Which SSD to buy?

[djkest]

My opinion: the Crucial C300 is the way to go. Faster than intel, durable, decent price. The intel models you were talking about just look too slow. If I'm going with SSD, I need some speed!

Still waiting for the magic price though: I want a 96GB SSD for $100. It will be awhile.

[cmthomson]

So for me at least, the answer was: no, XP and AHCI and SSD do not play together.

I think the more correct statement would be: XP and SSD do not play together. Win 7 does a number of things to optimize installation and configuration of an SSD.

Well of course XP doesn't have good SSD support; it predates SSDs by over 10 years!

The question was about AHCI. My response was that XP AHCI worked okay for me on HDDs, but not SSDs.

[green]

Crucial M4's:
http://www.crucial.com/store/ssd.aspx

64gb => USD$130
128gb => USD$250
256gb => USD$500
(excludes shipping. mostly depends on shipping type and where you are)

[fjf]

So, for a new sandy bridge mobo with 6GB sata, what would you get today?.

-Crucial M4?
-Vertex 3?
-Intel 510?.

Or maybe still a 3 GB sata drive, like the intel 320?. On tests it seems the vertex 3 ( or the m4?) is the way to go. What are the opinions now at the end of june, 2011?.

[Abula]

So, for a new sandy bridge mobo with 6GB sata, what would you get today?.

-Crucial M4?
-Vertex 3?
-Intel 510?.

Or maybe still a 3 GB sata drive, like the intel 320?. On tests it seems the vertex 3 ( or the m4?) is the way to go. What are the opinions now at the end of june, 2011?.

Anandtech just reviewed the fastest version of the vertex3, Anandtech OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS & Patriot Wildfire SSDs Reviewed

I still believe the Intel SSD 510 is a great balance of performance and reliability. If you want something with an even lower failure rate, there's always the Intel SSD 320 although you do give up performance and 6Gbps support to get that.

In my case, im waiting for intel 520s, due late this year, hopping we see a new intel controller, but might also be sanforce based,

[kater]

I'd appreciate your practical, no-nonsesne advice, the kind one usually finds around here [/sweetcandyoff]

I'm running a X25-V in my main PC as a system drive. A cheap little drive with good reads and sloooow writes. But hey, it's an OS drive, duh. So I'm thinking about putting it in my HTPC and getting a new SSD for my main system (775 in sig, but 1155 almost ready now).
I'm seriously considering Crucial M4 64GB. Hard to beat in bang/buck department now, isn't it? My main point is - am I going to see a noticeable improvement over the X25-V? I'm talking practical terms, daily OS usage, working with MS Office and several other text editing and CAT apps. A little gaming, if I have the time, perhaps. No video editing, no heavy file copying, no data crunching.

So is it worth upgrading to M4, or if not, then what drive should I be considering to get some real improvement?

[multiplexer]

Honestly, in day-to-day use the differences between any two SSDs are absolutely minimal. The difference with mechanical drives is so vast that it really doesn't matter. As I see it, the main difference between SSDs right now is reliability (i.e. failure rates, not all that write cycle bull).