SCAN slashes price of HyperX 120GB Drive by 45%!

[csgohan4]

Think I'll give this a miss with all the problems with Sandforce. Took the plunge on a Samsung 830 256GB instead

[Hicks12]

price is even worse now, 256gb M4 is only £130 at ebuyer (go here http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/cruc...er-com-1243802)

Theres also these two http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/ocz-pt...ff~HotUKDeals~
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/ocz-pt...y~RR~~12872031

(i wouldnt touch but if price is the deciding factor... then these are good).

[lohsmith]

If the price on these had plateaued over the last month...even for just a week...I'd be in! Can't believe how quickly these things are dropping in price. Sorely tempted by this Kingston - but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of user experience...and judging by OCZ and their Petrol SSD, I really don't fancy being a guinea pig.
On the flip side though, this has scorching speed...and the overall power consumption is exceptionally good too.
Aaah...decisions!

[lohsmith]

Think I'll give this a miss with all the problems with Sandforce. Took the plunge on a Samsung 830 256GB instead

The 830 was my original SSD target - however, although the specifications suggest it is exceptionally good on power consumption, real world benchmarks suggest otherwise. That's a big factor for us laptop users...and it's why this Kingston is so attractive (near class leading power consumption, and incredibly fast!).
Far too much choice...and not enough price stability!

[ONEK]

I own a Crucial C300 64GB. It's holding out well, although with these price cuts it's probably time to upgrading the next generation SSDs. I love the price of the HyperX although not sure about performance, with all the tatter about sandforce being plagued, although I haven't really had a problem. (touchwood)

[Hicks12]

The 830 was my original SSD target - however, although the specifications suggest it is exceptionally good on power consumption, real world benchmarks suggest otherwise. That's a big factor for us laptop users...and it's why this Kingston is so attractive (near class leading power consumption, and incredibly fast!).
Far too much choice...and not enough price stability!

It is good on power, if your looking at anandtech results then I think they are incorrect as the difference between 512gb and 256gb is astronomical, the 256 performs fine and uses a lot less than the m4 on idle (which is what most ssds do now ). I grab a crucial m4 or a Samsung and your fine and dandy never worry about a thing .

To the guy on the c300 still they are great drives , they aren't sand force either that's why you haven't had it fail haha!

[wtfitskeagan]

It's actually worth the buy, now that the price dropped. I'm sorry, but with the reliability of SSD's lately (without spending an arm and a leg) has been pretty dim. I'll buy one for less than $100 though.

[crossy]

I grab a crucial m4 or a Samsung and your fine and dandy never worry about a thing

That's one thing I don't understand - folks here are raving (apologies if that's too strong a term) about the Crucial and Samsung, but I just took a look at the specs on Scan, and neither seem to be exactly "class leading". So what's the big deal - is it merely the aftersales service (which I figure should be good since both companies also make NAND chips - and I've got experience of Crucial's after sales being good). Why should I buy one of those as opposed to, for example, a Vertex4?

Other thing I don't cotton onto is that there seems to be a distinct coolness against OCZ's gear. But I've had a Vertex2E for 18 months now and it's never given me a moments problem since it was installed. Although, because it was "only" a 64GB drive, it's now getting a little tight for space as an OS boot drive.

Anyone care to educate me?

[HalloweenJack]

reliability

the ocz vertex 3 , using the sandforce controller is still having documented issues (in fact not just ocz , its just they are the widest known). in fact IIRC the only company with a sandforce based drive without issues is intel , as they through a large amount of resources at fixing the sandforce controller. crucial use a marvel controller (as does the new vertex 4 - the indilix controller is actually a rebrand as the new indilix controller wasnt ready) and samsung use theier own inhouse controller.

so whilst not the `fastest` on paper - you dont read reams of pages about M4`s or 830`s falling over and BSODing week after week on the latest firmware

[Agent]

That's one thing I don't understand - folks here are raving (apologies if that's too strong a term) about the Crucial and Samsung, but I just took a look at the specs on Scan, and neither seem to be exactly "class leading". So what's the big deal - is it merely the aftersales service (which I figure should be good since both companies also make NAND chips - and I've got experience of Crucial's after sales being good). Why should I buy one of those as opposed to, for example, a Vertex4?

It's down to reliability. While both Crucial and Samsung have had firmware upgrades to fix minor bugs, neither have had an issue that has caused data loss on the scale that other drives have.
Crucial are excellent for CS in many peoples experience, which is valuable when dealing with tech that's still reasonably new.

People don't consider the Vertex 4 because of a couple of reasons:

1) OCZ had appalling customer service when the Sandforce fiasco and drive issues were encountered.
2) They are using a 'custom firmware' with the Marvell controller. While the controller is proven, the firmware is not and a lot of people are wary of this now.

Other thing I don't cotton onto is that there seems to be a distinct coolness against OCZ's gear. But I've had a Vertex2E for 18 months now and it's never given me a moments problem since it was installed. Although, because it was "only" a 64GB drive, it's now getting a little tight for space as an OS boot drive.

Anyone care to educate me?

Failing drives and poor customer service means that a lot of people are shying aware from OCZ.
Vertex 2E was an okay drive, no where near as bad as the latter ones, but some people still had issues - way above what you'd expect for a component.

There is tons on here about people and their issues, with links backing up many of the problems (such as the 'not quite fixed still BSOD Sandforce' issue), just have a search.

[Millennium]

Ok - wow.

I've just cloned my win7 install from a 90gb agility2 to this drive. EVERYTHING is faster. It's amazing - it's like a CPU upgrade for loading problems. There I was thinking that an SSD is an SSD is an SSD due to the latency being the main benefit. Well, they are all fast, but this one is pretty much epic.

Thanks Hexus, and thanks Scan

edit: this is what I used to clone: http://clonezilla.org/

I would only recommend it if you're sure you are already 4k aligned on the source disk. Also don't bother with the image mode just do it direct. Resizes NTFS too!

[teppic]

That's one thing I don't understand - folks here are raving (apologies if that's too strong a term) about the Crucial and Samsung, but I just took a look at the specs on Scan, and neither seem to be exactly "class leading". So what's the big deal - is it merely the aftersales service (which I figure should be good since both companies also make NAND chips - and I've got experience of Crucial's after sales being good). Why should I buy one of those as opposed to, for example, a Vertex4?

Aside from the above, it's because the quoted maximum transfer rates alone are worth little. You need to do lots of benchmarks on a drive to get a real picture, but Sandforce drives do especially well from this marketing because of very high performance in one particular area.

[crossy]

It's down to reliability. While both Crucial and Samsung have had firmware upgrades to fix minor bugs, neither have had an issue that has caused data loss on the scale that other drives have.
Crucial are excellent for CS in many peoples experience, which is valuable when dealing with tech that's still reasonably new.

There is tons on here about people and their issues, with links backing up many of the problems (such as the 'not quite fixed still BSOD Sandforce' issue), just have a search.

+1 on the customer service issue - I had to return some Ballistix memory a long time ago (it was DDR - which gives you an idea) and the CS folks were very helpful and it was a "pain free" experience.
Thanks for the heads up on the continuing issues on SF - I'd picked folks up wrong because I'd taken it that this was a big deal, but now it's more or less "old news" - so handy to know that it's still biting.

Okay, I've taken a look and I think the Samsung looks slightly the better product than the M4 - the cache RAM being the swing factor for me (because the kits appear to be the same price!). Only downside seems to be that I'll have to buy the "laptop" kit - although I'm pretty sure that mounting frame that I've got my Vertex2E in will be reusable.

Aside from the above, it's because the quoted maximum transfer rates alone are worth little. You need to do lots of benchmarks on a drive to get a real picture, but Sandforce drives do especially well from this marketing because of very high performance in one particular area.

Yep, I saw the comments about SF and compressible files - where it "punches above it's weight". Still, as the old cliche goes ... there's four kinds of lies: lies; damned lies, statistics and manufacturers benchmarks!

edit: this is what I used to clone: http://clonezilla.org/

Had a friend who was a major league Windows fan boy - he used to use Clonezilla (and really liked it) until someone (yep, me) pointed out that it "runs Linux".

EDIT: just gave Novatech a chunk of change for a pair of Samsung 830 128GB's - so my Ubuntu laptop'll get it's 320GB HDD "downgraded" to one of the Sammy's. The other is destined to replace the Vertex2E that has been my Windows7 OS drive since I built my PC. That 64GB drive's only got 5GB free, so a bigger drive is a must - and there's no way I'm going back to "spinning disk" for my boot volume. Would have normally given Scan the business, but Novatech have the drives in stock, whereas Scan have them on "pre-order" with no ETA. Damn you Hexus for encouraging me to spend money!

[Hicks12]

yup as people are mentioned, reliability is actually there (sandforce still have some lingering issues) and the headline speeds are useless readings now to look at its just like comparing top speeds of cars, two cars may be able to make 200miles an hour but car a can accelerate to that speed in half the time of car b, car a also has much better corner speed and in the wet.

(poor analogy but im not very good at that!).

Basically the samsung and m4 perform well in ALL areas you could call them the jack of all trades but im not sure if thats strickly true as even the transfer speeds are close to sandforce now and since they generally win in every other field they only seem to lose in compressible data files that are large transfers i.e something to use that 500mb/s etc.

If the price difference was alot more then maybe sandforce would be ok but when you are talking £5 - £10 difference it aint much when data is quite important and you get a faster drive .