[drnkn_stylz]

I want to upgrade my HDD to a SSD drive, and I am looking for some opinions or alternative suggestions for some around the 120gb mark.

The 3 I have been looking at are:
- OWC Mercury Extreme Pro (120gb) - Link
- OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Sandforce (120gb) - Link
- Crucial RealSSD C300 (128gb) - Link

I am leaning towards the OWC Mercury, but the OCZ I can get a little bit cheaper. The Crucial I threw in for comparison. Which would you pick? Perhaps one not in this list? Any suggestions are welcomed

[CharlesS]

The OWC and the OCZ both use the SandForce controller, so they should be effectively the same thing. If you go with one of those, I'd just pick whichever's cheaper. The SandForce SSDs currently have an advantage over others on the Mac because they use some crazy compression scheme to reduce the number of writes on the drive, and thus take longer to fill up all the blocks and invoke the rewrite penalty. This advantage will largely go away as soon as OS X gets TRIM support — however, we have no idea how long that will take (SandForce will probably still retain some degree of longevity improvement due to the reduced writes, but only time will tell if this is something that you will notice in practice). At 256 GB, Crucial has a raw speed advantage, making it tempting if you want to gamble on Apple adding TRIM support soon (this is what I did — hope it works out), but according to reviews I've read, their 128 GB drive isn't nearly as impressive speedwise, so I'd probably go with one of the SandForce drives at that size.

[mduell]

OCZ

Whose drive is OWC slapping their label on? Hard to believe that 2-bit company is doing their own firmware development.

[CharlesS]

They are using the SandForce controller, as was already mentioned — same as OCZ.

[mduell]

I know they're using the SF controller, but are they doing anything custom in firmware?

[Spheric Harlot]

It's all about the firmware.

Get whatever anandtech is currently recommending.

Anand has had several ASTOUNDINGLY comprehensive analyses of SSD technology including reviews, to the point where OCZ changed their firmware for worse maximum transfer rates (which are largely irrelevant in daily use) but optimized random read/write speeds (which make all the difference in actual system "feel"), because Anand had panned their products.

[mduell]

Unfortunately Anandtech hasn't updated in a while, missing the latest roundup of drives.

[drnkn_stylz]

Thanks for the replies!

I was concerned with OWC's SSD, but they provide some pretty impressive ratings from various reputable companies and it comes with a 3 year warranty.

Normally the OWC is cheaper than the OCZ, but the OCZ is on sale right now at NCIX so I am more inclined to pick that one instead.

[Mao]

Go with OCZ , Corsair ,RunCore and many more that uses SD-1200 Controller.

OWC is good in marketing and try to present it as if they have made the drives, which is not he case.

OCZ Vertex-2 Extended Solid State Drive | OCZ Vertex 2,SSD,Test,Review,OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G,OCZ Vertex 2 Extended SSD OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G 120GB SandForce SF1200 Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Review

OCZ actually makes their SSDs and working on the standard and custom firmware .