[Toni]

Hey guys, I was wondering what type of internal SSD would be the best to go with? What I mean by type is the manufacturer. There are so many and I've heard many great things about each and every single one of them, but I can't figure out which would be the best to go with. So far I've liked Samsung 830 series the best. I've seen video reviews over them and read up about them. They're technology is all custom by Samsung, so I've heard advantages to some of that over other SSDs, especially as they can support great care for customers using their own products.

3 more that I've also seen but never researched is OCZ, Kingston HyperX, and Corsair Neutron SSDs. I'm not sure about any of these, but I've heard great about them as well. Along with Intel SSDs.

Any suggestions? Also, what would be a better way to purchase them? Multiple smaller ones and run in RAID or a few larger ones such as a 256GBx2 or 512GBx1?

[playbox12]

If you run multiple smaller ones in an RAID that means you only have the small capacity, that's the point of RAID, more speed but less space. (IMHO that's odd for SSD's they're already very fast).

I went with an OCZ a little over a year ago, it's SATA 2, recently I upgraded my mobo to SATA 3 and still this SATA 2 drive which has a maxmium read/write of 250MB/s is very fast. I start up Windows in about 15 seconds from the boot sound.

I never heard anything about Samsung's SSD's. As far as I know OCZ practically leads the market in this area but I'm not sure. OCZ usally has higher speeds than the rest whereas Intel is supposed do be more stable. However as I said I have been running this SSD for over an year and never had problems.

[Toni]

I'll be sure to check out OCZ thanks! And there was a video somewhere of a team running numerous SSD's in RAID which increased the overall performance to like 6GB/s read/write if I remember correctly. It was insane, they opened up like 100 programs in 2 minutes including things like Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver and all those in a chain after one and another lol.

[carz0159]

Ya, i have a small 60gb OCZ and its fast, Im going to upgrade to a new one thats around 240-256gb.
Go to newegg.com and look around for good deals.
If you're buying now, get this one real fast
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233268
Its a 240gb corsair force series 3, a bit old, but only $140 and it comes with a adapter

[Toni]

Hm, I have a question though, so if I did buy this new SSD, how would I run both the SSD/Hard Drive Disk? What I mean by this is how would I use the 2TB HDD I currently have for 'storage.' Like would I be able to install any programs on there, or store files in there in a directory such as Program Files? Or would it just act as like an external hard drive where I would have to create custom directories and all?

[Toni]

Sorry for the really old bump, but I'm going to buy an SSD either tomorrow or this weekend and I would really like to know which I should go with.

So far I've leaned towards OCZ's Vertex 4, but I'm also curious about any others such as the Crucial M4 or HyperX or the Corsair ForceGT

[R@f]

I bought a new SSD some days ago. An Intel 520 180GB, a bit expensive but it's worth

[Toni]

Intels are very reliable and durable as far as I know lol, not the best speed I heard

[Vince]

OCZ is a good choice - recently installed an Agility 3 - but all in all it really doesn't matter that much. Any SSD will skyrocket your Windows Experience Index immediately. Mine went from 5.9 to 7.7 for the disk section. Though before you buy make sure that you have a free SATA socket.

[Toni]

I do, but another quick question. So from what I see Samsung comes with a Norton ghost disc that allows you to migrate your windows installation over to the new SSD. Is this available via Windows itself or at least OCZ? I honestly don't want to have to reinstall Windows again especially with the amount of customizations I have.