Intel 520 Series Cherryville SSDSC2CW120A3K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) Intel 520 Series Cherryville SSDSC2CW120A3K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: Was hesitant to go with a SSD on my new built but am extremely pleased with the performance boost and boot up speed of this drive. Using drive for operating system and programs only. Can't wait until SSD prices come down enough to use for my main data drive too. Programs which used to take forever to load on my old machine load almost instantly now.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Old Build: Windows XP, Pentium 4 - 3GHz processor, 2 GB Ram, INTEL-D875PBZ motherboard.

New Build: Windows 7 - 64bit Pro, Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz, Intel 520 Series Cherryville SSDSC2CW120A3K5 OS drive, G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB, GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD4H LGA 1155 Intel Z77, mirrored WD VelociRaptor WD5000HHTZ 500GB data drive

Pros: Intel, Software, Easy installation, Blazing speed.

Cons: Pricing. Its the only reason it gets four eggs. Too much money.

Other Thoughts: Lower the price.

Pros: Looking for a nice SSD for gaming? Well look no further! This baby is not only fast, but made very well. Great product!

Cons: none

Pros: What they say about installing a SSD in an older SATA II computer is true -- it can rejuvenate the old machine and make it a joy to run. The low latency, lightning fast random access times and a maxed out data transfer rate are well worth the time and cost.

I bought an Intel SSD for several reasons besides the brand name. The box contains all the hardware needed to adapt to an older computer including a mounting sled and screws, a SATA cable, even a Molex to SATA power adapter, and the included Intel® SSD Toolbox maintenance app knows XP. The Intel® Data Migration Software, well, not so much (see the Cons:). Once installed and fully configured, tuned and debugged (see below...), the SSD makes every computer operation from app opening to web surfing much faster and very much smoother even though my mobo only supports SATA II with a 235 MB/sec transfer rate that is less than half the potential of SATA III. In all, and thus far, it's an excellent piece of kit.

Cons: I expected that it would be a bit of a challenge installing a SSD in my 5 year old XP SP3/4 GB/E8400/Abit IP35 Pro rig and I wasn't disappointed. The biggest problem, tho, was with the Acronis based Intel® Data Migration Software. It will not migrate a single partition (e. g. the C: drive) to the SSD, it will only clone an entire physical HD. This is a serious limitation that was not mentioned in any of the documentation, and I spent some significant time figuring it out. It’s a major problem if the old physical drive, like mine, is a big ol’ WD Black 1 TB drive with 4 partitions and over 700 MB of data on it. I have several Acronis apps, and as it turns out not a one of them will directly clone a single partition to a new drive. Worse, when I installed the Free Intel® Data Migration Software, it trashed my older True Image 11 install, and then it had the nerve to strongly suggest that I needed to spend $30 unnecessarily to buy the new TI 13. All this cost the one star in my Overall Rating! I booted one of the rescue CDs and restored my backup image of the old C: drive to the SSD (but NOT the old MBR, of course!). That worked.

Other Thoughts: OK, here's what I learned, sometimes the hard way. This job is NOT for beginners, but maybe I can make it a little easier for the next person.

1. Before you do anything, BACK UP EVERYTHING!! And especially image your boot drive, verify it and make several copies of your images/backups and have verified bootable "rescue" disks prepared. ESSENTIAL! No worries.

2. One can format a SSD with FAT32, but it turns out that Intel's SSD Toolbox won’t support it. For legacy reasons my old C: drive was FAT32. I should have done a convert to NTFS on the old drive before anything else. It's a PITA and creates alignment issues converting a SSD after the OS is installed on it.

3. Before restoring the boot drive (C:) contents from an image to the SSD, one may wish to format and partition the SSD. Partitioning a SSD after the OS is restored to it will likely corrupt the OS. Partitioning a SSD may seem unnecessary, but it's very useful to move the pagefile.sys, the temporary files and any other large files (e. g. music, video and photo files) that don’t need to be backed up so often to another partition or HD. That will significantly reduce the size of one’s C: drive and the time/file size needed to back it up.

4. As noted above, the Intel® Data Migration Software will only clone an entire physical HD. To clone just a single partition from a large older drive, it will be necessary to do a restore from a backup image to the new SSD and hope the OS doesn’t object. The Intel/Acronis migration software is useless in this situation.

5. At this point, assuming one is running XP, it will be necessary to install and run Intel's Windows XP Alignment Tool and then install and configure the Intel SSD Toolbox. Be sure to run the Trim function on every SSD partition and to schedule it to run on a regular basis on each of those partitions.

6. Enjoy!

Pros: Fast for the first 30 minutes of usage then nothing.

Cons: BSOD on a fresh windows install. Day one. This product is flawed. I will not in good conscience deploy a computer with this SSD. Read the reviews. Wish I would have done more homework on this beforehand.

Pros: Installed & cloned without a single hiccup... swapped it in and booted from it; works just like it ought to. Yeah, it's fast.

Cons: none experienced

Other Thoughts: I've had multiple other-brand SSD's 'dislike' being used as bootable drives, so I am initially apprehensive when trying to swap someone over to SSD. This one has worked great.

Pros: operating as advertized. Newegg is the best.

Cons: None so far.

Pros: Great SSD. I use this drive as my boot drive with only Windows installed with all updates, drivers, firmwares and I have had no complaints. Super fast. Boot time is lightning fast. I love this SSD.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Intel's reputation for Quality is represented in this SSD.

Pros: fast, perfect for OS

Cons: none

Pros: Extremely fast

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I was skeptic, before buying this SSD. The price scared me a little. However, now that I've had it for ~a year, I believe that every penny has paid off.