It's mostly by SSD controller, not the company that actually sells the drive. A SandForce-based drive from OCZ is essentially identical to a SandForce-based drive from G.Skill, but not at all the same as an Indilinx-based drive from OCZ.
The best SSD controllers right now are the Marvell controller in Crucial RealSSD C300 and the SandForce controller in OCZ's Vertex 2 and Agility 2, G.Skill's Phoenix, Phoenix Pro, and Sniper, Mushkin's Callisto and Callisto Deluxe, and a variety of other vendors of SandForce-based SSDs.
The Intel controller used in Intel's X25-M and the Samsung controller used in the Samsung 470 aren't as good as those, but still good enough to be worth considering if you can find the SSD at a meaningful discount as compared to the faster controllers.
There are also some new SSDs coming soon, but you might want to be leery of buying a new SSD right after it releases, as they are likely to have firmware problems at first.
The "best" are Enterprise drives meant for servers, and will empty a very heavy wallet.
For consumer stuff, I'd stick with Intel's G3 drives due to the lower fail rate and general Intel quality, the data loss should be fixed due to a capacitor they added unless I'm confused here. C300's seem to win for speed.
Seriously though... SSDs have a serious data loss problem. Lost my boot sector twice in 2 weeks, lol...(on a G2 intel)
I've got probably 25 machines around work running SSD's for over 2 years now, and aside from one DOA drive, no problems with data loss. These drives are pre-TRIM, so they do take some maintenance to maintain speed, but I've not had a problem with corruption or bad sectors or anything else.
I don't think Intel's third generation SSDs are out yet, but even if they were, I'd be leery of buying a new SSD right at launch. Remember the glitch that Intel's second generation SSDs had at launch that would brick the drives? Or how their first generation SSDs never did get TRIM support? And Intel is hardly the worst offender in SSDs having problems at launch.
From the specs Intel is claiming, it's unlikely that their third generation SSDs will be meaningfully better than the Crucial RealSSD C300 or the various SandForce SSDs--and the more established drives have known good firmware, so there's far less of a risk.
Comments
It's mostly by SSD controller, not the company that actually sells the drive. A SandForce-based drive from OCZ is essentially identical to a SandForce-based drive from G.Skill, but not at all the same as an Indilinx-based drive from OCZ.
The best SSD controllers right now are the Marvell controller in Crucial RealSSD C300 and the SandForce controller in OCZ's Vertex 2 and Agility 2, G.Skill's Phoenix, Phoenix Pro, and Sniper, Mushkin's Callisto and Callisto Deluxe, and a variety of other vendors of SandForce-based SSDs.
The Intel controller used in Intel's X25-M and the Samsung controller used in the Samsung 470 aren't as good as those, but still good enough to be worth considering if you can find the SSD at a meaningful discount as compared to the faster controllers.
There are also some new SSDs coming soon, but you might want to be leery of buying a new SSD right after it releases, as they are likely to have firmware problems at first.
The "best" are Enterprise drives meant for servers, and will empty a very heavy wallet.
For consumer stuff, I'd stick with Intel's G3 drives due to the lower fail rate and general Intel quality, the data loss should be fixed due to a capacitor they added unless I'm confused here. C300's seem to win for speed.
Seriously though... SSDs have a serious data loss problem. Lost my boot sector twice in 2 weeks, lol...(on a G2 intel)
I've got probably 25 machines around work running SSD's for over 2 years now, and aside from one DOA drive, no problems with data loss. These drives are pre-TRIM, so they do take some maintenance to maintain speed, but I've not had a problem with corruption or bad sectors or anything else.
I don't think Intel's third generation SSDs are out yet, but even if they were, I'd be leery of buying a new SSD right at launch. Remember the glitch that Intel's second generation SSDs had at launch that would brick the drives? Or how their first generation SSDs never did get TRIM support? And Intel is hardly the worst offender in SSDs having problems at launch.
From the specs Intel is claiming, it's unlikely that their third generation SSDs will be meaningfully better than the Crucial RealSSD C300 or the various SandForce SSDs--and the more established drives have known good firmware, so there's far less of a risk.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-Vertex-Solid-internal-SATA-300/dp/B003NE5JCE/ref=pd_cp_computers_0
is that a fast ssd?
Yes, that's one of the SandForce drives.