For those that want an SSD for ESXi or baremetal unRAID. I am suggesting you take a look at the Plextor M3 Series or the Corsair Performance Pro Series!

 

They have 'advanced garbage collection' modes similar to "auto trim" and cleaning features to prolong disk life and 'trim like' write speeds when other SSD's in ESXi would be "dirty".

 

the older Kingston SSDnow V+'s had this ffeature but are hard to find, overpriced and are pretty slow by todays SDD standards..

Now we have powerhouse SSD'd that can perform this. Enter the Marvell 88SS9174 based SSD's.

 

This what is happening to our SSD's:

The "30min idle cleaning bar" is what we need for ESXi, unRAID, *nix, and OSX.

 

Take a look at this article > http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/marvell-ssd_7.html

Ilya Gavrichenkov did an excelent writeup of what the new Marvel based SSD's are doing and why they would be better for our use.

 

 

 

These features also make them good for Linux desktops or macs. They also work in raid arrays.

 

I am now deciding on the corsair or the plextor myself... I think I'm leaning to the corsair..

the plextors 5year warranty is the big decision..

 

Corsair Performance Pro Series CSSD-P256GBP-BK 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

Plextor M3 Series PX-256M3 2.5" 256GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

 

Both are priced at $339 for a 256GBSSD. That's a better deal then 2 OCX 128's in the price per GB that I built Atlas on originally.

(the Plextor also has a "Pro Model" for about $40 more... that is slightly better suited for servers and has slightly higher IOPS. )

 

 

Edit:

I Edited the first post to reflect my updated recommendations and post links.

I think I'll be ordering 2 of the Corsair for my server, maybe one for my desktop.

[ill just put the 3 SSDs that I'm taking out of Atlas into my Desktop/laptop's. those are windows and have trim.]

 

For $100 bucks more than mainstream SSDs, you can get a really good drive for your MacOS or Linux laptop (or ESX, Solaris/ZFS) and those cache drives hidden from Windows (looking at you Z68/Z77).

 

Caution on the Corsair as the drive height is not published. 2.5 inch drives come 12mm and 9mm heights, the 12mm do not fit in all laptops.

I expect my 256Gb Performance Pro to arrive either tomorrow or the next day - will report back on drive height.  I'm cautiously optimistic that it isn't a 12mm drive (the Force 3 I have isn't, it's just under 8mm) and there are reports here of someone getting the drive into a Sony Vaio SE1, which are pretty thin: http://forum.notebookreview.com/8421611-post10354.html

 

In any case, I hope they're not 12mm, 'cos then mine won't fit in the StarTech PCI expansion hotswap slots I bought! lol

Have now measured the 256Gb Performance Pro, and it is exactly 9mm high.

yep.

 

the plextor is also the same.. in fact. the plextor and the corsair have the same shell and the same circuit board inside. just different chips soldered on.

 

I think they order them from the same vendor.