My SSD drive broke down. What do you recommend?

[Testlund]

Today I discovered I can't boot up my desktop PC. It hangs for a long moment and then it displays the message "Reboot and Select proper Boot device". When I check in Bios the computer can see both my SSD system drive and my other drive, but it just can't boot. Can't remember the last time this happened but it's the first time I use an SSD drive, so maybe it's crappy quality. I will buy a new one tomorrow, but I thought I should ask if anyone can recommend a good SSD drive.

So I only have my laptop now and I'm taking this oportunity to set up a sim and test the latest version. :-]

[Testlund]

My broken SSD drive is a Vertex 2 and because it broke already after 4 years I will never by a hard drive of that brand again. Instead I have bought a Force SATA 3 drive, which turned out to be a lot smaller, so I could only attach it with one screw. Fortunately it's very light so I think it will be enough. It kind of hangs in there with only one screw. If this breaks too within a few years I'll be back and tell you not to buy this either. I have no idea what quality this drive is. It's the only one the retailer had left and I was desperate.

When I was to install Windows I accidently formatted my other drive where I had all my other files. So now I've had to use a program to restore those files and move them elsewhere, which is extremely time consuming, but I think I should be done with that late tonight. Then I can begin installing everything else. :-]

By the way the program I use to restore the files is Recuva, which i downloaded from Piriform.com. It seems to be working well so I can recommend that if this happens to you. There are two versions; a desktop and a portable. The portable is useless, so I had to install Windows first and then run the dektop version.

[Botsareus]

I hope you figure it out Testlund. Never had my hands on a SSD drive so do not know much about them. I am also trying to avoid posting here while the wiki and half the forum is broken. I think my presence here is what attracting people to break the forums and the wiki so generally trying to stay away until they burn themselfs out and then stuff gets fixed. God says stuff like that takes about 21 years though.

[Botsareus]

Well... It might be sooner then that as the forum is working again. Lets see if Numsgil likes my wiki plans.

[Numsgil]

I've been using Samsung SSDs.  I don't have any real criticisms for them, but I don't know that they're wowing me either.  But I'm not sure how a hard drive could wow me.  This is the drive I'm currently using, for what it's worth.

[Testlund]

Oh, my goodness! That's too much for me, both price and size. 500 MB drives are enough for me and I prefer to have several drives to backup things rather than storing everything on one drive. Also as I understand it SSD drives won't last long if they get written to a lot, so for instance it's not recfommended to defrag them. Therefore I only use one as a system drive to install software on and a secondary drive for everything else.

Well, I got everything back in order a few days before Christmas and was able to restore most of the stuff I deleted. Next year I'd like to buy a real good gaming computer where I for once can run everything at highest settings. I've always had budget computers.

[Peter]

SSD's of the last few years have such a high write limit, that's it's not a issue you'll notice. Competition bested all bad producers out of the market such like OCZ, I think all current SSD's are fine.

If you're going for a high end PC, I suggest to wait till AMD releases Zen. Going to be the first CPU AMD releases in years that will compete with intel. At the least it's going to push down intel prices a bit.

[Botsareus]

Good to know Peter. I was also looking at getting a new proper desktop as my current is still broken.
As far as SSD, (as much as I understand how they work) you will actually benefit from buying an SSD with more space even if you do not need the space because of how data writes to an SSD. Though I may be wrong on this.

[Peter]

Somewhat, yes.

Similar as to why it's important to have free space left on a normal HDD. Many SSD's don't make the full space available for that reason.(show only 240GB instead of the 256GB which is internally available)

[Botsareus]

hmm... Do not see how it is better for a normal hard drive. If anything it needs to be defragmented. That gets slower as the hard drive gets bigger.

[Peter]

Hard drives get fragmented more easily if space is sparse. And defragmentation is harder when the disk is full.

[Botsareus]

I see. Good to know.

[neanderbe]

By the way the program I use to restore the files is Recuva, which i downloaded from this site. It seems to be working well so I can recommend that if this happens to you. There are two versions; a desktop and a portable. The portable is useless, so I had to install Windows first and then run the dektop version.

Same thing happened to me once when I formatted a wrong drive. Recuva is a good tool and it's free but I found Active Undelete to be much more thorough in recovering my files. I use the Pro version.

[FaustinoG]

I also need something for data recovery, free if possible. I'm guessing Active Undelete Pro isn't a free tool?