Crucial RealSSD C300 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1

Pros: Blazing fast speed. Runs at rated specs even after the firmware update that people say slows down their read/write times. I actually ran this on the 0002 version because I never really got a chance to update it, and I honestly can't tell a difference between the two.

Cons: Not really a con for this particular drive, but more for the whole SATA III interface on most motherboards. I have an ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme. Overall, a great motherboard, but it has one horrible limitation- the lack of the additional 4 lane chip to fully utilize your SATA III connections. In short, the bandwidth for the whole SATA III interface is robbed by every single card that you insert into your PCIe slots. I had a single GTX480 to start with; I would achieve read speeds of about 260. After inserting my new ASUS Xonar D2X 7.1 sound card into the third PCIe slot to run it at x16, my read speeds dropped to just barely over 210. For everyone who is complaining about speeds dropping, this is something to consider- there are those of you whom probably do not have a board with this additional chip (PLX chip, I believe it's called). DO SOME RESEARCH BEFORE YOU BUY THIS OR YOU WILL NOT ACHIEVE THE SPECIFIED READ/WRITE SPEEDS.

Overall Review: Even though my drive is not currently operating at the specified speeds, I still gave it 5 eggs because it is definitely capable and is no fault of the actual drive. There are a lot of things to research when you consider buying high-end components such as this.

Pros: For an SSD, very impressive performance. Uses either W7 trim or firmware garbage collection to maintain performance.

Cons: Relatively high write latency compared to other SSDs. This will, however, likely produce no perceptual performance deficit to most.

Overall Review: This drive gives very good performance. Crucial's latest firmware update procedure works without fault. Can use a SATA II port and gives good benchmarks, but other SSDs do give better write latency. Used as a SATA III either through motherboard port or with host bus adapter gives unmatched read/write speeds. Using ASUS U3S6 in one PC and Koutech PESA230 HBA in another. Configured both cards to use msahci drivers. No measurable performance degradation in the time I have been using drive. Overall, very pleased with this SSD.

Pros: This drive is amazing!! Windows Experience is 7.9. Loads everything at lightening speeds.

Cons: The griping wife.

Pros: The speed is AMAZING. Running 2 drives Raid 0 EXT4 file system.

Cons: Still costs 20x hard drive price per GB.

Overall Review: Using it for an email server with Maildir format. Each email is a separate file so if you do a search and you have 10k messages you have to read 10k small files. With SDD there is 0 seek time so it's like 50x faster that normal big drives. Wanted to do a Linux review where drives are being worked hard.

Pros: The drive itself is amazing. I got the advertised speeds, and it's significantly faster than my other Corsair SSD. Came with the latest firmware, absolutely no issues. Absolutely the fastest drive I've ever had. It's a bit pricey, but if you buy this drive you won't regret it. Make sure you are hooking it up to your motherboard's SATA3 connectors with a SATA3 cable to get the advertised speeds.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Crucial's support is out of this world amazing, and I will definitely be buying Crucial products again. The SATA connector on the drive somehow broke as I was moving some things around in my case. I was really bummed about having ruined a very expensive part, and I thought it was going to be a total loss. I figured I'd call Crucial anyway to see if there was anything they could do to repair it (like just replace the connector for me). I expected to pay for this, as what happened to the drive was physical in nature and my own fault. But after all of that, after a quick phone call to Crucial, and RMA was issued, and I'll have a new drive within a couple of days! This was about the best outcome I could have hoped for - only thing I lost was my data. Thanks Crucial!

Pros: Awesome speed on SATA 3G or 6G.

Cons: I am on my second RMA to Crucial. I originally bought two drives from Egg. 1st one in laptop is still working great. 2nd one in deskop failed after about 40 days. BIOS stopped recognizing the drive. RMA'd to Crucial (painless, quick). RMA drive lasted about another 3-4 weeks and had same problem. All drives had firmware 001. I am now in RMA process on this drive - 3rd time's the charm I hope! 1st drive in laptop successfully updated to firmware 002 and is still trucking along.

Overall Review: When the drive works it flies! But this is a lot of money to pay for the headaches I've had. Firmware update from Crucial works now without bricking the drive. There is some BIOS fumbling to get the FW update to work, but Crucial website spells it all out. If you get a drive with FW 001, upgrade immediately because upgrading later wipes all data from the drive. If my 3rd desktop drive fails, I will update.

Pros: Trouble-free installation of this awesome SSD on ASUS P6X58D mobo sporting SATA III interface. Windows 7 Experience Index for primary hard drive is now maxed out at 7.9. Most noticeable improvement is speedy loading time for Photoshop CS4 and numberous installed plug-ins, which used to sluggish at best. Loading of large raw photo files is nearly instantaneous. WRT to benchmark results, read/write performance from this SSD is roughly 10x that of my now-archaic 7200 RPM HDD. Stunning.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: If installing this SATA III SDD in a Corsair Obsidian 800D case, do not install in one of the 4 hot-swap bays. The interface in those bays is SATA II only, and your mobo may not recognize the shiny new SATA III SSD at all. Instead, connect the SDD directly to an SATA III port (if your mobo has one).

Pros: Definitely as everyone else says in the reviews, this SSD is very fast. I upgraded from a 10k RPM Velocity Raptor and it's like night and day. Tech Support helped me through an issue - see in other thoughts.

Cons: Price? But it's come down as faster SSD's are available.

Overall Review: I recently ran into an issue with one of these SSD's. I have two of these in my Mac Pro, one of which holds the OS. All of a sudden, the screen started to freeze. Even after rebooting, soon enough it would happen again. Finally, after a few hours of tech support with Apple (who did a fantastic job - thanks Mark Perin and the girl before him), I realized the issue is with the SSD. It finally died and the Mac Pro couldn't boot. I talked to the tech support at Crucial (someone named Shawn) and basically I was able to restore the SSD back to functioning 100% with no data loss. I'm now up and running 100% and am more impressed not only with this product, but with Crucial as a whole. I look forward to buying my next Crucial. Thank you.