Best Cheap Solid State Drive

Installed the 240GB Revodrive series 3 in my Asus Maximus IV (P67). Booted up, card showed up immediately in the BIOS. Booted Windows 7 x64 from a USB stick. After installing the device driver (from the OCZ website), the installation went smoothly. Windows Experience Index jumped to 7.8 with zero tweaking.It seems the initial versions of these SSD cards had some teething problems, but OCZ sorted it out with this latest version.Recommended for enthusiasts & pros.

Long story short, OCZ have the reputation as the "Talladega Nights," of SSD. OCZ goes out every race; they either win big or crash spectacularly.I have been holding off on SSD for a while. I dipped my toe on the water last year putting an Intel 510 into a Dell Latitude e6420; even pushing SATA III through a laptop that screams.I have an Asus Rampage II Extreme, with an Intel 980x. As everyone knows this means I have become an Intel 1366 socket/Asus SATA II orphan. The machine screams with a Windows Index of 7.5+ in every category other than fixed disk and I not moving to socket 2011 now.When I saw the OCZ Revo Drive 3 X 2 Max IOPS, RVD3MIX2-FHPX4-240G, I decided to take some of the tax refund out of the bank. OCZ is letting me use the unused PCIe lanes and bandwidth combined with their impressive ASIC wizardry to drive some incredible numbers. OCZ isn't cheap but it may be worth it.I say may be, because I next day aired OCZr card from Amazon, dusted off the rig, update the BIOS, pulled aging Velociraptors loose and got ready to start watching OCZ kill hour glasses (well that metaphor is a little old now...)But instead I got this. Their main SMT ASIC with heat sink was loose in the bag. Not to say their boxing doesn't put Rolex to shame, but come on surface mounting was invented for the space program in the 60's. I get that is a big heat sink on a small chip; OCZ drives their ASICs hard, and hot. But completely loose in the bag...As soon as I am done with this I am putting…

-Only an i3. We don't plan on doing any heavy lifiting on this laptop, as long as it plays Netflix fine, we'll be okay.-Incredibly light. Almost too light for the size. But solid feeling.-Keyboard backlight isn't too bright or too dim. Was a big factor for me personally, I want a backlight in my keyboard.-Keyboard is just about perfect for both of us. It's about as wide as can be. Not too shallow.Reviews I've seen have mentioned flimsy hinges (not a factor given the way we open and close by default), poor color quality (haven't noticed anything odd, again, main use is just internet browsing/movie watching), slow SSD (as far as I'm concerned it's better than a HDD).The keyboard on this ultrabook is slightly recessed, you can see it in sideshots. When the lid is closed, it does flex some due to that gap. I don't think it's a big deal but it's definitely something to be aware of.At night when there's no other noise, the low-pitched hum of the fan *really* gets to me. When I have the fan by my ear, the fan sounds normal, but when it's on my lap, it's just... the pitch or the volume or something is just right to where it annoys me.To its credit, I haven't yet felt the wristrest/keyboard area get warm.

Long story short, OCZ have the reputation as the "Talladega Nights," of SSD. OCZ goes out every race; they either win big or crash spectacularly.I have been holding off on SSD for a while. I dipped my toe on the water last year putting an Intel 510 into a Dell Latitude e6420; even pushing SATA III through a laptop that screams.I have an Asus Rampage II Extreme, with an Intel 980x. As everyone knows this means I have become an Intel 1366 socket/Asus SATA II orphan. The machine screams with a Windows Index of 7.5+ in every category other than fixed disk and I not moving to socket 2011 now.When I saw the OCZ Revo Drive 3 X 2 Max IOPS, RVD3MIX2-FHPX4-240G, I decided to take some of the tax refund out of the bank. OCZ is letting me use the unused PCIe lanes and bandwidth combined with their impressive ASIC wizardry to drive some incredible numbers. OCZ isn't cheap but it may be worth it.I say may be, because I next day aired OCZr card from Amazon, dusted off the rig, update the BIOS, pulled aging Velociraptors loose and got ready to start watching OCZ kill hour glasses (well that metaphor is a little old now...)But instead I got this. Their main SMT ASIC with heat sink was loose in the bag. Not to say their boxing doesn't put Rolex to shame, but come on surface mounting was invented for the space program in the 60's. I get that is a big heat sink on a small chip; OCZ drives their ASICs hard, and hot. But completely loose in the bag...As soon as I am done with this I am putting…

Due to sheer stupidity on my part, I installed the drive and could see it was recognized on startup, but couldn't figure out how to get it to initialize. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM I checked on the internet in youtube, but there wasn't any information I could find there. I called OCZ's tech department and didn't get much help. I finally used the windows 7 installer program and the DVD recognized it. I installed the operating system and all programs and then removed my velociraptor HDD. Since then everything has run flawlessly, like in blazing fast. My startup time is about 1 1/2 minutes compared to 2 minutes 13 seconds with the velociraptor. I'm running a P6T7 motherboard, which is the primary cause of the slow start up (lots of junk to initialize). My ASUS Rampage II Gene, i7 920 processor with an Intel 160G SSD game machine takes 36 seconds to start up. All parts purchased through Amazon. I am nothing but thrilled with my machines performances.

Ordered one of these, returned it immediately.Despite the standard SATA connector, this drive *WILL NOT* attach to the drive trays of 2006/2007/2008 Mac Pro models.If you're in the same boat as me - check out the OCZ Vertex 2. Similar price, amazing performance, and industry-standard mountings allow for installation in virtually any desktop.Having said that, if you have a recent (2009/2010) model Mac Pro, don't hesitate - this is the SSD for you.

I am updating this post after having gone through two replacement units and many hours of support. Both units that OCZ shipped me failed within hours. I will say that the product manager at SuperMediaStore was very helpful in getting me replacements and none of this was their fault... OCZ just has problems with this product....I placed my order two weeks ago based on the "in stock, N left" status... but SuperMediaStore does not actually stock these, they custom order them as needed. So the wait time is 3-4 weeks, as everywhere else. They also won't tell you this until the estimated delivery time has passed and Amazon sends you an automated notice that they have missed their deadline to ship to you...If I ever actually receive the drive and it performs as advertised and the price hasn't dropped 50% before I receive it, I'll adjust my rating accordingly.

Took one day longer to arrive that what Amazon listed as the initial arrival date, but it was well worth the wait. Definitely out performs any standard hard drive, Boot time is 15 sec from when I push the button with read speeds approx 270-275.

This hard drive is extremely fast! Boot times in Windows 7 Ultimate are about 5 seconds! The drive speed tests using Sandra are at or above the advertised speeds. The tests using the old HD Tune 2.5 from 2008 shows speeds of 190MB/s flat across the entire hard drive, with no dips in speed anywhere. Access time is less than .1ms, beating all traditional hard drives (normal hard drives range about 7.0ms to 15.0ms). CPU usage during the test is less than 5%. All games and programs open almost instantly. Ive never seen such a dramatic improvement in a computer upgrade before. Even simple tasks like opening a photo in Photoshop, or opening a browser window, saving a game, loading a game level are all incredibly fast. Many things now load or install at the instant I let go of the mouse button from a double click! It is wild! To see this speed increase, make sure you use this as a clean install for your OS. If you hook up your old drive together, you can then have the option of booting to the new drive or the old drive when you boot up the computer. This is a great way to compare things between your old drive and this one.

I have had the SSD for about a week and it's great. I cloned my C drive without problem and was running. The Marvell controller is a serious bonus and the five year warranty is sweet. This is my first SSD and I am amazed at how fast load times are in comparison to my old drive. Instantaneous which is what I was looking for. I am hoping that Amazon gets the 512GB version of the M3 drive. I have another system and if the price is right, I'm taking the dive for the big drive.

I got the power cycle bug that could leave your SSD 320 in a mostly unusable 8MB state. After speaking to Intel they directed me to some NON Intel sites to secure erase your drive, which did not work.This happend after I Updated the Firmware that is what surprised me. Intel says that the update would avoid the problem . not My case) only option is to do a return . which I am working on . Lucky it has a 5 year warranty . But I would advise anyone not to pick this model .

This is a great laptop, but battery life is really really poor. 3 hours of websurfing with 40% dimmed display, that's what you can expect. If you try to put some real load on it - don't go far from AC socket. I don't understand how you can create laptop designed to be mobile and put so bad battery inside.

This card redefines what I have previously long considered to be the biggest bottleneck in a modern PC. To say that it's fast is inaccurate as it gives only a one dimensional perspective as to what this card actually provides. Yes it's fast, but that's a given considering what it is. What really surprised me and has me thinking differently about PC storage is the sheer amount of BANDWIDTH it has. Many review sites provide benchmark results that are unusual for stored media. Small files and smaller data sets transfer at an unexceptional data rate, somewhere around 400-500MB per second. That's nothing exceptional for a modern SSD Drive. Where it get's interesting is when it moves large volumes of LARGE datasets/files. When you start to move large numbers of 1MB and larger files through it it ramps up to the 1500 MBPS range. As one website reviewer described "you can transfer 1100 1 MB files a SECOND".This card is about the need for data storage bandwidth. Do you need fast access to a large amount of large files? this card will do that... very, very well.Do you need fast access to small files? A cheaper SSD drive will do that just as well.

What can I say. This drive is the fastest I've ever used. I have mechanical drives and hydrid drives. Neither can come close to the performance of this Octane unit. For those of you that live by your WEI score, this unit posted a 7.9! Windows boots much quicker now than before. Virus scans, general tasks and game loadings are ridiculously quick. I can't say enough good things about this unit. I bought the OEM version, so the only thing that comes is the drive itself: no cables,no screws,no mounting bracket, and no software. Not an issue for me since my 650D case came with the mounting bracket and the screws. My motherboard came with extra SATA 6 cables. I downloaded a freeware program to migrate my software to the SSD. Everything is working great.GRIPES:1. $$$/GB - guess that real performance costs!2. Reliability: only time will tell how long this unit lives. The unit comes with a lengthy 3 yr warranty, so I expect a long life from the unit.