Interesting SSD Reliability Study - Page 5

That was my thought as well as I've heard as SSDs get filled up performance tends to slow dramatically, with double the space I'm likely to never fill it up and that allows more space for the controller to use to optimize performance / life.

First, Plextor also has 5 year warranties on all but its brand new "entry level" drive.

Second, I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Crucial either. I agree with Assassin's take. I was just point out farther up the thread that you can't say Crucual hasn't had a major problem. They did, but they fixed it.

By the way, the Samsung firmware update was more of a compatibility issue with certain hardware and with some hibernation states. I'd put that in a different category than a fault that causes a total drive failure.

Yeah Plextor is up there too, however have been a little more spendy as of late. I also just read that the Intel 330s will be having a price cut in August, and a several people on Slickdeals saying that prices will continue to drop over the next couple months. Checking out price history on just about every single SSD I've been looking at, right now is about the lowest price they've been listed at, with lots of specials occuring quite frequently bringing the prices to where they are now.

Given that, and the fact I don't need one right at the moment anyway, I might just hold off and see if I can keep an eye on Slickdeals and get something even cheaper in the next couple months. Even if I completed my HTPC now anyway, I'd have to buy an OS, and I don't feel like paying full price for Windows 7 only to pay extra to upgrade to 8 in a couple months. So I might as well hold off until 8 is released and only pay once.

Only thing I'm seriously contemplating getting right now is the i5 3570K processor and P8Z77-V LX motherboard from Micro Center as the processor is only $189.99, and the motherboard is only $115, and you get a $50 bundle discount when you buy that processor and a mobo too. That is by far cheaper then anywhere else. Curios how often they do these "bundle deals" and if this is really something I need to pounce on right now (sale runs out next week), or similar to SSD if this won't be that special a price I could hold off a while.

I think Intel's price cuts on the 330 are already reflected in today's prices. They added a 240GB 330 and cut the prices all as one step. I think that's why you're seeing the 120GB for under $100 wihout any sale or rebate.

And that will probably force others to cut further.

The Micro Center $50 off a motherboard with a K processor has been running since the day the 3570K was released.

Actually, it's been running basically continuously for over a year. They did the same thing with the i7-2600K and i5-2500K and Z68 motherboards. I used that deal with my i5-2500K cpu and a Gigabyte Z68 motherboard last year. Only the details change. Sometimes it's only the two i5 K models, sometimes the i7s are included, sometimes it's ANY Z77 or Z68 motherboard, sometimes it's only selected motherboards.

And they'll bend the rules. They gave me the same $50 off an Intel DH77KC motherboard with my i5-3570K a week after it was released just because I asked a salesman if they would. And 5 minutes earlier, the same salesman had given another guy the $50 with an i7-2600K even though at the time it was only advertised as applying to the i5s.

My 3570K/DH77KC bundle was over $100 less than Newegg or Amazon were charging at the same time.

Interesting. I was actually just looking at the i5 3450 for $150, but that didn't qualify for the $50 off, so I figured the i5-3570K is the way to go as ends up being $10 cheaper with the discount (even though I won't be overclocking). I never thought to ask if they'd give me the same $50 off with the 3450 instead. It's also helpful to know that the $50 discount isn't a rare occurance, and that the salesman have some leeway. Then I probably don't need to be in any big rush, especially considering Windows 8 won't be released until 10/26 anyway, unless I come across a deal that really is too good to pass up. I just wish they'd announce what the Windows 8 System Builder option will cost so I would know if it would be cheaper just to wait.

Micro Center says if you buy Win7 OEM you qualify for Windows 8 Pro for $14.99, I knew that worked for new PCs but wonder if what they're saying is right or if they have that wrong.

I don't overclock either of my "K"s, and I would have bought a 2400 and a 3450 respectively had it not been for the $50 off deal. But with that, it was cheaper to buy the K version.

Wow, Slickdeals has the 240GB Intel 330 on sale for $137 ($4 and up for shipping). I just ordered mine for $141. Likely a price mistake, but figured this is a smoking deal if it goes through:

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/77390/bh-photo-video-240gb-intel-330-series-maple-crest-2.5-sata-iii-mlc-internal-solid-state-drive-ssd-ssdsc2ct240a3k5?#comments

Supposedly, this is supposed to be their new pricing (MSRP of course, not sure how accurate it is). So with the 180GB listed around $155, having the 240GB listed for $137 seems to be abnormally cheap....

Current Price (SSD 330)
60 GB – $94
120 GB – $149
180 GB – $234

Expected Price (SSD 330)
60 GB – $69
120 GB – $104
180 GB – $154

Current Price (SSD 520)
60 GB – $109
120 GB – $189
180 GB – $279
240 GB – $349
480 GB – $809

Expected Price (SSD 520)
60 GB – $99
120 GB – $139
180 GB – $199
240 GB – $259
480 GB – $594

Just don't read any of the posts over there. There are actually people warning to stay away from the Intel drives because "Hardware reliability is useless without solid firmware (OCZ...)". I was dumbfounded. Opinions are like a-holes I guess, everyone's got em.

Crazy. Obvious price mistake but I ordered anyway. Who knows, they might honor it.

That's a good thing. The less people buying these drives, the higher the chances that B&H will let the orders go through instead of cancelling them despite the obvious price error.

I just ordered one. And I'm not convinced it's a pricing error. Remember, 2 months ago they had a $60 rebate which made the 180GB $135-140. So if they are reducing the price by dropping everything down one step it would not be impossible that they are now selling the 240 for that same $135-140. Will be interesting to see whether Newegg and Amazon have similar pricing tomorrow or later this week.

That Intel pricing is really going to put the squeeze on OCZ, Crucial, Sandisk and Mushkin who have been pushing sales with bargain pricing.

I figured worst case scenario the order is cancelled. This might not be a price mistake, it might just be a slahed price intro deal on the 240GB drive since it's so new. I guess we'll see if our orders go through!

I was figuring I was going to have to spend about $90-$100 on a 120GB drive, so seeing 240GB (and Intel no less) for $140, it didn't sound like a price that would come around very often (if it turns out to be valid).

I've been looking for a bargain on a higher capacity, reliable SSD to replace the HD in my work travel laptop. Now I just need to figure out how to dismantle my Sony Z Series to put it in. There's no access panel; it's a "pull out the entire keyboard and circuit board to get at the disk."

But at this price, I'll suffer through it.

And to think I paid $140 for my first SSD - a 64GB Plextor M2 - about a year and a quarter ago. Yeah, I know how with technology we continue to get more for less as time passes, but the pricing collapse on SSDs, particularly since the first of the year, is virtually unprecedented.

Ah yes, reminds me of when the first Plasma TVs were around 42" and cost over $15,000. I got a 50" around 7 yrs ago for about $3,000, and now could get the same thing for around $1,500 probably.

$1500?!? More like half that. Sad, but true. Well, sad for early adopters, but great for late ones.

There's a big difference with before and after rebate pricing. For one thing, there's a limit of 2 per household on the rebate. Another, not everyone bothers sending in the rebate or fills out the paperwork properly (despite how easy Intel's online rebates are). Besides, B&H has the 120GB model listed for $129.

I saw that B&H deal in the AT Hot Deals board. That's a sweet deal. If I needed a SSD I would jump on that. Intel SSD's are top tier and that is a hell of a price.

While there isn't a review of the 240GB specific model, when reviewing the other 330 models many of the benchmarks from performance tests ultimately went up as they went to a higher capacity drive. For example, the 180GB drive had better performance then the 120GB. So if this pattern were to hold true, the 240GB may end up having slighly better performance then the other 330 drives as it's higher capacity.

A general question about reviews of the 330 drives: Reading the reviews to date it doesn't sound like they will accurately reflect the performance on these drives for HTPC use. Most of their tests involve both reading video from the drive (when you're playing a movie) while simultaneously writing video data to the same drive (encoding a new movie). A lot of these complex scenarios where the queue is over 32 deep is where it slows down. However knowing that 240GB simply isn't large enough to house video collections in the HTPC space, this doesn't really mean anything. If all our video libraries are going to be on a larger conventional HDD, then you're primarily using the SSD for your OS and programs. In this situation, the load time for this drive is almost identical to the 520 or the Samsung 830, and all the read/write operations really wouldn't be happening on this drive anyway.

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1528/pg1/intel-330-series-ssd-120gb-review-introduction.html

Specific reference from this article:
So in all reality, while this particular devices speed may not be that of other drives, in real world performance that we would be seeing in most HTPC systems, these shortcomings wouldn't even impact us as the media wouldn't even reside on the SSD in the first place. Am I looking at this the right way?

I use MediaBrowser which caches metadata and images in C:\ProgramData. This is the thing that was most noticeable to me. On a PC with a platter drive, there's usually a delay when I'm browsing through thumbnails. With the SSD, loading metadata and poster art is practically instantaneous. It helps make the HTPC feel more like an appliance and less a computer.

Right, makes perfect sense. And so the areas where the 330 slows down a bit compared to other drives, such as writing and reading video files to the SSD, are things that someone wouldn't ever encounter if their content is stored on a seperate HDD anyway. So all the slower speeds advertised on the 330 most people wouldn't even see on a HTPC because their libraries would be on a larger HDD, not on the SSD.

Because of this, all the hype about the 330 being slower then the 520 might be a moot point. The areas where it matters most: OS boot time and general speed of program use, would be nearly identical not just between the 330 and 520, but across nearly ALL SSD drives that are SATA III. The only time you may notice a slight difference in speed (even then only if you had a stop watch that tracked things in nanoseconds) would be if you were writing and reading video data to and from your SSD (you housed your video library on the SSD instead of a larger HDD).

Not even then. You'd need to have a fast source to even notice the speed difference. Basically, either transferring from SSD to SSD or RAM disk to SSD. Copying from SSD to HDD or HDD to SSD, you'll be limited by the HDD speed. Blu-ray to SSD and you'll be bottlenecked by your Blu-ray drive. ATSC maxes out at a measly 19Mbps (2.375 MB/s) and QAM maxes out at 38Mbps (4.75 MB/s) so even if you're recording several streams at the same time (course you need to have a big enough SSD to handle all those simultaneous recordings), the SSD wouldn't skip a beat. Really, you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference between an Intel 520 240GB running on SATA III 6Gb/s vs an Intel 330 240GB connected to a SATA II 3Gb/s port.

Tom's Hardware sums it best:

Agree with IloveJedd.

It's always a "moot point." I guess there might be some large scale database or other activities where perhaps one would notice a difference, but in actual usage by normal people doing normal things on normal pcs, discussions of speed differences between different SSDs are pointless. As I've said, I use a variety of drives of different sizes, SATA speed, controllers, and NAND types, and I see NO discernible difference among any of them. They're all just fast.

I can't believe that this discussion of "which SSD is fastest" is endlessly repeated. It's like wasting time discussing how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

I guess all these tech websites need something to discuss so they trot out endless meaningless "benchmarks" and lab measurements. Tom's Hardware seems to be the only one honest enough to say "none of it matters in the real world."

Oh, and speed will always increase with size in SSDs, although there are definitely diminishing returns as they get larger. The biggest differences will be seen from 30-60 and then from 60-120. After that other factors tend to diminish the effect.

Thanks. I agree too many sites flaunting these specs and benchmarks, all while missing the main point. Even if you were to encounter the perfect scenario where the speed of the SSD was actually slowing you down, the difference in this speed compared to the ones with faster specs would mostly be undiscernible from one another. They're all fast, and in a perfect test scenario the ones with higher specs may be fractions of a second faster at times. Not the huge difference they paint them out to be in the grand scheme of things.

The other point they fail to mention is like IloveJedd mentions above, most of the time in real world you will be limited by the speed of other components on your machine such as HDD and optical drives, so regardless of how fast your SSD is, your source won't be fast enough to keep up with the SSD anyway. And in the rare event you were going to copy stuff from one SSD to another SSD, in the HTPC realm this isn't something you'll really experience either because SSD's aren't large enough to store all your content, these will likely be on a HDD.

So in the real world, especially so for HTPC use where your library is on a HDD and you use the SSD primarily for OS and programs, a vast majority of the time you would never experience a situation where the speed of your SSD was actually slowing you down. Only in very rare situations would you ever potentially experience this. And in one of these rare situations you did experience it, the difference in speed compared to a "faster" drive is so small you'd need to measure it in fractions of a second.

Right. It was take major abuse or constant benchmarking for it even to be a concern.