Joined on 02/08/05
8/5/2010 follow-up - say YES to Mushkin
Pros: GREAT support after my initial experience. The best hardare on the planet doesn't mean much if it's not supported by the company selling it...
Cons: None so far. You may want to research if this is the right drive for you, see TANWare's review below.
Overall Review: This is a follow-up to my review on 8/5/2010. Although I didn't get any support at the Mushkin forums. Nick from sales was conscientious, saw my review here at Newegg, and offered to take care of the matter himself: [1] He talked to the forum admins and asked them to provide better support. It seems there is an additional admin who is pretty active there now. [2] He PERSONALLY answered all of my questions, offered more suggestions to fix the problem, and when all else failed offered a replacement drive, without ANY hassle! He also had the replacement drive benchmarked BEFORE sending to me so there would be no doubt that I would receive a perfect drive. [3] He followed up after I received the drive to make sure everything was taken care of. He has single-handedly restored my faith in Mushkin. I couldn't have asked for anything more. THANK YOU Nick!
No Mushkin support
Pros: It's faster than a traditional 5400RPM mechanical hard drive
Cons: Drive has poor performance below 16K, only getting between 55-80% compared toother benchmarks posted on the Mushkin SSD forum. See Mushkin SSD forums, thread title "Slow small file performance", I went by same username. I also got more support from one of the reviewers below (thanks TANWare!) and another member than from the Mushikin support staff. Scorecard of thread activity over 12 day period: Non-Mushkin members, NOT including me: 15 Mushikin support staff: 3 That's being generous to Mushkin; last response EXACTLY what TANWare (again, non-Mushkin staff) said a day earlier in the thread. Mushkin offered **NO** explanations to problem. TANWare suggested may be a cpu/bios/mb combination specific to my notebook. **BEFORE** I bought the SSD checked the lenovo x201 owners thread at notebookreview forums; a few people installed SSDs without issue. System: Lenovo X201i, Core i3 M330. Windows 7 Professional 32bit. 4GB RAM.
Overall Review: Classic quote from Mushkin: "I would suggest not benching it for a week and then see where you are at." That was the best they could offer, what a joke. Another thing to consider is the current drive corrupts SMART when doing a secure erase. Run at your own risk. (there are a couple of threads on the Mushkin forum) Will never buy anything from Mushkin again. End of story.