Intel X25-M Mainstream 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDSA2M080G2GC - OEM

Pros: Fast - I think my perspective might be a bit exaggerated because I'm coming from a ~5 year old computer, but this with an i5 has changed the way I do things. I love how restarting my system is not an annoyance any more. It shuts down and boots back up very fast, and as soon as the desktop appears, you can click on a program and it starts up. None of that waiting at the desktop for everything to "really" finish loading. Small - My case (antec mini 80) can either mount an HD rack OR a front intake fan. I was able to put my storage mechanical HD in the one available 5.25" slots (with an adapter) and just have this sitting on the bottom of the mobo compartment shelf. This allowed me to mount both 120mm intake fans, which is nice.

Cons: Expensive - 80gb. ~290 bucks. And to think I was trying to stick to a "budget" build. Low capacity As of right now, there's a firmware update issue. I got a drive with 02G9 firmware, and can't update to 02HA because some people reported issues and intel took it down. you need 02HA for windows 7 TRIM support, which is not possible 'til intel finishes another revision. If you find an 02HA download, don't try it. watch the official intel site for a fixed release.

Overall Review: It comes with a sticker! I'm disappointed by how many of my new components didn't come with stickers. Video card? Nope. Mobo? Nope. CPU? Nope. Storage device? Hells yeah!

Pros: Great drive -- Win7 64 installed awesome.

Cons: it's not bigger --

Overall Review: MAKE SURE you upgrade the firmware! I ordered and received mine at the end of March 2010, and it still had 2CV102HA -- Windows 7 will NOT unlock the great features of SSD without 2CV102HD! http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3044&DwnldID=18363&lang=eng

Pros: The metric to use when buying an SSD is iops/$. An $85 HDD nets about 0.7 iops/$. The X25-M nets about 56 iops/$. On a cost-per-GB basis, an SSD makes no sense. But for general system performance, they are an absolute STEAL. Pair it with a cost-effective 1000 GB HDD and you get the best of both worlds for only $300. I picked up two of these drives when they dropped to $220; one for myself and one for my wife. On Win7 64-bit I'm getting 230 MB/sec sequential reads and < 0.1 msec access times. Everything loads extremely quickly now. Resuming from Sleep takes 2 seconds versus about 15 seconds for my HDD. The drives are tiny - much smaller than I expected.

Cons: 1) The drives shipped with the 02HA firmware, which I updated to 02HD before putting any data on them. The 02HA firmware has known problems and the firmware update software requires the use of a CD/DVD burner. You can easily extract the update utility and place it on a USB boot disk, but Intel should provide the ability to update the firmware more easily - either in Windows with a required reboot to activate or by providing a tool to create a USB boot disk directly. 2) The OEM version does not come with a cable or a mounting bracket, so you'll need to make sure you have an extra SATA cable. I wasn't concerned about the mounting bracket because the drive has no moving parts and my case never gets moved.

Pros: This is the fastest SSD I've used to date, you really don't notice the relatively slow write speed as much as you notice the incredible read speed and low latency of this drive. This has brought my hard drive rating to a 7.5 out of 7.9 on the Windows 7 Experience Index. The biggest surprise to me was how quickly Microsoft Office (Word or Excel) now opens, it's incredible. You click the icon, the loading screen flashes for maybe 1/10 of a second (just enough to see that something has flashed on the screen, but not enough to read anything), and then you're sitting at your document ready to go. This computer is pretty run-of-the-mill, I built it about a year ago for around $1000, but after installing the SSD it is now the fastest machine I have ever had the priveledge of using (I routinely build $7000+ servers with 8 cores, 24+ GB DDR3 RAM, etc, so that's saying a lot).

Cons: Not much storage space, but it's plenty for a boot/OS drive. I have a pair of 1 TB platter drives in RAID 1 for all of my media archiving.

Pros: Very happy with this drive. Mine actually scores a 7.8 in the Windows 7 'experience' tool. Not sure what relevance that has.

Cons: price/GB = $2.74 This was a major detractor, prior to actually purchasing and using the drive. I deal with the limited space by placing the OS and most commonly used programs/games on the SSD.. everything else goes on the RAID5.

Overall Review: The OEM version comes with an older firmware, so you will need to flash the device; otherwise it will not support TRIM commands from Win7 or Ext4 on >= 2.6.28. The firmware is loaded onto the device from a program running in freedos. The version of freedos did not recognize my ICH10R SATAII controller, so I needed to flash the device on an machine with a supported chipset. ICH10R is an Intel chipset, so it is odd that their firmware upgrade utility did not support it. Just FYI for anyone who runs into this issue.

Pros: This drive is fast. Really fast. Application load times are almost instant (for photoshop, dreamweaver, and alike), boot time for Win7 x64 changed from 30s to 10s. Sequential Read is at 257 MB/s, write 90 MB/s. This is not just ridiculous, this is Ludicrous speed! SSDs are also very reliable, quiet, and decidedly lightweight. They also use low power, so they're a perfect match for mobile users. I placed this in my desktop for sheer speed.

Cons: Price. $220 for 80GB is a lot, but definitely (in every sense of the word) worth it. This drive did come from the RMA warehouse. There were also finger marks, scuff marks, and screw rash on this drive. (Obviously suggesting it has been used before). I am quite used to the caliber of quality that intel delivers, and this drive has definitely been used before, and sold to me under new condition. Still 5 eggs for the product, but it's hard for me to be sure that I'm getting what I really did pay for.

Overall Review: Whatever you do, never let it near the water, never feed it after midnight, but no matter how much it begs, no matter how much it pleas, NEVER EVER DEFRAGMENT A SOLID STATE DISK!!!! SSDs don't need defragging, and at the least, a defrag will SHORTEN the lifespan and SLOW DOWN the nice, new, shiny SSD you just bought. Don't do it; just say no.

Pros: Amazingly Fast - you've heard it all before. Quiet No heat

Cons: Price / GB Storage Capacity

Overall Review: You Can't beat this device as a boot drive. Running Win7 x64 on an Asus P5Q, Q9650, 8GB Dominator Ram. Everything is almost instant. Photoshop CS3 starts in 2 seconds. My WD 1TB Black was fast but it's no match for this drive. Trim won't work (yet) for me since I have this drive on the Intel Matrix. I have a pair of WD 640's in Raid 0 so I can't run the AHCI Microsoft drivers. I need to wait for the Intel Matrix updates to support trim. The intel SSD tool is very easy to use and does the same thing as trim so it's really not that big of an issue. The ICY DOCK M8882SP was a great match for this drive.

Pros: - Extremely fast. Windows 7 x64 boot time is fast, ~15 seconds. Once your desktop appears, you can start opening apps, No waiting around. Level / Map transitions in games load up fast. I have Crysis and Fallout 3 installed on it, and the load times are much quicker in both. - TRIM. Had to update to the latest firmware, and backed my SATA driver back to msahci.sys in order for trim to work.

Cons: - Price. ~ $3.75 per gigabyte vs. $0.10 per gigabyte for a regular WD Caviar Black 7200 rpm drive. 37.5 times more expensive!

Overall Review: The price may be outrageous, but that being said, I believe that the Intel X25-M 80GB 2nd generation is worth every penny. If you are looking to squeeze a little more life out of an old desktop, or even a laptop,this may be the best bang for your buck, but if you play graphical demanding games, a better video card may be the route that you want to take, such as a GTX 285 for roughly the same price. System Specs: Intel Core i7-920 w/ Prolimatech Megahalems heatsink ASUS P6X58D Premium SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Motherboard CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB RAM EVGA GeForce GTX 285 1G Video Card Creative 7.1 Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Intel X25-M Mainstream Solid State Drive 80GB booting Windows 7 x64 Home 2x Western Digital RE3 1TB 7200 RPM Hard Drives in RAID 0 LG 8X Blu-ray Burner Antec 902 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Case CORSAIR 750W PSU Logitech G15 Keyboard, G5 Mouse, and X-540 5.1 speakers 25.5" Samsung T260 LCD 1 TB WD HD connected to an External Thermaltake BLACX eSATA Drive Dock