best SSD drive for under 250USD?

[Rock N Roll Rebel]

i just got my first ssd and its a ocz vertex 2 120 gb it had a lot of bad reviews but so far its running real good and fast knock on wood. my system boots in 5 seconds

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

as far as im aware corsair fixed there problems long ago, and id still take the Corsair drive its in the top 3 for fastest SSDs, and comes in at a lower price then any other drive in its performance category, and ive had nothing but good experiences from corsair, in terms of RMA and support.

 

[TheOne]

as far as im aware corsair fixed there problems long ago, and id still take the Corsair drive its in the top 3 for fastest SSDs, and comes in at a lower price then any other drive in its performance category, and ive had nothing but good experiences from corsair, in terms of RMA and support.

That is a common mistake, the Recall on the Force 3 120GB was for what Corsair claims 2 reasons, hardware defects and F/W change, the original drives did have F/W 1.0, whereas all replacement and current Force 3 and Force GT have 1.2, sadly this only helped some users.

The SandForce controller being used for top end SSD's right now is buggy, OCZ is trying to resolve this with F/W changes, and Corsair is working with SandForce on a solution, it has problems with all SATA controllers, though Intel's is more common, the number of AMD users with problems is actually increasing on Corsairs forums. The Marvell based drives are supposed to be stable, but in return you give up the high speed of the SandForce controller. As for their RMA, I have had nothing but trouble trying to work things out with them, the main issue is getting them to respond, though every users experience will vary.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

well ive had nothing but good experiences with corsair,

from ram i overclocked to death to sending me a new PSU, before i even sent my old one in, using a hold on a credit card, i got a new unit and the old one got shipped back everytime ive had issues corsair went above and beyond and got me a replacement asap but as you said it differs between ppl,

that said id still take the Corsair Force GT at 120gb 500+ read writes and only $260 id take my chances, and if ordering off newegg, well if the drive is buggy and has issues it will most likely be readily noticeable, and since newegg has that nice 30 day window yea. id take my chances if its a bunk SSD, id just call newegg get a ups label ship it back and get another.

even tho a vertex 3 can be had for $5 less and more so with rebate, ill stick take corsair, at least when ive rma'ed parts ive gotten new retail items back where with OCZ ive been given refurbished units that dont work lolz when it comes to ram and customers PSU's

 

[remixedcat]

so it comes down to corsair vs ocz huh???? hrrrmmmmmm

 

[Hotobu]

I wonder if it's a problem with the SF 2200 driver. Both the Corsair and Vertex 3 use it.

 

[TheOne]

well ive had nothing but good experiences with corsair,

from ram i overclocked to death to sending me a new PSU, before i even sent my old one in, using a hold on a credit card, i got a new unit and the old one got shipped back everytime ive had issues corsair went above and beyond and got me a replacement asap but as you said it differs between ppl,

that said id still take the Corsair Force GT at 120gb 500+ read writes and only $260 id take my chances, and if ordering off newegg, well if the drive is buggy and has issues it will most likely be readily noticeable, and since newegg has that nice 30 day window yea. id take my chances if its a bunk SSD, id just call newegg get a ups label ship it back and get another.

even tho a vertex 3 can be had for $5 less and more so with rebate, ill stick take corsair, at least when ive rma'ed parts ive gotten new retail items back where with OCZ ive been given refurbished units that dont work lolz when it comes to ram and customers PSU's

Keep in mind Newegg's SSD policy is 30-day replacement, no refunds if the drive is open, normally.

As for me I'm trying to get a refund for my Force 3 120GB, they originally wanted me to wait about a month for the refund, 1 week for the drive to get to them and 2 to 3 weeks for the refund, this is after 2 weeks of trying to get the refund started, after talking to them they made it only 3 weeks and their supposed to be sending it UPS, they already have the drive and claim they will not be able to send out the check until Friday, so I have about another 2 weeks until I'm supposed to get the refund, and that is only part of the trouble I've had with them, this was completely unexpected by me given Corsair's reputation.

 

[Maban]

People, keep in mind the board she has. A SATA 6Gb/s drive would be relatively useless. A 60-120GB Vertex 2 or similar drive would be ideal.

Also, TheOne, I'm surprised. I've never heard you speak ill of Corsair before.

 

[TheOne]

People, keep in mind the board she has. A SATA 6Gb/s drive would be relatively useless. A 60-120GB Vertex 2 or similar drive would be ideal.

Also, TheOne, I'm surprised. I've never heard you speak ill of Corsair before.

That is very true, unless you plan to upgrade to a newer MB with SATAIII soon, a SATAII SSD will be the better choice, also keep in mind that the newer SATAIII drives use a 25nm NAND which has less of a life span than the 34nm NAND used by most SATAII drives.

As for Corsair, I have always enjoyed their PSU's and RAM, and have never had to deal with their customer service before, I'm surprised by how much trouble I'm having getting in contact with them.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

hmm guess im just lucky then ive had 0 issues,

only companies ive really had issues with

are OCZ, with ram and psu, and Foxconn years ago with some of there motherboards

 

[Hotobu]

Don't know why the ADATA is getting overlooked. I just put in an order for it.

 

[happita]

I don't know why you guys are raving so much about Sandforce this, Sandforce that. Big freakin deal if it had 500+ read and write. They obviously have their problems. Just do yourself a favor and get the Crucial M4. 415read and 175 write. You will NOT notice the difference going from 415 to 500 I promise you. It will still be blazing fast.

 

[Hotobu]

I don't know why you guys are raving so much about Sandforce this, Sandforce that.

Most of the discussion here isn't about performance. It's about reliability. Something tells me that two of the drives that have the most BSOD and other random issues (Corsair and OCZ) using the Sandforce 2200 driver isn't a coincidence.