# Cheapest reliable 120 GB SSD for laptop with SATA II



## Chetan1991 (Mar 29, 2015)

I have a query. I want to put an SSD inside my 5 year old Inspiron laptop (via ODD caddy), but it only supports SATA II. 

So which are the cheapest (and reliable) 120 GB and 64 GB SSD's quick enough to saturate SATA II? There's no point in buying the quickest SSDs since SATA II will be a bottleneck.


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## harshilsharma63 (Mar 29, 2015)

SATA III is backwards compatible with SATA II so you can use any modern SSD. Get Samsung 850 series SSD.


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## Nerevarine (Mar 29, 2015)

* There's no point in buying the quickest SSDs since SATA II will be a bottleneck.*

Thats a unique requirement in your case, I dont think Samsung 850 series SSD is best for your budget, as they offer the very best of speeds at high price.. I dont have a suggestion though, you have to wait for more replies


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## sumonpathak (Mar 29, 2015)

Chetan1991 said:


> I have a query. I want to put an SSD inside my 5 year old Inspiron laptop (via ODD caddy), but it only supports SATA II.
> 
> So which are the cheapest (and reliable) 120 GB and 64 GB SSD's quick enough to saturate SATA II? There's no point in buying the quickest SSDs since SATA II will be a bottleneck.



since you are looking for the cheapest;look for the kingston V Now 120GB..with a little luck you can find one for about 3800(street price Kolkata)


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## vito scalleta (Mar 29, 2015)

Nerevarine said:


> * There's no point in buying the quickest SSDs since SATA II will be a bottleneck.*
> 
> Thats a unique requirement in your case, I dont think Samsung 850 series SSD is best for your budget, as they offer the very best of speeds at high price.. I dont have a suggestion though, you have to wait for more replies



+1.
I wasnt getting any good performance with my 840 evo plugged in to the sata II port in my lappy. so i wouldnt recommend gng for an ssd now.


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## Chetan1991 (Mar 29, 2015)

sumonpathak said:


> since you are looking for the cheapest;look for the kingston V Now 120GB..with a little luck you can find one for about 3800(street price Kolkata)



The Kingston Now V300 is widely available online at around 4k as well but doesn't has very good reviews. It seems to develop problems after a year or so.  Are there any better alternatives?


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## ithehappy (Mar 30, 2015)

Well if you going to spend 4k then why not spend another 1k and get the 850 Evo? Just saying...


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## Chetan1991 (Mar 30, 2015)

Because the laptop won't be able to use the 850's extra speed anyway. Could you recommend me some sites that sell SSDs at best prices?

Hey [MENTION=212498]vito scalleta[/MENTION] did you install the os and programs on the ssd?


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## cybertechie1 (Mar 30, 2015)

@above

I have upgraded my laptop with a samsung EVO SSD on the same day i bought the laptop. Performance has been excellent so far.
.
Recently i had to put together a workstation for windows sever. Mechanical hard drives were too slow for my needs. I picked up two used SSD's from ebay. One is an intel 120 gigs 530 drive . paid 2800 rupees for it. Drive was in excellent condition. Warranty is good till december 2019 as per intel's website although the seller had mentioned no warranty.

Bought another SSD from a delhi based ebay seller for 3.2k. it was a samsung evo 830 256GB drive. Out of all 3 SSD's , evo 830 performs the best.I was surprised at how quick the drive is in spite of being nearly 2 years old. It even feels snappier than my new evo 840. I would suggest you to pick up a used drive from ebay, preferably evo 830. If you want i can post the link of the seller from where i bought the product from. 

Although you won't be able to harness the complete potential of the SSD due to lack of SATA 3 controller however the system will still be much faster due to high IOPS values SSD's delivers. In-fact you are more likely to notice the difference in performance on your system compared to an SSD installation on a modern computer.


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## Chetan1991 (Mar 30, 2015)

Thanks a lot for the reply  [MENTION=307282]cybertechie1[/MENTION]. Please do post the links of sellers you bought the ssds from. I'm drooling already.


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## cybertechie1 (Mar 30, 2015)

[MENTION=22157]Chetan1991[/MENTION]

Here is the link of the seller from whom i bought the drive from :

Samsung 256 GB SSD 6 GBPS Speed Solid State Drive NEW Price 11500 | eBay

listing had ended now

Here is another link :

Samsung 256 GB SSD 6 GBPS Speed Solid State Drive NEW Price 11500 | eBay

Seems like it is same seller with a different ebay ID. He has mentioned a coupon in the listing. it wil give you 9% discount on the listing. There is another offer going on in ebay. Incase pay by Mobikwick wallet, you will receive 300 bucks as cash-back so effectively you will be paying ~ 3.3k for the drive. If you end up buying the drive, use some HDD benchmark utility like HDtunepro and run a complete heath-check just to be on the safer side. Samsung SSD's are very reliable.


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## Chetan1991 (Mar 30, 2015)

Its says used but not for how long. Since ssds have limited Read/write cycles aren't these ssds going to be unreliable? The benchmarking apps will show life expectancy of ssd like smart data, right?

 How did the ones you bought fair?


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## cybertechie1 (Mar 30, 2015)

Endurance Testing the Samsung 840 EVO SSD

Please go through the endurance tests of SSD's including Samsung evo 830, 840. Even in a simulated environment they could not fail the EVO after multiple TB's of read/Write. For a normal user, It will take many many years before PE cycle runs out.

Coming to the aging of drives, there maybe a few reasons why sellers don't  post those information. First, as you can see from the listings, these guys end up selling a lot of drives. I'm not sure if it feasible for them to test/ capture data for each drive and upload it on ebay. Secondly, Samsung unfortunately does not give out a lot of SMART information. Intel SSD's on the other hand does show much more life is left on the drive. 

As as i mentioned in my first post, Samsung 830 i got feels much more snappier and faster than the new samsung 840 used on my laptop. regarding usage, power on count on the drive is about 5,000 hours. As previously mentioned, Samsung does not show the read/write data information. If you need any specific data, let me know. I will be more than happy to run the test and upload the screenshot.


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## vito scalleta (Mar 30, 2015)

Chetan1991 said:


> Hey [MENTION=212498]vito scalleta[/MENTION] did you install the os and programs on the ssd?



I did.. I ran crystaldisk mark just to be sure . the speeds i got were quite low compared to actula speeds.
Here is the screen shot with the ssd in sata 2 port.
*i.imgur.com/Ina6eyo.png

Here are the speeds with the ssd in the sata 3 .. 
*i.imgur.com/7ghrpQO.png


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## Chetan1991 (Mar 30, 2015)

I'm inclined toward this listing: SSD 256GB I 2 5" 256GB I SATA6 0GBPS I MZ 7PD2560 07 | eBay.

I checked the model number. Its an *840 Pro*. Which means not only more reliability but most likely less hours it has run. Coupons work on it as well. At 3.6k, its costs around Rs 14 per GB, which is much less than Rs 40 per GB for a new SSD.


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## ithehappy (Mar 30, 2015)

Get that then. With Pro series you can't go wrong at all, unless you have very bad luck.


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## Chetan1991 (Mar 30, 2015)

Bought it. Which tests should I run to check the drive's health?


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## vito scalleta (Mar 30, 2015)

Chetan1991 said:


> Bought it. Which tests should I run to check the drive's health?



You can use HD tune to check the drive's health


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## Chetan1991 (Apr 6, 2015)

So the drive arrived and I installed Windows on it. It has less than 300 hours on it, but the drive does not report write/erase cycles.

SSD Life says the drive is healthy, but the random access test in HD tune shows weird results:

*i.imgur.com/k0ETw0q.png

Notice how a few operations in random file size test take much longer than most operations. Also there is one item marked in SMART data:

*i.imgur.com/nGTUhf1.png

I have moved all my work data onto the SSD. Should I trust the drive?

- - - Updated - - -

bump..


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## bssunilreddy (Apr 6, 2015)

Chetan1991 said:


> The Kingston Now V300 is widely available online at around 4k as well but doesn't has very good reviews. It seems to develop problems after a year or so.  Are there any better alternatives?



Kingston V200 & V300 does not develop any problems even after years of use buddy because my SSD is that excellent example...

SSD Life says the drive is healthy, but the random access test in HD tune shows excellent results:
*i.imgur.com/lfRAD1j.png

Post an error scan test just like this one buddy:

*i.imgur.com/kSkFHgu.png

You should have bought a Kingston V300 125GB or Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD's which come at 4.5k. It seems that your SSD has some serious errors.


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## Chetan1991 (Apr 7, 2015)

I think you are jumping to conclusions. My SSD's error scan is the same as yours, completely clean. I ran the test again and now it is showing this:
*i.imgur.com/sA41Ay1.png

Also
*i.imgur.com/OC3TtgI.png

It seems I need to change some settings regarding pagefile etc that adversely affect SSD performance.


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## cybertechie1 (Apr 8, 2015)

[MENTION=105611]bssunil[/MENTION] Sorry to say mate but you have no idea what you are talking about. You may have had good experience with Kingston however they are one of the worst SSD makers out there. I do agree that the initial batches of Kingston V series drives were good however they have switched to low quality NAND providers. Please go through the below articles to find out what they are upto

SSD shadiness: Kingston and PNY caught bait-and-switching cheaper components after good reviews | ExtremeTech

An Update to Kingston SSDNow V300: A Switch to Slower Micron NAND

@ Chetan 1991

There is no problem with your drive. CRC errors usually happens due to poor/loose connections or due to bad quality SATA cable. Try to reseat the drive again and if possible, switch to high quality SATA cable and run the test again. As i have mentioned in my previous posts, samsung OEM SSD's do not show the heath estimate.


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