In another thread I made this list of controllers, let me try adding reliability data to them. The sort order on the list is in preference by speed, reliability, and compatibility not necessarily in that order, just my gut sort of those factors.
Tier 1
Intel Gen 2 (~2% failures, handles XP and Vista better than most, Intel SSD Toolbox v2.x could put this drive at the top of the list even if reliability or speed wasn't a factor.)
Marvell (C300) (~4% failures but a faster drive in most cases, I'd buy on price between this and the Intel Gen 2 drives. If I used Win 7 or had a SATA 6GB/s controller I might favor it slightly)
Tier 2 or Tier 1?
Samsung 470** (unknown, too new to tell but likely less reliable than Intel by a hair and similar in speed, waiting for reviews)
Indilinx Martini (unknown, too new to tell but likely less reliable than Intel and similar in speed, sometimes faster sometimes slower)
Tier 2
Sandforce* (~15% failure rates, higher with some brands, some compatibility issues)
Indilinx Barefoot (~10-50% failure rates depending on the brand, the more reliable brands are worth buying but only if they are noticeably cheaper than the Intel Gen 2 drives)
Toshiba/Jmicron (more than 16MB cache) (~5% failure rates, slower than Intel, slower than C300, Slower than Sandforce, slower than Indilinx Barefoot).
Obsolete
Intel Gen 1 (no TRIM support, slower than Gen 2 drives, discontinued)
old Jmicron (less than 1MB cache (not a typo, the old drives had KB of cache), slower than any SSD above it in the list)
old Samsung (slower than any SSD above it in the list)
* Sandforce drives would be 3rd place on that list if the failure rate was under 10%
** Samsung 470 drives could be in 3rd, 4th, 5th place, I'm waiting for Anandtech to review the drive and for reliability data to show up to be sure where to place this.
Not mentioned above is Indilinx has provided support tools for their drives allowing XP/Vista users to have an alternative to Intel Gen 2 drives. They aren't cheap enough for that to be a big factor right now but It's worth keeping an eye on the Martini revision in case it becomes competitive.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4020/ocz- ... -martini/2 to backup the performance I think the random data write speed is a decent proxy for overall performance. comparisons such as
Code: Select all
Sandforce 40GB 70.9
C300 64GB 68.3
Indilinx Martini 128GB 47.6
Intel G2 40GB 37.7
Indilinx Barefoot 128GB 14.4
It's not a perfect representation of the overall performance order but I think its close and compared to my list shows how much sandforce is being hurt by their reliability/compatibility issues right now.
Marvell C300 is being held back by the vast number of Windows XP/Vista users that aren't migrating to Windows 7. The C300 is a nice controller (or at leas looks nice because they are so generous with the Cache on the board) but doesn't hold up as well in non TRIM situations.