SSDs - State of the Product?

Well it does not have a hardware RAID controller, so unless you are planning to have four separate drives apparently softraid is expected.
 
Yes, that is it. I like the Intel because it has the toolkit for optimization.
 
Samsung appears to have a toolkit called magician software as well, I haven't used it but saw it mentioned on another forum.

I can't link to it but click software.
http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/MZ-7PC128N/AM#software

I think I will save a buck and go with the samsung. Had three intels so far and really liked them but the money savings appears to be good on the samsung.

Utility wise intel bundles arconis and appears samsung bundles ghost.
 
I thougth the Samsung was actually a bit more expensive, but that was a while ago. Let us know how it performs or if there are any issues.
 
I'm really liking the sudden, amazing price drops on 120GB SSDs. In the last week or so, I've found Kingston, Verbatim and Corsair units at or a little under $1/GB, which is cheap enough that I can realistically contemplate using one in a mainstream build.

In a year I'm sure I'll look back at this post and laugh.
 
I suspect he's been bought and paid for a few times by different OEMs, much like Tom of Tom's Hardware.

With a little help from a friend and a planned stop at Microcenter, I'm going to be able to build two i3-2100 systems with 120GB SSDs for a total of $704 this week. How sweet is that?
 
I knew about Tom's but I didn't know about that, that's too bad because I thought they were on top of the SSD stuff.
 
They are very on top of SSD stuff. That you would disregard everything Anand says shows an insufficient level of cynicism. I don't believe there is a single tech author out there that hasn't dreamed of being bought out by somebody. At least the bigger names have more eyes on them, and really egregious stuff is more likely to be called out.
 
Mercutio said:
I suspect he's been bought and paid for a few times by different OEMs, much like Tom of Tom's Hardware.

With a little help from a friend and a planned stop at Microcenter, I'm going to be able to build two i3-2100 systems with 120GB SSDs for a total of $704 this week. How sweet is that?
Click to expand...

Do you have a source for your suspicion? I'd like to know more about his buyout.
 
As a well known hardware/tech site owner, Anand clearly has access to and relationships with OEMs that the rest of us can only dream of. I have no idea if he takes direct advertising or not, but given the fact that vendors bend over backwards to offer him pre-release products and special units for testing, it's not much of a leap to think that those things might color his evaluations of various bits of tech.

That's just the nature of trade journalism, and I've never seen anything from ANY big tech review site that suggests that any of them actually have any understanding of the ethical principles that underlie journalism, which makes the whole lot suspect, and some more suspect than others.
 
In the article I linked above for the Intel 520 he was pretty clear that there is some sort of a problem with that chipset and it is only Intel's work that is saving them. That doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement of sandforce to me.
 
Well the fact that it took intel a year to push that product to market indicates serious problems of some sort. Perhaps Intel had no better controller option.
 
MaxBurn said:
That doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement of sandforce to me.
Click to expand...

Obviously you haven't been following his work for very long then. Until Intel suddenly fronted up and told him the Sandforce firmware was rubbish and only they could fix it, Sandforce could do no wrong. Now everyone else is crap but - against the evidence of history - anything Intel is guaranteed to be good because he can feel it in his water (or something).

The more gushing promos of OCZ have disappeared (too old I assume), but I did find this little nugget in a review of the Vertex 3:

"Thankfully while OCZ may be a much larger organization today than just a few years ago, it still has a lot of the DNA of a small, customer-centric company."
 
time said:
Obviously you haven't been following his work for very long then. Until Intel suddenly fronted up and told him the Sandforce firmware was rubbish and only they could fix it, Sandforce could do no wrong. Now everyone else is crap but - against the evidence of history - anything Intel is guaranteed to be good because he can feel it in his water (or something).

The more gushing promos of OCZ have disappeared (too old I assume), but I did find this little nugget in a review of the Vertex 3:

"Thankfully while OCZ may be a much larger organization today than just a few years ago, it still has a lot of the DNA of a small, customer-centric company."
Click to expand...

Even before the Vertex 3 OCZ was making better-than-average SSDs. From your comment above it sounds like you feel the company makes nothing but rubbish?
 
A thousand firmware updates and tech support via forums filled with crazed enthusiasts is a kind of rubbish.
 
HardOCP reviews usually call junk, junk. I don't remember the particulars any more, but HardOCP was threatened with legal action after a review called a piece of hardware junk.
I have Tom's blocked from showing up in Google searches.
Anand's reviews are okay if taken with a grain salt...about the size of a dump truck. Lately their reviews seem to be aimed at the pre-pubic hair group. Or maybe my age is really starting to show.
 
time said:
Obviously you haven't been following his work for very long then. Until Intel suddenly fronted up and told him the Sandforce firmware was rubbish and only they could fix it, Sandforce could do no wrong. Now everyone else is crap but - against the evidence of history - anything Intel is guaranteed to be good because he can feel it in his water (or something).

The more gushing promos of OCZ have disappeared (too old I assume), but I did find this little nugget in a review of the Vertex 3:

"Thankfully while OCZ may be a much larger organization today than just a few years ago, it still has a lot of the DNA of a small, customer-centric company."
Click to expand...

His site doesn't interest me very much and I tend to only go over there when I am looking to buy something. At the same time OCZ is not a company I would even consider getting a product from so I would avoid those reviews anyway.
 
I have the drive and it shipped with current firmware. Downloaded ghost from samsungs support site (right next to the 830 firmware) and that is asking for a registration key that wasn't included. Guess all you get is the ghost 30 day trial.
 
I not feeling a subjective difference between my Samsung 830 and the X25M I pulled for it. But having four times the capacity is still quite nice. Makes my VMs load up nice and quick.
 
I just hung mine often eSATA port, the machine it's going in isn't here yet. I wonder if this drive benefits from proper alignment? As I understand it they all will. Did you check the alignment? I'm wondering if the bundled ghost software will do that, for example on the Intel bundled arconis it will do that.

I have the feeling that I wouldn't notice the speed difference from the intel SSD either, just the large difference from a laptop 5k mechanical drive.
 
MaxBurn said:
I have the drive and it shipped with current firmware. Downloaded ghost from samsungs support site (right next to the 830 firmware) and that is asking for a registration key that wasn't included. Guess all you get is the ghost 30 day trial.
Click to expand...
My notebook upgrade kit version came with a product key on the back of the Ghost CD envelope.
 
Was the ghost CD a separate CD from the Samsung magician software CD? That's the only disk I got but I don't think that I got the upgrade kit. I got nothing but the retail box drive.
 
Installed the 830 today. Windows 7 Experience Index went from 5.9 to 7.5. Subjectively, I don't notice a difference, but I was happy with the last SSD (Kingston V100 64GB); it just got full - no HDD in this particular system.
 
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