240GB Intel 330 Series 2.5" SATA III 6Gb/s Internal Solid State Drive SSD (SSDSC2CT240A3K5) $140 + Free Shipping

Quote from wineaux : Ok, you misunderstood what I was saying. I am in 100% agreement with you on the differences between any mechanical HDD and any SSD. I was only speaking of not seeing the speed difference when using a newer SATA III SSD vs an older SATA II SSD in an older laptop with a SATA II controller. Both a SATA II SSD and a SATA III SSD will smoke a mechanical HDD in a laptop. But you won't see much of any difference in speed between a SATA II SSD and a SATA III SSD in a laptop with only a SATA II controller. Therefor, if the SATA II SSD is less expensive than a SATA III SSD of similar size, you are better off spending less money and buying the older SATA II SSD. Did I make it clearer this time? I may have been assuming more knowledge of the underlying technology than some folks have, or my points may have been spread out over multiple posts that some may not have read. If so, I apologize.

To your latter point, you're absolutely correct. It wouldn't make sense to buy a more expensive SATA-III SSD if you could find a comparable SATA-II SSD because, in both cases, you'll be capped at SATA-II transfer rates. That said, with the way prices are plummeting right now, my guess is the difference between an SATA-II and SATA-III SSD is negligible.

Quote from Ardrid : To your latter point, you're absolutely correct. It wouldn't make sense to buy a more expensive SATA-III SSD if you could find a comparable SATA-II SSD because, in both cases, you'll be capped at SATA-II transfer rates. That said, with the way prices are plummeting right now, my guess is the difference between an SATA-II and SATA-III SSD is negligible.

On the higher capacity drives, I think you are correct, as there weren't many of those made in SATA II format. However, with the smaller drives from 120-160GB on down, you can find some rather significant savings. Especially with rebates.

Quote from jwashkau : Requested a PM to Amazon (I have their CC, Prime, some points and love their service) $139.99 now

+1, +1
For that I'll PM to help the cause!

-1 for recently implemented CA Tax =P

Quote from shanmugam : Just an FYI, samsung 840 announced today http://www.anandtech.com/show/632...ed-840-ssd http://www.anandtech.com/show/632...6gb-review Samsung 830 prices will drop further and drop these SandForce driven SSDs prices even further

Hope hope hope it drops to $0.50/gig
:crossedfingers:

Quote from atarilynx : is this drive a 9mm drive or a 7mm drive (thickness)? i need to inow because my x220 thinkpad needs a 7mm

I don't know about the 330 series, but the 320 series are 7mm with a black plastic square spacer that makes them standard sized. Ironically, screws are too long once the plastic thing is removed and the metal cover will be completely loose.

Quote from atarilynx : is this drive a 9mm drive or a 7mm drive (thickness)? i need to inow because my x220 thinkpad needs a 7mm

9mm. So far they fit my 4 laptops. My new Dell 101Z was a 7mm slot but the 9MM fit well without the rubber boot!

Quote from TidalWaveOne : Personally, I wouldn't feel good about using an SSD for that. Recording TV media sounds like a job for an HD. You may wear out your SSD pretty fast if you're constantly recording huge files to it.

Absolutely true! Furthermore movie files are a waste of performance, as even the slowest HDs are more than capable for playing back movie files.
Consider even a 35Mbit (full capacity bluray is only, ~12gb/hour or 3.3/MB per second.) Even the slowest thumb drives can handle that. There's no need to spend a premium on an SSD for video storage. Spend $130 on a 3tb drive instead since capacity is going to be far more important.

Quote from Indio22 : My current HTPC is often downloading several movies while at the same time recording two HD TV programs. At the same time, someone might be using the HTPC for web access or playing a game. The single traditional hard drive currently in my HTPC seems to be able to handle all this reasonably well, with perhaps the occasional glitch or hesitation. Probably any SSD would provide a significant improvement, including this Intel 330. The thing is, if prices are comparable, why not go with a non-Sandforce SSD that seems (based on the reviews) better designed to handle incompressible files (such as movie files) of which an HTPC sees a lot of?

Consider that a 10 year old Tivo was able to record 2 programs and playback a 3rd without interruption shows how undemanding media storage is. There will be no noticable improvement in playback performance with an SSD. If someone is having playback problems with local media, it's usually due to a weak CPU/GPU or a crappy player/codec, with heavy post processing or some combination.

Not sure if i should get this for the X230; seems like that laptop takes 7mm drives...
I know you can probably remove the cover (doest seem like you can remove a spacer) but I don't want to void the warranty on the drive...

Quote from Coolchu : Not sure if i should get this for the X230; seems like that laptop takes 7mm drives... I know you can probably remove the cover (doest seem like you can remove a spacer) but I don't want to void the warranty on the drive...

Only the X25 series and 320 series had the spacer. the 330 does not, so there is no way you could convert this drive from 9.5mm to 7mm. better off getting a Samsung 830.

Quote from atarilynx : is this drive a 9mm drive or a 7mm drive (thickness)? i need to inow because my x220 thinkpad needs a 7mm

I also would like to find a great deal on a 7mm. I get tired of having to do google searches to find out if it's a 9.5mm or 7mm. Seems like that would be an important spec.

Quote from rminor : I also would like to find a great deal on a 7mm. I get tired of having to do google searches to find out if it's a 9.5mm or 7mm. Seems like that would be an important spec.

Just memorize the model #s that are 7mm

Although, its time to start learning the new size, 5mm

Quote from Nurgle : Absolutely true! Furthermore movie files are a waste of performance, as even the slowest HDs are more than capable for playing back movie files. Consider even a 35Mbit (full capacity bluray is only, ~12gb/hour or 3.3/MB per second.) Even the slowest thumb drives can handle that. There's no need to spend a premium on an SSD for video storage. Spend $130 on a 3tb drive instead since capacity is going to be far more important.

Although with any SSD, the price per gb is still always more than for a traditional hard drive. People are paying for the snappier performance of the SSD. That is why people are putting an SSD combined with a traditional storage drive in their HTPCs. I will be using a similar combo. The difference is my traditional drive will be located in a server. And the SSD in the HTPC will be a bit larger than some folks are using, because my HTPC sees a lot of different uses and can leverage the larger size. Not to mention 256gb SSDs have come down so much in price. I can do everything on the SSD, and then copy any movies or files desired for long term storage, eventually over to the big slower server drives.

This thing about SSDs wearing out if used to record video files, I have not read that anywhere. You guys have any reviews that mention this issue?

Another day another SSD deal.

Quote from jwashkau : Requested a PM to Amazon (I have their CC, Prime, some points and love their service) $139.99 now

does this work for a Mid 2010 MBP 13"?

Quote from Indio22 : This thing about SSDs wearing out if used to record video files, I have not read that anywhere. You guys have any reviews that mention this issue?

Do a search for SSD write endurance. Depending on the drive this varies but typical MLC cells can be written to 3,000 times. This is where drives like Kingston differentiate their models like the HyperX 3k where the 3k designates the flash is good for 3000 writes (Intel cherry picks all their nand so they are all rated at 5k or more). Depending on the size of the drive and the amount you write to it will give you the total write endurance. Theoretically you can take the capacity of the drive and multiply by 3k and that will be the total amount of writable data (120gb * 3000 = 360TB) there is probably overhead as the drive does things like internal reallocation of data, garbage collection, partial writes, etc but it's still a large number, so write endurance isn't a major concern for most of us. By the time you write 200TB of data to a 120gb ssd it's probably outlived it's usefulness anyway.

Where write endurance is a concern is for things like busy database servers that generate large temp tables. One of my company's SQL servers writes over 300TB a month. A 120gb MLC SSD used for that would be fast for 1 month and then then die, turning into a SSD-ROM.