Please HELP! Which SATA III (6Gbps) SSD should I buy? Leaning towards OCZ Vertex 3!?

[Crunch]

Hi all,

I have the 2.5GHz 2011 Mac Mini (w/ AMD Radeon HD 6630M) graphics chip and I must say I am loving this Mac. Besides upgrading the RAM to 8GB, I swapped out the (lame) stock Toshiba 5400rpm drive w/ 8MB cache out for a (fast and quiet!) Hitachi 7200rpm and 16MB of cache and the process literally took only minutes. No temp. sensor = Upgrade BLISS!

So now I want to get an SSD and after reading buyer reviews on multiple sites as well as reviews on sites like "The SSD Review", my favorite is the OCZ Vertex 3 or its Max IOPS Edition, which cost $220 and $280, respectively. I want to eventually get a second one and RAID them, so the Max IOPS may be overkill, especially considering the RAID part.

I am also thinking of getting the OWC "6G", so can anyone steer me in the right direction? OWC has a reputation for being more "for the Mac" and OCZ is sometimes lacking service and support. Is that true? Any recommendations as to what to stay away from?

Thank you all!

 

[KyleAwesome]

I would caution against the Vertex. My company has issued 10 vertex 2's to our clients (I manage a medium sized IT start up) and we have seen all but 2 come back for RMA. OCZ's RMA process isnt the best either. We have switched over to the intel 500 series since and have had a failure rate of less then 10%. The Vertex 3's may be totally fine, we may just have gotten bad drives from the same batch but I wont trust them for field use any longer.

 

[philipma1957]

I would caution against the Vertex. My company has issued 10 vertex 2's to our clients (I manage a medium sized IT start up) and we have seen all but 2 come back for RMA. OCZ's RMA process isnt the best either. We have switched over to the intel 500 series since and have had a failure rate of less then 10%. The Vertex 3's may be totally fine, we may just have gotten bad drives from the same batch but I wont trust them for field use any longer.

this has happened to me with ocz slow rma's owc fast rma's.

I am east coast ocz is west coast owc is central. but ocz held it for a while after they got.

 

[floridonet]

I have an OCZ Vertex that is over 2 years old and still going strong. It's unfortunate to hear there are so many issues with OCZ since they are fully dedicated to SSD.

I also have an Intel X25-m that that runs great. I'm now in the market for a new SSD to put into a Mac Mini. I'm leaning towards going with Crucial M4 or even Samsung 470, which evidently is very close to what Apple. According to Anandtech, the Samsung 470 uses the same controller as what is used in Apple SSD, but most likely has Apple custom firmware.

The other issue you have to look into is TRIM support. It looks like Lion doesn't support Trim for non-Apple SSD's.

 

[mikethewxguy]

I ordered the Crucial CT256M4SSD2 256GB M4 SSD 2.5" SATA III from amzon for $420...

Any feedback on the Crucial M4 going into my 2011 Mac Mini server?

This will be my first SSD.....

 

[falterego]

I personally have the OCZ Vertex 2 in my MBP and we're installing them in some of our power users HP quad-i5 systems at work. I haven't seen an issue with them yet, and I've deployed about 20 of them. I'm thinking about the Vertex 3 for my i7 Server, but I have a 60GB Vertex 2 just sitting here doing nothing that I could install.

For me, it's going to be an OCZ drive either way when I do my upgrade.

 

[Crunch]

Thanks to everyone who responded! Wow, yea, this thread is certainly already a microcosm of what I've found by going through user reviews from people who bought OCZ drives from Amazon and Newegg. It bothers me that so many of them arrive DOA. 10% in most cases. That's a lot! Combine that with the apparent lack of good customer service and slow RMA turnaround times, I'm surprised that there are as many good reviews as there are.

Lion's TRIM functionality can be turned on for NON-Apple SSD's, no? I really would hold it against Apple if they actually put obstacles like that in the way of customers, so as to attempt to force everyone to buy their overpriced SSD's. One person responded that they're getting a Samsung 470, so as to come close to what Apple puts in its own systems. I will not be doing that, because what Apple puts in its own computers is hardly SATA III 6Gbps 500MB/s+ capable equipment. How could it be, it's a SATA II.

I think I will go ahead and order an OWC SSD, as they appear to be better in customer support and they now even have a true 30-day return policy that waives the 15% restocking fee. That alone is worth something to me.

I just stumbled over an article, which is, perhaps, the best reason yet to get an OWC SSD: The company just put two of its high end SSD's (the 6G's) in the exact computer that we're talking about here, the 2011 Mac mini, in a RAID 0 configuration in order to demonstrate its near-1GB/s speeds. I will try to find the article that talks about that and post a link as soon as I find it.

OWC also likes to tout its compatibility with virtually all Mac's and they put up warnings specifically for those Mac's that have limitations or issues with its SSD's.

I have to run, but thanks again everyone and please keep posting if you can think of anything else. ;-)