Am I overlooking something?

I've just been researching, out of interest, the market shares of SSD MFRs when I found this: http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-top10.html
It looks a bit inaccurate to start with, but at the bottom it goes on about Intel making some terrible SSDs and implying they should leave the market.

Wait...what?? I thought Intel made some of the best/most reliable SSDs on the market? I know they might not be the cheapest but all MFRs I know of have had their hiccups and I don't know of anything to warrant what they said.

Any ideas? I'm genuinely interested because I've been recommending Intel drives, along with others...

Seems like a crappy site. Intel and Samsung make the most reliable SSD's

Yeah, probably someone who's had a single faulty one and decided they're all that way or something...

I went on the no. 1 ranked ssd maufacturers website and they seem to only do very large (expensive) ssds for business storage. Maybe thats why Intel rankled poorly,as they tend to offer smaller SSDs. Intels are meant to be near the top but frankly at their prices it's unlikely one will find its way into my build.

Maybe, but it doesn't justify the comments that site left, I don't know of any 'truly terrible' drives they've released. Surely they can't mean that 8MB bug? If so, then why do they praise OCZ, or more specifically Sandfore, so highly after some of the disastrous issues they've had? At least Intel went about patching it quickly.

I would gladly spend £30 more on an Intel product vs someone else, i have not had a single "Bad" intel product

First thanked post. Thank you!!!

Anyway back to the intel SSD debate- They're good but I'm a cheapskate so a OCZ Vertex will be my limit

Scan please put the Vertex 3 on a today only deal we would all love you for it!!

Well they've had SSD firmware issues of their own, but that's besides the point. I know you can't believe everything you read on the net but that did get me thinking, and while a single bad review (or even a load if I know otherwise) won't put me off a product, it could have people running to other brands 'just in case'. A while ago Anandtech published failure rates of a few brands (not exhaustive but included popular brands) and Intel was amongst, if not the, lowest. Maybe it was down to benchmark performance; Intel may not get top marks for synthetic benchmarks, is it really going to make a noticeable difference, for consumer use at least?

@whobi: I appreciate the input. :)

And I don't want to put you off the drive, but I'd get advice from members more up-to-date with things (I've had a look but can't find a simple yes/no to if it's been sorted) as the Vertex 3 had (or has) a pretty major firmware problem causing frequent BSODs.

Intel had some problems with their 320 series. It's been fixed for ages now. you can read more here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4625/i...-8mb-power-bug

and the solution (2 days later):

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4646/i...text-13x-error

Intel's more budget range will slowly be wound down, they weren't the best of performers but served the purpose of forcing other manufacturer's to compete. It sounds like Intel's future aim is more towards the enterprise market and high end of things: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4902/i...0-200gb-review

Also worth noting that sandforce drives have had their share of problems too. The BSOD issues with these have also been resolved. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4973/s...vailable-today

I've always like storage review for drive info.

http://www.storagereview.com/best_drives isn't a bad starting point plus there are a ton of in-depth reviews on their site.

Yeah I visit that site quite often, but like others they can't really test for reliability/bugs without knowing what to look for.

it's probabaly already been mentioned, but someone's gone to the trouble of collating links to SSD reviews into one thread for easy reference: http://forums.hexus.net/storage/2068...ws-thread.html

I've just stumbled on another issue with Intel drives which I remember hearing at the time, how the X25-M drives would slow down over time due to wear levelling (lack of TRIM?).
http://www.techradar.com/news/comput...broken--539058
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage...ainstream-SSDs

But AFAIK that was common with early drives and was patched with a firmware update, so is no longer an issue.

have a read up of all this stuff on www.Anandtech.com They are very thorough with their SSD testing.