Can someone explain the differences between these 3 SSDs

Hi everyone. i'm considering buying a cheap-ish average/low capacity SSD. mainly as a boot drive and for one or two intensive games. performance is my main focus (with cost being a secondary, so i can't get a particularly spacious one)

right now, i'm looking at the following:


http://www.microdirect.co.uk/home/product/56428/corsair-ssd-30gb-2-5-sata-ii-nova-series

This one's from corsair, it's the cheapest of the three, but has a low capacity. It's relatively expensive for it's capacity and seems to be relatively slow. i've heard that corsair has a reputation for reliability, but is there anything to indicate this drive might have a longer lifetime than the next two?



Second one:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/home/product/56174/sandisk-64gb-sata-internal-2-5--ssd

This one is what i'm leaning towards atm. However as far as i can tell, it seems to only support SATA (and not SATA II or III). is that correct?

As i understand, Even SATA allows a transfer rate of 1.5 GB/s, which is far in excess of the drive's 490 MB/s read speed, so would there be any point in having a more advanced SATA anyway ?


Last one:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/57097/SanDisk-64GB-SATA-Ultra-Plus-SSD-sdssdhp-064g-g25

This one is almost identical to the second drive, except that it has "ultra plus" in the name. I don't really see what makes it faster though. In fact, the only difference between them i can see at all, is that this one supports SATA III, which iirc allows 6GB/s data transfer.

What is the point of that? as i mentioned previously, the read speed isn't anywhere near SATA (I)'s transfer speed, so isn't it worthless to support better SATA? or is there something i'm missing here.

FWIW, my computer/motherboard only supports SATA II (not III)

Is there any other way this drive is better than the second one, which justifies its increased price ?




And out of these three, which should i pick? Or does anyone else have a recommendation in a similar price/capacity bracket ?

 

Get the latest version SSD you can, reliability has vastly improved with the latest versions.

I would look to 120-128GB, you really don't want them over 75% full for reasonable long-term speed and the larger the drive in the same family, the faster they are. The smaller they are, the faster they choke.

The cheapest reliable drives would be Crucial M4 (not V4!) or Samsung 830/840 non-Pro.

My 128 M4 was silly fast over SATAII, it's still my System drive since moving up to SATAIII and still fast at over a year old. I recently bought an 840 just to hold games even though I have to connect it to SATAII as my 'board has only the 1x SATAIII.

A good alternative that is sometimes a little cheaper is the Plextor M5S; my advice would be to save up for a few weeks, check comparison sites for those 3/4 models regularly and jump on the cheapest one when you have enough ££ saved (~£70-75 ATM but prices regularly drop and special offers are frequent).

The priority once you have a new SSD is to update to the latest firmware!

 

Are you in the UK if so I recommend Scan it's usually the cheapest place due to the huge volume of sales 'largest in the uk' always has the newest stock and also has a no quibble return policy.

http://www.scan.co.uk/

No the drive is probably mislabelled, any drive you buy will be sata 2 or 3 and it doesn't really matter which at this speed and price. Since you only have a sata 2 controller you can't make full use of a sata 3 drive anyway but you should still strive to get sata 3 as they are often newer models and will still work perfectly.

Any drive that has a read or write speed above 300MB/s can make use of sata 3 which has a max transfer speed of 600MB/s.

1.5Gb/s= 150MB/s
3Gb/s = 300MB/s
6Gb/s = 600MB/s

Your getting your bits and bytes mixed up which cool around here:coolNotice the smaller 'b' denoting bits on the left and the capital 'B' on the right denoting Bytes

Either consult table above or for more reading

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bytes.htm

The three main performance points to look for are max read and write speed which will be the peak at which the drive can transfer large files and IOPs which is basically the drives ability to randomly access smaller files at various places on the drive, this is very important to the way you pc feels everything happens just a little faster and why ssd's are so much better as an OS drive.

Be aware the older the drive you buy the faster the performance will degrade as each generation of memory chips usually has a longer life span, it may sound a no brainer but many places make their money by selling older drives with worse chips even though all the numbers look the same and sometimes even the exact same model.

The corsair is only 30gb, you don't want that, it can be used a hybrid drive but I'm not going into that here.

64gb is the minimum I'd consider in this prices range so I'd go with the sandisk but for £3 cheaper.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/64gb...-490mb-s-write-240mb-s-7200-iops-1800-iops-ma

Google some reviews of the ultra plus for the differences I didn't spot any between the cheaper one but there will be something, for one it will probably have newer memory chips as I said.

Hope that helps EDIT I've typed it now Satrow so I'm posting it and it's a lot of words:-D

 

hi all x thanks for the replies. i've been talking to a friend about this (he pointed out my mixing up the GB and Gb). He;s also telling me that the write speeds on these drives are wrong. Like, that a 64GB SSD cannot possibly have such a large write speed. Does that sound true ?


looking up a few things on ebay seems to support this, as i'm seeing a lot of rives on there which have ~550 MB/s read speed, and only 95 MB/s write speed. This seems like a vast and unreasonable difference to me. is it true ?

 

Wow
I have never seen such a badly designed site. This deserves some kind of award for it's terribleness. if i try to look at ALL SSDs it gives me a monolithic list which changes table formats several times throughout the page. Stopping at various points for no apparent reason to show me accessories and cables and other crap i'm not interested in, while also changing from a top-bottom list to a left-right grid. I actually counted twenty such changes in the SSD page alone

i actually find this painful to use. Aside from that, the product range seems to suck. when i set the filters appropriately to find 64-128 GB SSDs it turned up only five products which jumped rapidly from crappy 30GB models to an Intel 100 GB model priced at over £200. who would pay that ??

I cannot believe anyone would recommend this site for anything.

 

Yes, the drive speeds quoted for the smaller drives in any given drive 'family' are frequently wrong, they're often quoted from the 'up to' range of speeds in the original release advertising, the highest of which would only be applicable to the largest drive in that family.

Yes, as above, smaller drives are slower, just as most older drives are also slower than their more recent counterparts.

EDIT: Haha, Scan's site is different, for sure! Great reputation though, you can also call in to buy/collect.

The Intel drives are the best when it comes to longevity and reliability, many are specifically for the Enterprise - yes, performance+reliability costs.

 

Believe it :-D It's fast once you get used to drop down menu's. When you click all SSD's your actually entering a search for ssd's so it will show everything related, much better to refine your choice in the top drop down menu to a manageable number of products.

I would pay that my vertex max iops cost £200. The problem is £50 is too little to spend on an SSD if you want choice and 64gb is also too small I would only consider 128gb for a windows 7 drive minimum as would many reputable retailers and the stock reflects this. Choice cost's money and your scraping the very bottom of the barrel at this price.

If your finding lots of other drives on other sites it's because they're probably outdated, scan doesn't stock outdated SSD's or stock in general usually each product ina price bracket is the best of it's class which is why whatever you spend on there 90% of the time you will get the best product in that price bracket. If you don't mind having an end of product line check the Today only page it's the most viewed computer sales page on the internet and has actual bargains.

 

EDIT coincidentally on the today only page the sandisk you posted earlier is on offer currently and you can pick one up for exactly £40, that's £8 cheaper than the site you posted, for that you will also get the best customer service available and a no quibble return policy.

Scroll down to box 7 for the drives on offer.

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx

No I'm not affiliated with Scan but I do shop there a lot:-D

 

Is this in budget? 128GB SanDisk Ultra Plus, 7mm Slim 2.5" SSD, SATA III - 6Gb/s, Read 530MB/s, Write 290MB/s, 80000 IOPS Max. for £72 on the today only page.

That's a pretty awesome drive for the money IMO.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/128g...b-s-read-530mb-s-write-290mb-s-80000-iops-max

 

I have the original OCZ Vertex 3, and I'm nothing but happy with it. Not sure if this version 3.2 would be in your budget, but it has solid read/write speeds (520/550 MB/s).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227954