I can share my experience and research with you. Almost 3 years ago, I
purchased a 60GB OCZ SSD to use as my system drive. It worked well, but was
a bit small for my needs. Six months later, I bought a 100GB OCZ Vertex 2
drive and placed the 60GB unit in my wife's computer. Here are the results
of this experiment:

The 60GB drive has given no problems and is still running just fine in my
wife's computer. Unfortunately, the 100GB drive did not work out as well.
The first 100GB drive failed after 6 months. There was a 3-year warranty, so
a replacement was sent in about a week. The second drive lasted about 5
months. The third lasted about two weeks, and I quit. I got the replacement
and sold it on e-bay. It still had plenty of warranty left, but I did not
want to keep replacing drives. Perhaps this experience is restricted to OCZ
Vertex 2 drives, but I got gun-shy.

Based on research, it seems that Samsung and Intel have the most reliable
drives. I recently bought a Samsung 830 256GB drive since their prices have
come down. I just got it so can't share reliability experience yet.

I may note that I use TrueCrypt on my computers. This was particularly
prudent since the failed drives could not have data wiped before return. On
the OCZ drive, I noticed a significant speed reduction when TrueCrypt
encryption was added. On the Samsung drive I saw no such reduction in speed.
In either case, boot time for my Windows 7 64bit was only 25 seconds. This
compares to over a minute using my Seagate XT hybrid drive. So an SSD does
make things go quickly.

Hope this is of use.

Peter Shkabara
--------------------------
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-----Original Message-----
From: David Nasser [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 3:39 PM
Subject: Solid State Drives

If someone is thoroughly familiar with the subject, would appreciate
discussion of Solid State Drives in common desktop usage now days. In
particular as regards long-term reliability in the context of "wear
leveling".

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