In the market for an SSD ...

[The Duke]

It is going in my laptop to help speed up basic tasks. I think 120GB is all I will need, if that, as I do not store anything big on it.

For example ... I have a 250GB HDD in here now and I still have 213GB free. That is with a folder I have not yet taken off with a bunch of install files on it too.

I am looking at Mushkin, ADATA, and OCZ since they all have 120GB models under $100.

What do you think my HDD/SSD gurus?

[Archer]

Well I prefer HDDs in raid but as that is not an option a Mushkin Chronos is very hard to beat. I have a 90- and I have a 120 on the way. ATTO from 33MBps Low end (.5k) to 545MBps 8192k.

I have an ADATA and a Vertex as well and I can tell you in my opinion the Mushkin is just better. But I like the brand as well.

[dwih2007]

how long does a ssd last is it more durable than magnetic

[Archer]

For highly data intensive work it is not as good as a hard disk but for a boot disk and the like you will be ready to upgrade your system before the drive starts to degrade. Also there are MLC (most common user drives) and SLC (most common industrial server grade) and here inlies the difference in preformance, longevity and cost. I can not use one in my main rig for much. It is a 24/7 rig and does quite a bit of file work.

[Neuromancer]

An SSD that is only being read from can theoretically last forever. (In actuality, the controller and/or the capacitors will fail before the memory chips) NAND has limited write life however and as Archer points out intensive IO will shorten the life span. the smaller the drive the sooner it fails. theoretically, modern MLC nand has about 3,000 w/e cycles in it. therefore a 64GB SSD can handle abotu 192TB of write/erase cycles. (A block has to be erased to be written to) If all you did was stream data to the hard drive nonstop which in dirty conditions = about 200 MBps MAX, you could theoretically kill the drive in about 2 weeks. In reality those companies are offering 3-5 year warranties because the drive will lost longer than that in nearly all situations.

@Duke As for what is best, top speeds are not what you look for in an SSD, I do not have a list yet of which NAND performs well (drawback of doing to many types of reviews and not focusing solely on storage and memory) but if you look at reviews you will see that certain SSDs will perform better at low cluster sizes (commonly referred to as IOPS). Now the really expensive drives are going to have some insane write speeds here. I would say not for general purpose usage though. 4K and 8K are both important in Windows OS.

sandforce I think is teh only good option here, I do like the Marvell controlled SSDs but they still suffer performance wise until you hit 256GB. We will see how Indilinx stands up when I get my hands on one of them.

Mushkin I have not used, I only had one set of RAM from them as they were generally overpriced so stayed away from them. never had a mushkin SSD

OCZ I have lots of stuff by them from the memory days, and they seem to have gotten away from teh "Lets just tweak the SPD rating and slap an OCZ sticker on it and sell it for cheap" mentality. They have great SSD prices and good products too.

ADATA is off the test bench now and getting written up tonight/tomorrow. Hold off on purchasing yet, I might be able to give you a good deal It performed very well. Both on the RAID card and on AMD test bed. I need to pull the stats off the other PC... as I am getting to that part of the review now... IIRC, it did well in low file size performance.

Overall though. you look at top speed as the key. 1 drive is listed at 550/515 and another drive is listed at 540/500. Despite the 2% difference in top speed, this effect goes up exponentially on smaller file sizes, and at 4K will usually be 20-30% differnce in performance and depending on the NAND, could be ridiculously different (as much as 200% performance difference at 4K). IOPs are the "standard" for duiscussing 4K performance but I wouldn't make a total decision on that since sandforce will have twice the write performance of reads at 4K sizes. A Good read speed at that size is important as it effects windows and application loading.

[Neuromancer]

Synchronous NAND drives

Vertex 3, Pyro SE, SX900, Intel/Crucial drives, OCZ octane etc

chronos deluxe uses toggle mode NAND like the OWC Mercury Pro and the MAXIOPS, regular Chronos uses Asynch NAND like the Agility 3, the SP900 and other "budget" drives.

Hmm found this list here

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2186372

[The Duke]

oh very cool link ... Hopefully my ADATA wont let me down

[pcnew]

if you have not yet made the purchase, please check at the SSD from Strontium. Full details in this link