What SSDs are people using?

[Lee Mullen]

Preferbly those above 256gb? Please state, need some ideas and sources thank you.

[Taky Cheung]

I'm using Intel 128GB on one desktop. Then crucial 256GB on main desktop and Crucial 512GB for laptop.

[Terry Martin]

The Samsung 830 series is the industry gold standard for performance and reliability. The new 840 Pro series may be the next one, but not yet proven.

[James Huenergardt]

I'm using the 480GB SanDisk Extreme SDSSDX-480G-G25

So far it's working great. I ordered a second one for a backup on a green screen shoot I'm doing this weekend.

[Taky Cheung]

Recently, my 512GB Crucial M4 SSD died for no reason. After a tech support call, it was because I have my PC harddrive spin down after 20 minutes. Thus the TRIM function won't kick in. I was advised to boot computer to BIOS and leave it on for 6 hours. That cause the built-in Active Garbage Collection kicks in. The SSD went back to life.

[Shaun Roemich]

I had 6 of my 8 OCZ Vertex3 240GB drives fail. They are at OCZ for RMA replacement right now.

[Shaun Roemich]

Update: OCZ were very fast in replacing my drives and the customer service was excellent.

Wish I knew why the drives failed in the first place though...

[Noa Put]

It's good to have that kind of service but did you manage to retrieve any data that was on the discs? I would worry more about loosing footage or paying a lot of money to have the data recovered.
I must say that I read quite a lot about ssd's failing without any reason, just recently a bmc owner used a ssd twice, toke it out of the camera to move data to his pc and then let the disc sit on his desk for one night and the day after it died as well. Don't remember though which brand that was, not very reassuring.

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

I use OCZ, no problems. I've heard good things about Samsung, too, but they haven't found much penetration in my country yet.

[Steve Game]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

It's good to have that kind of service but did you manage to retrieve any data that was on the discs? I would worry more about loosing footage or paying a lot of money to have the data recovered.
I must say that I read quite a lot about ssd's failing without any reason, just recently a bmc owner used a ssd twice, toke it out of the camera to move data to his pc and then let the disc sit on his desk for one night and the day after it died as well. Don't remember though which brand that was, not very reassuring.

I assume that the lost content was not critical to his activities. That would apply equally to any storage medium: card, HDD etc.. I would at last give the hardware a few duties with non-critical content before accepting it into normal usage. The reliability of hardware improves rapidly in its early life.
SSDs can of course suffer from handling damage, less likely mechanical, more often (ESD electrostatic discharge). That's despite having designed-in tolerance to ESD.

[Noa Put]

I assume that the lost content was not critical to his activities.

Critical or not, the most important function of a recording device, whether it is a cf card, ssd or harddrive, is to store your data safely, the reliability of that device is equally important then the camera itself. I don't see testing as an option, it just has to function. That no recording medium is 100% failsafe I can understand and that's why you always best dual record to 2 different media simultaneously but when I read about 6 out of 8 SSD's failing for one user combined with the other stories I read about malfunctioning SSD's certain brands certainly are not ready for primetime yet. Not sure if there are SSD manufacturers that have a history of proven reliability on certain ssd models?

I have a 4 year old Sony hvr-dr60 with a 60gb harddrive that has not given me a single issue yet (knock on wood). That's what I would expect from a external recorder.

[Mark Watson]

I have a 600GB Intel 320 series SSD in my newer (2011) Sager laptop. Had some problems with the laptop; first the firewire port quit, then the SSD. I have a 3 year warranty, so called tech support. Ended up putting in a HDD to see if it would boot up. It did. Loaded Windows via the recovery disks and still had no firewire and now the wireless went out too. Just sent it back on RMA for new motherboard and SSD. I kept all my projects on external 1TB WD Passport USB 3.0 drives, so no serious data loss.

My older (2008) Sager had 3 320GB HDDs. That laptop took a fall on a hard floor and after a few more weeks of use, it just quit booting up normally. Booted to SAFE mode so I was able to get my data off, but that's it. I did some checking on the latest SSD situation and it's changing so fast. Ended up sticking with Intel, just ordered a 520 series 480GB version from B&H. I didn't like seeing that my Intel SSD was made in China, but couldn't find much complaints on the net about their reliability.

I've got to come up with a good backup scheme. Maybe clone my SSD to a compatible internal HDD so when I have another failure I can just swap out drives and keep on truckin'.

[Steve Game]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Critical or not, the most important function of a recording device, whether it is a cf card, ssd or harddrive, is to store your data safely, the reliability of that device is equally important then the camera itself. I don't see testing as an option, it just has to function. That no recording medium is 100% failsafe I can understand and that's why you always best dual record to 2 different media simultaneously but when I read about 6 out of 8 SSD's failing for one user combined with the other stories I read about malfunctioning SSD's certain brands certainly are not ready for primetime yet. Not sure if there are SSD manufacturers that have a history of proven reliability on certain ssd models?

I have a 4 year old Sony hvr-dr60 with a 60gb harddrive that has not given me a single issue yet (knock on wood). That's what I would expect from a external recorder.

Noa, the point that I was making is that the reliability performance of ALL devices tends to follow a 'bathtub curve' where failure are more common in their early days, then fall to a low level for a sustained period finally rising near the end of the item's life. These failures are occurring across the whole population of shipped devices. Of course, nobody knows whether their devices are the one(s) likely to fail or whether that will be somebody else's problem. So as a precaution, I would be prepared to give the device as much background 'burn in' as I could before trusting them on critical work.
Like some of the other posters in this thread, I find that there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that OCZ drives are failing. OCZ have clearly recognised the importance of rapid product replacement so maybe this anecdotal evidence is representative of the product in general. Intel and Samsung devices though, seem to have fewer faults reported in the public domain. Those two makes do seem to be on offer at slightly higher prices that their competitors' equivalents. Maybe this is a result of additional production process costs aimed to give a more reliable delivered product.

[Allan Barnwell]

What does everyone think of drives from OWC? Other World Computing?

OWC Solid State Drives For Mac Desktops & Laptops

[Mark Williams]

I am leaning towards the Samsung SSD 840 PROSeries.