What is the difference between newer SSDs and older SSDs?
 

I'm seeing a lot of good boxing day deals for SSDs like the Intel 330 series.

What are the differences between an SSD that is 1-2 years old, and one that just recently came out?

Based on this info, I will either get an Intel 330 120gb for $89 or look for something newer.

Thanks!

In my opinion, more reliable, better controllers, and obviously, faster. Oh and cheaper.

Old SSD's are SATAII and the new ones are SATAIII allowing for faster read and write. Also being cheaper, more reliable, stronger and just better in total.

How could I differentiate an older SSD from a newer one? other than the SATA II vs SATA III?

The new ones are faster, bigger, cheaper and more reliable.

Besides having more reliable controllers and SATA III speed as mentioned, mine (Plextor) also has a special proprietary firmware that improves TRIM function quite a bit. Most SSDs, even the newer ones with more reliable controllers, vary in speed according to the amount and condition of files on them, and they slowly lose performance over time. The Plextor firmware is very resistant to that, and in my tests so far, I find that to be the case.

It runs pretty much at the same speed before a TRIM vs after, no matter how full of files it is. Plextors also come with a 5 yr warranty, but you won't find then for as cheap a price as you're shopping in. More like $125 for the M5P 128GB. My only slight nit pick is USB Flash drive firmware updates is not natively supported, so you have to burn it onto a CD or use a special program like Yumi.

Even though my MB's SATA III controller is quite bad and I run it on the Intel SATA 2 port instead, I still get full reboot times as low as 35 seconds on W7 Ultimate 64. It's also nice to not hear that rattling my previous WD Raptor HDD exhibited every boot up.

Going to get a Samsung 840 250gb one.

In about 12 hours. So if it's not good, can someone tell me that! If not, I'll buy it.

The new Samsung 840 Pro series looks nice, and even has a little faster write speed than mine, but it costs more and personally I'd rather have the proprietary firmware Plextor uses, because in the end, that more than overcomes any small speed differences.

Most any of the decent SSDs made though, be it Samsung, Crucial, Intel, Plextor, are going to give you a noticeable improvement if you're replacing a HDD with them.

Difference between SSDs released about a year ago and now is not that great, especially when you are comparing the old discounted top end model with the current budget offerings. For example, Samsung 830 released over a year ago can still compete against newer models.

same differences as other older tech vs newer tech...

Samsung writes their own firmware for their SSDs. One reason their performance and durability is so high.

Only issue I recall with certain older SSDs was lifespan besides price.

I have a 128GB 830 and it has proven to be great and I like the Samsung Magic tune utility which came with it.
Only needs to be used once.