Advise please: Sata 2 SSD Recommendation

[Midnight Mick]

My Son wants an SSD for Xmas.

His PC is sata 2 only.

It doesn't need to be the fastest, hoping that a slow sata 2 ssd is faster than a normal hdd.

What is the most reliable sata 2 SSD (250gb or so) on the current market?

I'm in the UK & preferably shop at www.ebuyer.com.

Many thanks for any advise given. :)

[Gotenks98]

I would go with anything but the OCZ brand, those have had horrible reviews not for speed but for reliability. More of those are defective out of the box than anything else. What I bought for myself was the Crucial M4 drive. It was 256gb and was$169 when I bought it on sale a month ago. Speed wise its great but if you pair it up with windows 8 you will see drastic speed increases with that.

Quick edit: https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1121914-my-ocz-vertex-2-is-dead/page__pid__595346626__st__15#entry595346626

See what I mean.

[Farchord]

Known good brands (Quality-wise): Samsung, Intel, Crucial

Known bad brands: OCZ

Others, I havent heard much about em.

[abysal]

For 128GB, I'd go for a Crucial M4 / Samsung 830 / or the newer Samsung 840. I don't see it worth it to save ~ $10 and go with something like a Crucial v4; which is a Sata II budget drive (without a budget price IMO). I would stay away from OCZ or any kind of Sandforce controller based drives.

Some interesting reading regarding recent Sandforce controllers: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6107/corsair-force-series-gs-240gb-review - IMO Sandforce is junk; I'd rather sacrifice some speed for stability, or sacrifice write vs read speed.

[chconline Veteran]

To be fair, OCZ is one of the largest venders, and people are most likely to complain about dead SSDs than making a post about their SSD is fine after so many years. I own more than half a dozen OCZ SSDs (OCZ Vertex 4 256GB, OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB, OCZ Agility 4 256GB, OCZ Agility 3 240GB, OCZ Octane 512GB, OCZ Vertex 2 120GB, and OCZ Vertex 2 60GB) plus a bunch of 'generic' SF-2281 SSDs which is basically the same thing inside (Patriot Pyro SE 240GB, 2x Kingston V+200 120GB, Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB) if I were to make a thread about EACH of them working fine, I'd be spamming this forum with useless threads.

And all of them have thousands of operating hours on them. The Agility 3 240GB and Pyro SE 240GB both are or were used in my laptop, which goes through a lot of on/off standby cycles per day. Others are used on my desktop, and the pair of Kingston V+200s are used in my server. I think I've pretty much covered every common usage scenario.

[epk]

Samsung 830 got awesome reviews (both pro and user), and since the 840 is out maybe you can get them cheap :) They're sata 3 -as most nowadays- but they will work great on sata 2 :)

Crucial m4 is a good alternative :)

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Samsung 830 fan here. The 840 series have more punch, though. ;)

[qdave]

Samsung 830 fan here. The 840 series have more punch, though. ;)

Is non pro version worth it though?

[+Fahim S. MVC]

I'd also recommend the Crucial M4. It's ?20 more expensive than the cheapest 240-256GB drive eBuyer sell.

Is this going in a laptop or a desktop? Some laptops will require a 7mm drive where as if you are fitting a 2.5" drive into a desktop then you will need a mounting kit.

As for the the SATA2 vs SATA3 question. Pretty much every drive is designed to be SATA3 these days. If you buy a SATA2 drive it will usually be because it is an older model and won't benefit from the latest advances in reliability and quality of controller. I'd suggest you go SATA3 as someone who is running two in a SATA2 capable machine as the difference in price is negligible and you get the added benefit of being able to get more out of your drive when you upgrade the machine.

[epk]

Is non pro version worth it though?

Well, the non pro version is TLC or triple level cell. These are less reliable than MLC (just as MLC is less than SLC), but how much? We don't know yet.

[remixedcat]

Samsung 830 or 840 pro.

[Denis W. Veteran]

I would go with anything but the OCZ brand, those have had horrible reviews not for speed but for reliability. More of those are defective out of the box than anything else. What I bought for myself was the Crucial M4 drive. It was 256gb and was$169 when I bought it on sale a month ago. Speed wise its great but if you pair it up with windows 8 you will see drastic speed increases with that.

Addendum to this recommendation: do not upgrade to the latest firmware for this drive (010G) if you get this drive. Has a known problem that causes the drive to lose its SATA link (and subsequently cause the drive to disappear and/or freeze). It's been addressed already in the OEM version of the drive - that firmware has not been released for M4 drives.

Otherwise a pretty decent drive. Night and day difference on my laptop, which is also SATA II only.