Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : proposed design

[Paul Hartman]

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 12:13 AM, Philip Webb <purslow@××××××××.net> wrote:
> 120803 Michael Mol wrote:
>> http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/solid-state-drives
>
> They have just  1  desktop at  128 GB  & it costs  USD 230  ... !
> I'm grateful to VAH for getting me to check out the OCZs,
> but I suspect he's shooting from the hip re Samsung.

That's just MSRP, nobody pays that. You can get Samsung 128GB USD$89
on sale typically. Current price on Newegg is USD$99 free shipping (in
the US, anyway). If you want one with mounting rails included it might
cost a little more.

Typically with SSD the biggest problems have been with firmware. The
SSDs with the best reputation for reliability are typically Intel and
Samsung. Intel costs a lot more than any of the others.

Pretty much all of the rest (current-generation) use the same
Sandforce controller and so then your big questions to differentiate
between them are how frequently they update firmware, if they allow
firmware updates to occur in linux (or from a boot disk/ISO), what
features are supported that you care about (encryption, compression),
over-provisioning, what quality of memory do they use. There were
widespread reports of problems when the latest sandforce were first
introduced, drives disconnecting randomly, that sort of thing, but I
believe those problems have been corrected by firmware updates and you
shouldn't have any problems today with any of them, as long as they've
released updates.

OCZ is a premiere partner of Sandforce, so they usually get the new
chips and latest firmware fixes sooner than the other Sandforce-using
brands. There are other brands who have a good reputation online for
reliability, such as Mushkin, Sandisk, OWC...

I personally have a Samsung 128GB for root and Sandisk 240GB for home.