I'm happy with my OCZ Vertex even though it doesn't have the latest firmware. I've had a few HDD failures and delicate mechanical stuff has always felt flaky to me. I'm beginning to trust SSDs more now, although backups are still a must!

for the ocz vertex you MUST have the latest firmware if you are planning to use the Grabage Collection software on other os-es than seven. the trim supporting firmware (for seven) is coming soon from what i've heard...

I didn't vote because my SSD's replaced mechanical drives and I am not looking back--SSD's full speed ahead. I didn't own VelociRaptors.

I helped a friend pick out some computer parts this weekend. He decided to go with an SSD, and having seen what he paid, I'm really considering it as well. A 120 GB OCZ Agility is coming dangerously close to what I paid for a Velociraptor a bit over a year ago, and if you can get by with 60 GB, you're all set for $230.

This isn't one of those terrible JMicron drives, either. It's a modern drive with an Indilinx controller, slated to get TRIM support in a firmware update Very Soonâ„¢. According to the incredibly thorough SSD bible articles Anand keeps writing, performance is right up there with everything except Intel.

This makes zero sense. It must be some other issue causing the slowdown (maybe an almost-full drive with no TRIM or hidden swap memory?). Fragmentation should not affect SSDs, since there's no read head to physically move to different locations to access data. Every piece of data on an SSD should take the same amount of time to access.

You're replying to a seven-month-old post. The issue mentioned in it is out of date, but was at the time very real.

It wasn't due to either fragmentation or reduced performance once blocks had been written, though; the issue was actually with JMicron controller chips optimized for sequential read and write performance, to create big shiny advertising numbers. These controllers were appallingly bad at handling random writes, and whenever the computer hit the disk with random writes (i.e., almost every time you did anything), everything would freeze for a few seconds. The issue is detailed in full here, but modern drives using the newer Indilinx controllers no longer suffer from these problems. Neither do Intel X25 drives, though they cost considerably more than Indilinx ones.

For my latest i7-860 Win7 build, I decided to use a X25-M 160G Postville instead of two velociraptors set RAID1 (mirror) as in my i7-920 Vista64 rig. Data files are kept on NAS, and 160G is way big enough for all my program files (no games).

Win7 + Intel SSD = serious SMOKING HOT system. The difference in performance is just unbelievable - and since Intel fixed the firmware issue last week, this should be permanent.

For example, I use a two screen setup: a Dell 20 in portrait beside a 30". Click a 2-3MB excel file on the 20, and excel loads and then loads the file before I can even focus my eyes over onto the 30. That sort of performance comes cheaper than two raptors, and I think it's safer. I'll never go back to HD. Oh, and since work pays for it, ...