I think MOST non-geek-high-end user types will be looking for reliability first. SSD's have become more reliable but I still get a bit nervous when I see something strange happening. Data backups are your best friend.
Bingo! Reliability is #1 in the long term, even for the nerdy geeks who want speed. They come around eventually. I'm not too pleased with the way reliability is heading but compromises must be made to make this tech cheaper for the masses.
There are two types of people: Those who've lost data without a backup, and those who will. Always make backups. Once you do, the reliability becomes a non-issue, and you can enjoy the speed of SSDs without worry.
The backup system I set up for my dad does incremental backups wirelessly to a NAS every day, so he doesn't even have to do anything. (A new initial backup every few months is made over a wired network to save time.)
Have to say that I have been dissappointed with my M4 256 fw9 SSD. For the price, encryption and some more performance would have justified the high tag.
Could be your CPU is limiting speed, not the M4. At work we've got some DELLs with 64 GB Samsung PM..*something*. Definitely not the fastest, even 2 years ago. However, during installs routinely one Core of the i5s (~3.6 GHz) gets fully loaded.. so a faster drive wouldn't help much.
"I think people are going to start looking less at max performance values and more at overall Stability. Based on OCZ current history these numbers don't mean anything until more through testing can be completed."
I have 4 different SSD's from 4 different companies and the oldest one from Intel (a 40gb x25-v) has been going strong for over a year. I have yet to experience any reliability issue with any of my ssd's. Don't know exactly where people keep saying these things.
Yes cause all the people in forums and reviews must be shills as there have only been 5 SSDs sold, your 4 and mine. So the issues of SSDs problems are fake and OCZ and other SSD makers that admit problems and come out with firmware fixs must have been bribed by platter makers to keep the false info going.
My Vertex 2E has fallen apart. On my previous build it ended up having a ton of errors (about a year old). I thought nothing of it, rebuilt my entire machine (brand new high quality PSU/MB/GPU/RAM/CPU), and it worked for a week.. this is after updating firmware, too, clean install of 7 x64.
It now hard locks a few seconds after booting Windows.
All the performance in the world doesn't mean anything if the drive is priced too high.
Yes, with the inflated price of HDDs right now it will probably seem like a value, but if you already have terabytes of storage you need a good price/performance ratio.
I'd like to see something that's a bit slower but increased capacity at a good price.
Like a 512 GB drive for under $200. So what if it doesn't compete with the faster drives, it would be a better value!
In SSDs the bulk of the cost is the flash. Which doesn't change if you use a slower controller. TLC would give you what you want, though (as joseph already said).
However, personally I think waiting for 512 GB SSDs to come down in price is rather stupid. It's better to maximize the usage of the space the current drives provide. E.g. I'm using a 60 GB Agility 3 as cache for my entire HDD on a Z68 board. That's fine speed and value.
I've been using a 120GB OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro SATA III 6Gbps SSD which is insanely fast in my 17" MBP on OS X Lion. I wasn't going to get the OWC at first, but instead wanted to get the OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS Edition. I spent quite a bit of time researching the new SATA III SSD's and I found too many negative reviews for the OCZ. They both use the SF-2281 controller and they're virtually equally as fast, but the OCZ MAX IOPS still edges out the OWC EXTREME. Maybe this new one will be better, although I'm starting to think that it was mostly Windows users who experienced the BSOD's who kind of hurt OCZ's reputation for a while. Anyone running the OCZ SATA III SSDs without any problems?
(p.s.: I wish Apple got its act together with the 2011 MBP's, so I can run both of my OWC SSD's in RAID 0 again, which currently still only works in the 13" MBP. Does anyone have any insight as to what I might try to make both the hard drive and optical drive bays run SATA III SSDs reliably?
"Anyone running the OCZ SATA III SSDs without any problems?"
Sure, but you don't hear these people as usually they don't shout as loud. Well, actually my first drive failed after ~1 week (hadn't even started really using it..). The 2nd one is fine, however (and of course no BSOD issues).
The MBP RAID 0 flaw is the biggest turnoff in computer history.
With the possibility of external GPU's via thunderbolt (hopefully) And ram getting cheaper.
We are baby steps away from Laptops being significant portable workstation powerhouses. Imagine two 1tb RAID 0 drives for all working video/audio projects.
Just sync/back up to platter drives every time you reconvene with your desk.
Add 4x ram slots in a 17" MBP, and maybe 0.2% of the population would ever need a desktop again.
OCZ's last Indilinx drive was the Vertex Plus, based on the Martini controller. Read the user reviews and forum posts about that drive and you will think the Sandforce mess was nothing. Even with recent firmware updates, Vertex Plus users are still reporting major data corruption issues. Regardless of the benchmark numbers, I won't even begin to consider Octane until its reliability (or lack thereof) becomes established.
Only Samsung and Intel SSDs have proved dependable, according to a previous Anandtech posting. Isn't that game over? Shouldn't the ONLY real question be weather these things will actually not destroy your data? The performance diffs are small compared to that. PLEASE RATE DEPENDABILITY!
And how could they possibly do that, given the small samples size they're limited to? Look for and report any issues they encounter? Hammer the drive with different usual and unusual loads? Guess what the're doing already ;)
I thought SandForce only had BSOD problems. Intel never crashed, but some came back to an 8MB drive and no way of recovering the data. Personally? I'd rather crash.
I have both manufacturers (160 GB Intel 320, 60 GB Vertex 2, 120 GB Vertex 3) and the two SF drives did BSOD on me, I just opted to not sleep my machine. The Intel drive hasn't had any problems, but it does concern me a bit that it's a known possibility. I should really update the firmware on the whole batch, as all issues are reported as patched. I like to wait and see what else broke, as some were reporting the 8 MB problem post-patch.
Will the full review include a wider range of sizes?
I have to say I'm having an increasingly hard time finding use in SSD reviews when they don't include a larger range of sizes within the same product line. At least a couple, to get an idea of scaling. While you can certainly get an idea of relative performance between different controllers and manufacturers' products by just comparing the results of all the beastliest ones, there's no way I'm spending nearly $900 on a drive. I'm far more interested in the 128 GB version, maaaaybe 256 if I'm feeling saucy. Both will most likely be slower than the 512, and I'm sure different controllers scale differently or better than others. Meaning the winner at 512 may fall behind at 256 or 128. But those sizes never get reviewed.
It's my understanding that the manufacturers usually only provide their biggest/fastest for review samples to put their best foot forward, but it's getting increasingly frustrating not being able to do an apples-to-apples comparison for the under-the-stratosphere things I'm looking at. Here's hoping that starts to change.
Let's face it, most of us don't want to spend $500-1000 on a huge SSD when a 120-128GB model will give us the speed if not the capacity. But it's difficult to get an idea of how well these baseline models will perform when all you review is the huge versions with their channels fully populated...
Well, in that case, you'll have to wait a year or so, and see what's what. Reliability can only be tested over the long term. Early adopters shouldn't expect it.
Can we expect also the review of Corsair's Preformance Pro with the Marvell controler? Senn a review over at tssdr, looks prety decent, wonder how it compares to Octane.
If you look for quick (instant ;) program startup, which block size maters the most?
The Octane vs Marvell's new fw...i.e. Corsair Performance Pro. First thing I noticed is that the new marvell retains a lot more of it's performance in the smaller sizes. Octane perf. goes waaay down hill once you get below 512GB. i.e. a 128 Perf Pro will stomp a 128gb Octane. Guess we'll find out soon.
M4 has been doing really well, and i am one of the few who has been pushing it to different market before it has even gotten attention. ( In case you are wondering, Crucial is absolutely poor at distribution with places other then US and UK, and some part of Europe )
I have been hesitating to use Sandforce, i knew it was fast, but one thing i was concern about it being too clever, doing too much complex things to speed up the data.
It is great to see Indilinx is on broad with this traditional controller idea. Hopefully this will bring some healthy competition.
But on the other hand we are only 10+% from Maxing out SATA 3, we need SATA 12Gbps, or some other form of Interconnect. May be Internal Thunderblot which should be great fit,.
Well, plenty of room to improve random reads and writes, for instance.
Last generation of SSDs: random reads: 30MB/s - 60MBs random writes: 50MB/s - 220MBs
So, PLENTY of room for user experience improvement.
Priorities now, from user POV (not from marketing): 1 - reliability (hard to check, only after some time, and even then as an "educated" guess) 2 - price lowering 3 - bigger capacities (although 1GB seems to be a good move) (and yes, only with lower prices) 4 - faster randoms (no need for anything above sata 6gbps) 5 - SSDs being mundane in every laptop and PCs you buy (HDDs being relegated to home storage and backup) (maybe even some more points...) X - new interface (sata 12gbps or whatever)
That said, of course that marketing and some applications (servers, ...) benefit from higher bandwidth, but not really for home user, at least IMHO.
The people on the site need to quit bashing ocz and ssd reliability. It's like the same 6 people are trolling every single article and jumping at the chance to complain about reliability. Yes there were some early issues with some sandforce drives. Yes there are complaints on the forums (what else do you expect to see on the forums?) The bottom line is most of these issues never affected the majority of users, and most have been cleared up. I personally own 2 OCZ Agility drives that I have been running in raid 0 for over 2 years with 0 problems. Like Mr S says the people with no problems don't see the need to post all the time. Read the feedback reviews on sites like ncix and you will find that the vast majority of people are very satisfied with there vertex 3 drives! Just RMA your bad drive, move on, and quit crying already.
I have helped a friend built a PC with OCZ Vertex 2 120GB, and it failed after 8 months. My RMA experience was not too bad (less than two weeks) but he was without a functioning PC for the period of time.
Case in point, if you have good experience with OCZ (SandForce), then stick with them. I have not. So I am seeking other products.
PS: Trying to save $30 and ending up with 3 - 4 hours of extra work is not acceptable for me. Reliability trumphs speeds every time.
199 bucks for 128 GB is not any cheaper than a competing sandforce 3 SSD. WIth the latest firmware that fixed the random BSOD issue, Sandforce 3 at 200 bucks price point is a major threat to this Octane unless the Octane can surpass the sandforce 3 in performance, which I highly doubt it.
Can you guys at anandtech create a new benchmark called "User Experience" and base it only on perceived feel of the product. So, setup identical systems and swap out the drives and see how each feels then simply rank them in order, or if they cannot be ranked along a single line then rank them under multiple rankings. Forget the benchmark tools.
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josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I think people are going to start looking less at max performance values and more at overall performance. Looks like Octane competes with the best.inplainview - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I think MOST non-geek-high-end user types will be looking for reliability first. SSD's have become more reliable but I still get a bit nervous when I see something strange happening. Data backups are your best friend.josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Totally agree. The delay in the launch was probably a good thing for the end consumer. Better OCZ catches bugs then the consumer.niva - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Bingo! Reliability is #1 in the long term, even for the nerdy geeks who want speed. They come around eventually. I'm not too pleased with the way reliability is heading but compromises must be made to make this tech cheaper for the masses.Solandri - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
There are two types of people: Those who've lost data without a backup, and those who will. Always make backups. Once you do, the reliability becomes a non-issue, and you can enjoy the speed of SSDs without worry.The backup system I set up for my dad does incremental backups wirelessly to a NAS every day, so he doesn't even have to do anything. (A new initial backup every few months is made over a wired network to save time.)
Proxy711 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Your right since I backup my data every month I no longer care about BSOD, stuttering, and the need to rely and frequently make use of my backups./sarcasm
SSD reliability doesn't just apply to loss of data.
Denebola - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I don't care about reliability since everything that I would put on a SSD can easily be redownloaded.It might be problematic for people who don't know how to move the media folders on Windows though (if they even use that.)
That is as long as the drive still works / under warranty. If they doesn't apply then I'd be pretty livid if I had a $500 paper weight.
Lord 666 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Have to say that I have been dissappointed with my M4 256 fw9 SSD. For the price, encryption and some more performance would have justified the high tag.This graph just proved I should have held off.
Marlin1975 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
You do know there are more than 1 way to measure performance in SSDs right?One that is slower in one area may be better in 4k and so forth.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Could be your CPU is limiting speed, not the M4. At work we've got some DELLs with 64 GB Samsung PM..*something*. Definitely not the fastest, even 2 years ago. However, during installs routinely one Core of the i5s (~3.6 GHz) gets fully loaded.. so a faster drive wouldn't help much.MrS
Lord 666 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
2600k with x68XP-UD4 and the drive connected to 6gb slot. MB is even using latest F5 bios and PSU is 700w. OS is Win7 x64 SP1.We'll see what Santa might bring me....
Makaveli - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
"I think people are going to start looking less at max performance values and more at overall Stability. Based on OCZ current history these numbers don't mean anything until more through testing can be completed."Marlin1975 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Hanging with the big boys has more to do with reliability then performance for me. Even the slowest 6gb SSD is still better than platter hard drives.I bought a Crucial M4 more for the reliability factor then performance.
i.e. would you rather drive the 2nd fastest car in the world or the fastest car without brakes or seatbelts?
anactoraaron - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I have 4 different SSD's from 4 different companies and the oldest one from Intel (a 40gb x25-v) has been going strong for over a year. I have yet to experience any reliability issue with any of my ssd's. Don't know exactly where people keep saying these things.josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Sometimes you wonder if HDD companies are trying to push the reliability issue to slow adoption.I've had a Vertex 3 since May and it's been perfect.
Marlin1975 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Yes cause all the people in forums and reviews must be shills as there have only been 5 SSDs sold, your 4 and mine.So the issues of SSDs problems are fake and OCZ and other SSD makers that admit problems and come out with firmware fixs must have been bribed by platter makers to keep the false info going.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
My Vertex 2E has fallen apart. On my previous build it ended up having a ton of errors (about a year old). I thought nothing of it, rebuilt my entire machine (brand new high quality PSU/MB/GPU/RAM/CPU), and it worked for a week.. this is after updating firmware, too, clean install of 7 x64.It now hard locks a few seconds after booting Windows.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I bought an Intel 320 for the same reason, even though I have a 6Gbps SATA board, I don't care. They even upped the warranty to 5 years.n0b0dykn0ws - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
All the performance in the world doesn't mean anything if the drive is priced too high.Yes, with the inflated price of HDDs right now it will probably seem like a value, but if you already have terabytes of storage you need a good price/performance ratio.
I'd like to see something that's a bit slower but increased capacity at a good price.
Like a 512 GB drive for under $200. So what if it doesn't compete with the faster drives, it would be a better value!
n0b0dykn0ws
josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I think that comes out in January with the TLC-based SSD's. It'll probably be $350 for a 512 though.MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
In SSDs the bulk of the cost is the flash. Which doesn't change if you use a slower controller. TLC would give you what you want, though (as joseph already said).However, personally I think waiting for 512 GB SSDs to come down in price is rather stupid. It's better to maximize the usage of the space the current drives provide. E.g. I'm using a 60 GB Agility 3 as cache for my entire HDD on a Z68 board. That's fine speed and value.
MrS
n0b0dykn0ws - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I would go the SRT route but I built my 2600K on a P67 board.I would also consider a 120 GB drive for just my games, but I don't really notice a huge lag in game load times using my HDDs now.
I figure in a few years I'll he motivated to upgrade to SSDs.
n0b0dykn0ws
Soulkeeper - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
512MB seems like a massive cache for an SSDMarlin1975 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
1mg per 1gb?I doubt they put 512mg on if it did not help. OCZ seems to push the performance a lot, I just hope reliability comes along this time.
MadMacMan - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I've been using a 120GB OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro SATA III 6Gbps SSD which is insanely fast in my 17" MBP on OS X Lion. I wasn't going to get the OWC at first, but instead wanted to get the OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS Edition. I spent quite a bit of time researching the new SATA III SSD's and I found too many negative reviews for the OCZ. They both use the SF-2281 controller and they're virtually equally as fast, but the OCZ MAX IOPS still edges out the OWC EXTREME. Maybe this new one will be better, although I'm starting to think that it was mostly Windows users who experienced the BSOD's who kind of hurt OCZ's reputation for a while. Anyone running the OCZ SATA III SSDs without any problems?(p.s.: I wish Apple got its act together with the 2011 MBP's, so I can run both of my OWC SSD's in RAID 0 again, which currently still only works in the 13" MBP. Does anyone have any insight as to what I might try to make both the hard drive and optical drive bays run SATA III SSDs reliably?
josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I've been using a Vertex 3 since May in a MacBook Pro. It's been flawless. I haven't even updated the firmware. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
"Anyone running the OCZ SATA III SSDs without any problems?"Sure, but you don't hear these people as usually they don't shout as loud. Well, actually my first drive failed after ~1 week (hadn't even started really using it..). The 2nd one is fine, however (and of course no BSOD issues).
MrS
Fandongo - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
The MBP RAID 0 flaw is the biggest turnoff in computer history.With the possibility of external GPU's via thunderbolt (hopefully)
And ram getting cheaper.
We are baby steps away from Laptops being significant portable workstation powerhouses.
Imagine two 1tb RAID 0 drives for all working video/audio projects.
Just sync/back up to platter drives every time you reconvene with your desk.
Add 4x ram slots in a 17" MBP, and maybe 0.2% of the population would ever need a desktop again.
dingo99 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
OCZ's last Indilinx drive was the Vertex Plus, based on the Martini controller. Read the user reviews and forum posts about that drive and you will think the Sandforce mess was nothing. Even with recent firmware updates, Vertex Plus users are still reporting major data corruption issues. Regardless of the benchmark numbers, I won't even begin to consider Octane until its reliability (or lack thereof) becomes established.rochlin - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Only Samsung and Intel SSDs have proved dependable, according to a previous Anandtech posting. Isn't that game over? Shouldn't the ONLY real question be weather these things will actually not destroy your data? The performance diffs are small compared to that. PLEASE RATE DEPENDABILITY!MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
And how could they possibly do that, given the small samples size they're limited to? Look for and report any issues they encounter? Hammer the drive with different usual and unusual loads? Guess what the're doing already ;)MrS
icrf - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I thought SandForce only had BSOD problems. Intel never crashed, but some came back to an 8MB drive and no way of recovering the data. Personally? I'd rather crash.I have both manufacturers (160 GB Intel 320, 60 GB Vertex 2, 120 GB Vertex 3) and the two SF drives did BSOD on me, I just opted to not sleep my machine. The Intel drive hasn't had any problems, but it does concern me a bit that it's a known possibility. I should really update the firmware on the whole batch, as all issues are reported as patched. I like to wait and see what else broke, as some were reporting the 8 MB problem post-patch.
Cisephys - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Will the full review include a wider range of sizes?I have to say I'm having an increasingly hard time finding use in SSD reviews when they don't include a larger range of sizes within the same product line. At least a couple, to get an idea of scaling. While you can certainly get an idea of relative performance between different controllers and manufacturers' products by just comparing the results of all the beastliest ones, there's no way I'm spending nearly $900 on a drive. I'm far more interested in the 128 GB version, maaaaybe 256 if I'm feeling saucy. Both will most likely be slower than the 512, and I'm sure different controllers scale differently or better than others. Meaning the winner at 512 may fall behind at 256 or 128. But those sizes never get reviewed.
It's my understanding that the manufacturers usually only provide their biggest/fastest for review samples to put their best foot forward, but it's getting increasingly frustrating not being able to do an apples-to-apples comparison for the under-the-stratosphere things I'm looking at. Here's hoping that starts to change.
Roland00Address - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
which sizes are you testing, and which one will be synchronous vs asynchronousDenithor - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Let's face it, most of us don't want to spend $500-1000 on a huge SSD when a 120-128GB model will give us the speed if not the capacity. But it's difficult to get an idea of how well these baseline models will perform when all you review is the huge versions with their channels fully populated...Beenthere - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I don't care how fast the Octane SSDs are unless they are bulletproof reliable.Rick83 - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
Well, in that case, you'll have to wait a year or so, and see what's what.Reliability can only be tested over the long term. Early adopters shouldn't expect it.
Dreamwalker - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Can we expect also the review of Corsair's Preformance Pro with the Marvell controler? Senn a review over at tssdr, looks prety decent, wonder how it compares to Octane.If you look for quick (instant ;) program startup, which block size maters the most?
Movieman420 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
The Octane vs Marvell's new fw...i.e. Corsair Performance Pro. First thing I noticed is that the new marvell retains a lot more of it's performance in the smaller sizes. Octane perf. goes waaay down hill once you get below 512GB. i.e. a 128 Perf Pro will stomp a 128gb Octane. Guess we'll find out soon.iwod - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
M4 has been doing really well, and i am one of the few who has been pushing it to different market before it has even gotten attention. ( In case you are wondering, Crucial is absolutely poor at distribution with places other then US and UK, and some part of Europe )I have been hesitating to use Sandforce, i knew it was fast, but one thing i was concern about it being too clever, doing too much complex things to speed up the data.
It is great to see Indilinx is on broad with this traditional controller idea. Hopefully this will bring some healthy competition.
But on the other hand we are only 10+% from Maxing out SATA 3, we need SATA 12Gbps, or some other form of Interconnect. May be Internal Thunderblot which should be great fit,.
Qapa - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Well, plenty of room to improve random reads and writes, for instance.Last generation of SSDs:
random reads: 30MB/s - 60MBs
random writes: 50MB/s - 220MBs
So, PLENTY of room for user experience improvement.
Priorities now, from user POV (not from marketing):
1 - reliability (hard to check, only after some time, and even then as an "educated" guess)
2 - price lowering
3 - bigger capacities (although 1GB seems to be a good move) (and yes, only with lower prices)
4 - faster randoms (no need for anything above sata 6gbps)
5 - SSDs being mundane in every laptop and PCs you buy (HDDs being relegated to home storage and backup)
(maybe even some more points...)
X - new interface (sata 12gbps or whatever)
That said, of course that marketing and some applications (servers, ...) benefit from higher bandwidth, but not really for home user, at least IMHO.
motqalden - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
The people on the site need to quit bashing ocz and ssd reliability. It's like the same 6 people are trolling every single article and jumping at the chance to complain about reliability.Yes there were some early issues with some sandforce drives.
Yes there are complaints on the forums (what else do you expect to see on the forums?)
The bottom line is most of these issues never affected the majority of users, and most have been cleared up.
I personally own 2 OCZ Agility drives that I have been running in raid 0 for over 2 years with 0 problems. Like Mr S says the people with no problems don't see the need to post all the time. Read the feedback reviews on sites like ncix and you will find that the vast majority of people are very satisfied with there vertex 3 drives! Just RMA your bad drive, move on, and quit crying already.
/Rant
Makaveli - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link
I think you need to stop being in denial.There are pages and pages at the OCZ forum for proof.
When you start seeing articles about these issues on website AKA anandtech had one its an issue.
Take off the blinders son!
Phate-13 - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
When owners of webstores claim a RMA-rate of over 10% for the OCZ drives. You would say there is nothing wrong with that?Or this reliability research : It might not be the biggest, it's in dutch, but the images are in english and say more then enough:
http://darkstone.tweakblogs.net/blog/6956/ssd-betr...
gamoniac - Sunday, November 27, 2011 - link
I have helped a friend built a PC with OCZ Vertex 2 120GB, and it failed after 8 months. My RMA experience was not too bad (less than two weeks) but he was without a functioning PC for the period of time.Case in point, if you have good experience with OCZ (SandForce), then stick with them. I have not. So I am seeking other products.
PS: Trying to save $30 and ending up with 3 - 4 hours of extra work is not acceptable for me. Reliability trumphs speeds every time.
jacknhut - Saturday, November 26, 2011 - link
199 bucks for 128 GB is not any cheaper than a competing sandforce 3 SSD. WIth the latest firmware that fixed the random BSOD issue, Sandforce 3 at 200 bucks price point is a major threat to this Octane unless the Octane can surpass the sandforce 3 in performance, which I highly doubt it.billegge - Monday, November 28, 2011 - link
Can you guys at anandtech create a new benchmark called "User Experience" and base it only on perceived feel of the product. So, setup identical systems and swap out the drives and see how each feels then simply rank them in order, or if they cannot be ranked along a single line then rank them under multiple rankings. Forget the benchmark tools.rickdaley - Monday, December 5, 2011 - link
will this work in a laptop that doesn't have an sata3 controller?