Wanting to join the "SSD Revolution" a few months back I opted for the cheap option of the OCZ Petrol 64GB drive, having not really done so much research.
On Thursday, 2 months after purchase date, I boot my computer to find Windows performing an error check which stuck at 1% for 3 hours. Whilst weird, I proceeded to reboot my machine, the disk was no longer detected by my motherboard. I nearly had a heart attack with several projects needing urgent attention. Long story short, it obviously needed replacing, within 2 months.
However, before this I actually did some reading. Turns out the Petrol drive is based on new in-house OCZ Tech, so is pretty much unproven in the field. Now I will state that I updated the firmware on my drive using the OCZ Toolkit upon purchase, so it's not that. In addition to this, I checked out a few more points shout the Petrol drive... It turns out, unless you purchase above the 128GB version of the drive, you get a maximum read throughput of 185MB/s, and write of 75MB/s.
At this point it was obvious that I did not want the same drive at all and looked at alternatives, being pretty pissed with OCZ at this point I looked for others, but being from PC World it was my only choice at £15 more, for less space.
However, this drive actually operates at a 525MB/s read throughput, 475MB/s write, and is based on a more proven firmware. So far, the difference is so much better, from initial installation to boot speeds and access. I will update this post in 2 months to see if it's another product to stay away from, and have a nice big rant at OCZ whilst wholly badmouthing them if ever asked. Let's hope that doesn't happen.
The point of this post is to say, for the extra £15, even though you will lose 4GB of storage, I would go straight for the Agility 3 drive if it has to be OCZ. Stay well away from the Petrol, I may well have had a bad drive, but one of the PC World staff said his Petrol failed after 5 months also, and lots of online reviews share a similar experience.
Good luck if you're joining the SSD crowd, I can wholly recommend it, just get the right damn drive off the bat and save headaches.
Top tips:
- Use as your boot drive
- ONLY keep your OS/data on that drive
- Ensure you have backups of whatever is on there
- Remember that, under (very!) heavy load, your drive may only last 1-3 years anyway, so don't get *too* attached to it
- Enjoy the difference you'll notice! You will never want to go back to a HDD again!