Experiences with JMicron based SSD's

[Champman99]

Hey guys.

Ive recently bought an Intel X25-M for my main gaming PC and have kind of got the SSD bug. Im thinking about a smaller scale drive for my laptop but as the machine itself cost £500 or so, another big cost SSD might be hard to justify.

I know theres the X25-X (and Kingston derivative) coming soon, which would be around half the price of the X25-M (for half the speed AND half the capacity), but the JMicron drives can be had much cheaper on ebay etc.

I've heard about "stuttering" and comments like "you get what you pay for" but for my laptop it's more about weight and battery life that outright performance (will still outperform a 5400rpm HD anyway). So basically I kind of want to know what peoples actual experience is with the JMicron based drives, outside of a review environment in real world use. Although maybe hexus users read up and only bought Intel/Indilinx drives

(Example Drives are OCZ Core & Solid series)

[spoon_]

Would 30GB Vertex for sub £100 be too expensive?

[Champman99]

I think at that price range I'd be more inclined to go for the 40GB Intel based Kingston. But even so, I'm really interested in an absolute bargain, I might end up just getting another Intel X25-M if they come back down to £160, but we'll see. The drive would be like 1/4 of the laptops value then. Ebay 30-40GB JMicron drives can be had for ~£40 if my research is correct.

[watercooled]

Just so you know the cheapest Kingstons, the V series I think are painfully slow - far slower than any modern hard drive in any test including access time so are terrible value for money.

[mikerr]

The 40GB kingston = intel G2

[shbris]

technically yes! BUT they have less NAND chips so bandwidth is scaled back massively. the kingston has good technology but scaled down to price

[kalniel]

technically yes! BUT they have less NAND chips so bandwidth is scaled back massively. the kingston has good technology but scaled down to price

The main advantage of SSDs lies in their random write/read speeds, not bandwidth though.

[jim]

I've heard about "stuttering" and comments like "you get what you pay for" but for my laptop it's more about weight and battery life that outright performance (will still outperform a 5400rpm HD anyway).

The bad ones won't outperform a 5400rpm HD, that's the problem.

[Champman99]

The bad ones won't outperform a 5400rpm HD, that's the problem.

Oh, I didnt realise it was that bad! I figured that there would always be some advantage, the JMicron drives werent exactly cheap at retail, what were people paying for if not performance :S

[jim]

Oh, I didnt realise it was that bad! I figured that there would always be some advantage, the JMicron drives werent exactly cheap at retail, what were people paying for if not performance :S

AFAIK, according to the specs they'd massively outperform them, and certainly if you put them in the correct testing environment they'd do very well, but in day-to-day, real world usage, they were severely shown up, and the hanging issues you've heard mentioned would result in a PC becoming unusable for a brief period every so often - i.e. it would have a temporary hang for no obvious reason. I can imagine that becoming extremely irritating, very quickly.

[Pob255]

Well one thing I always though SSD was good for in laptops is mobility.
No moving parts make them 100% shock proof (the shock would have to be so great as to physically damage them or the connection, nothing is smash proof )
There's also the slightly lower weight and power usage.

I wonder if any form of combined SSD is made?
I'm not massively up on the subject, I'm thinking of something like the SSD in eee pc's.
Now I know it's built in and not seperate, just wondering if something simular is made as a seperate SSD.
Incase you didn't know, in the eee pc they actually broke the SSD up into two parts, one 4gb which has good read/write speeds, and one 12/16gb one (depending on model) which has decent read speeds but slower write speeds.
This means you can get the OS and key bits of software on the high speed section while the slower section becomes your data storage.

[Champman99]

I eventually went for a Samsung drive I found on ebay, the type used in Macbooks and Dell notebooks not widely available at retail.

£73 for 64GB drive including delivery. so £1.14 per GB (less if you factor in delivery cost, which is not bad imo, even for a slightly older drive!)

Not very fast Read and Write times for big files, but pretty good for a system drive or so my research has lead me to beleive and no stutter issues or anything, Apple and Dell wouldnt really stand for issues. No TRIM (i doubt will ever be), but I'm happy, just wanted something cheap for my laptop that would be lower weight, lower heat and if possible more responsive.