OCZ Vertex 2 (2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC) SSD + INTEL X25M 80 GB SSD?

[incurablegeek]

Background:

1) Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 motherboard with 8 GB GSkill DDR-3 RAM; 3.2 GHz AMD 6-core CPU
2) New Intel X25M 80 GB SSD
3) Would the OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC be a wise add on for someone who is always testing new programs? What I plan to do is add the OCZ (read and writes appear to be off the charts) for Programs that are not business Mission Critical (not a gamer).

Questions:

1) Is that a wise add-on purchase (don't think 80 GB is enough with only about 64 GB useful after format and leaving room for TRIM)?
2) Also, what is involved in linking the INTEL and the OCZ SSD's. (Oops. Sorry the question is so Neanderthal.)   

[incurablegeek]

Got this question answered.  Stay with Intel.  Avoid OCZ.

If anyone wants all the details, feel free to PM me.

[incurablegeek]

JavaJolt asked me to provide some evidence of why NOT to buy OCZ SSD's (despite the fact that I am a member of the OCZ forum).

Simply distilled down, what separates Intel with its low failure rate and OCZ with its rather high failure rate is Firmware.  Perhaps the best place to get an honest comparison and opinion based on experience is Overclock.net. This is the most technical group that I have ever encountered (sorry for the honesty). I have therefore chosen not to quote all the very many helpful forum responses that strongly encouraged me to buy Intel X25M series (the X25E being for servers and seriously expensive) over anything from OCZ. In all fairness to OCZ, despite their rather high failure rate, they do seem to RMA their products very ethically.

The following are very synoptic of what I have read - all over the net:

1) By Submesa at Tomshardware

OCZ is a budget retailer, and had some firmware issues with SSDs in the past, bricking them. Not only during a firmware upgrade, also without prior notice some just drop dead.

Note: Anand devotes much time to the Intel X25M but doesn't pay any attention to OCZ.

2) Information on SSD Reliability can be found here

Intel: All Intel SSDs had low failure rates (maybe <5%?) easily the most reliable SSD from everything I've read though failures are higher now than the ~2% I saw earlier in their life cycle.

OCZ Vertex and Agilility (Indilinx Barefoot) 30-60GB drives (chock full of so many negative reviews I find it hard to categorize them all).

OCZ Agility 120GB retail (Indilinx Barefoot) about 10% failure rate.

Patriot Torqx (Indilinx Barefoot) dead drives approaching the 50% mark.

OCZ Onyx (Indilinx Amigos). (This drive was taken off the market due to a firmware bug, makes it hard to get valid numbers for a post fix rerelease, besides the Amigos drives aren't priced appropriately to their performance so this drive has a double strike against it)

Sandforce (radical new controllers):

OCZ Vertex LE (sandforce 1200) about 30% failure rate.

OCZ Agility 2 (sandforce 1200) no failures reported yet.

OCZ Vertex 2 (sandforce 1200) about 10% failure rate.

Mushkin Enhanced Io (sandforce 1500) no failures reported yet.

Corsair Force (sandforce 1200) drive not found on newegg.

Sandforce drives have the most unconventional controller. It's unproven at this point and should only be bought by users with a strong understanding of the trade-offs this design uses. In some usage cases it's faster than the Marvell or Intel based drives in others it isn't. Long term reliability isn't proven yet.

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Conclusion: If you buy OCZ, you may or may not have a positive experience. Some swear by OCZ; many swear at it. As one fellow commented on OCN, if OCZ stopped making RAM, what does that say about their ability to manufacture SSD's.

Other than OCN (excellent), Amazon, NewEgg and TigerDirect have hardware reviews. Suggestion: Read Only the Negative Reviews!

For what it's worth, I put my money where my mouth is and purchased another Intel X25 today for my "extra" programs. Since it is recommendable to keep as much as 15-20% headroom for firmware and TRIM, it is better not to even play around with an SSD of less than 160 GB.

Basic Common Sense Rules for SSD's

1) Never ever format them.  Let TRIM (allocate time for it do its job.

2) Never ever use an SSD for storage.

3) Work with your OS and Programs to reduce the number of writes to your SSD (I'm going with JavaJolt's suggestion by using blackviper's site , RAMDisk Plus 11, 7-Zip for Firefox/IE, and a few other things.

4) If you wish to benchmark your SSD, MAKE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN YOUR TEST DOES NOT WRITE TO THE SSD! hdtune is the safest because you cannot even write with it. For more info, check out Magic-Man (this guy knows SSD's) at OCN:

Hope that helps at bit. If you have any questions, just PM me. I have been a bit manic, overkill in my study of SSD's.