (up to): 300MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s)

Anonymous_0172 · 31 May 2012 at 15:09

Ok, thanks for the info. Would you recommend a Vertex 4 over an M4 due to the higher IOPS, or go for a cheaper M4? Also does anybody know how reliable the Vertex 4 drives are? I've heard that the M4 is very reliable.

dave_beast · 31 May 2012 at 16:08

The Vertex 4 is the same controller as the M4 (modified), so is essentially a faster M4. Obviously you'll pay a premium because of this, and also because it's newer.