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Now I know that in all likelihood nobody here knows for sure but what's your best guesses at when to start buying SSDs again? What were pre-flood prices for budget 64GB drives? And are they anywhere near that level again now?
What's my best bet for waiting vs buying now?
AFAIK they've only gone up marginally. They've never really broken £1 per GB which is the threshold most people start to consider taking the plunge. NAND flash wasn't affected by the floods to nearly the same extent as the HDD factories. Given the higher costs of HDD it actually makes the SSDs more attractive economically. IIRC decent 60-64GB SSD were going for £70-90 depending on type before the flood, not too dissimilar to now.
never really moved did they? just sort of stood out of the way while the HDD price came shooting out of the floor... there are certainly similarly sized Gen3 drives for the same price now as the Gen2 drives were before the floods.
the M4's went up a touch, but i think that was more to do with every bugger wanted one, usually sold out in 128GB. sandforce drives did nothing.
Wouldn't touch an M4 right now. Heard of the 5200-hour bug they're only just admitting to?
A firmware update is out next week. At least Crucial acknowledged the problem last week and is getting out a fix as soon a possible. Since the M4 was only released in April,5200 hours more or less means drives affected have been on pretty much 24/7 since that time. Its hard to say whether it is earlier drives which have been affected only though. The Intel 510 uses exactly the same controller and has issues with certain laptops like the MacBook Pro.Quote:
Originally Posted by directhex
The Intel 320 series were affected by a load of early production drives resetting themselves to 8MB. However,Intel got a firmware update out quickly too.
Compare that to the Force 3 which needed a recall at launch(still had issues after that) and Vertex 3 which has BSOD issues since launch. The previous Sandforce drives had there fair share of issues too(there a few threads on Hexus).
The only current drives which have no issues AFAIK, are the Kingston SSDNow V series and the Samsung 470 series. The Samsung 830 series has only been out since late September IIRC and hence too new to gauge its reliability.
Some of the Kingston drives have data corruption issues, which leaves the new+unproven Samsung. The M4 issue is minor compared to others and is no reason to avoid buying one now, there's no way you'll hit 5k hours by the time the patch is scheduled.
SSDs do seem to have crept up in price quite a bit IMO.
The tech should be getting cheaper but instead prices are climbing, so effectively that's a double-whammy to prices.
Have been looking for some for friends and many of the decent ones were £140-160 for 120GB. We should be below £1/GB by now, we were almost there 6 months ago but now we are heading in the opposite direction!
Okay, then can people help with recommendations?
I'm not too bothered with the latest benchs, as long as it noticeably outperforms my old 7200rpm drives I'm happy. Here's my situ:
- Price is #1 factor
- Size must be 60GB+ but bigger is obviously better
- New mobo has SATA III port I'd like to use
- PC will always be on so needs okay longevity
Well I'd happily recommend the M4 but the OCZ Petrol which is meant to be a budget drive should be out soon, but as with all new drives, reliability is an unknown.
Considering the current prices.....http://www.ebuyer.com/282000-ocz-120...sd2-1vtxpl120g may be worth a look at for £100 on the nose.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
Fix for the sandforce controller has been out for a couple of months now: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4973/s...vailable-today
is it anything to do with quantitative easing? IIRC they release a certain chunk of all that extra capital at regular intervals diluting the currency and the result is that the £ is worth less and less each time they release some. Imports therefore cost more and more.Quote:
Originally Posted by shaithis
hmmm, £100 for a 120GB OCZ. Couldn't happen last month when I had some spare readies, could it :rolleyes:
I know and you do realise the drives such as the Vertex 3 were launched in April. It basically took around six months for Sandforce to admit their problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by ik9000
no, it took 6 months for them to locate the problem in order to fix it. There's a big difference.Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
Is ti worth paying the premium for SATA III over SATA II. I'll only really be running Firefox, Win 7 and Photoshop from it.