$60 to $90 rebates on OCZ SSDs

Until the end of the month you can get a nice rebate on 2.5" OCZ SSD drives from 32GB up to 128GB (and possibly a 250GB SSD coming out before the end of the month).

This means a 32GB SSD will cost $79.00
64GB will cost $99.00
128GB will cost $219.00

OCZ drives suffer from slow writes but still have lightning fast read times so you have to choose your application carefully. By slow writes I mean almost as slow as the fastest 7200rpm notebook drive.

newegg.com was sold out yesterday but mwave.com still has stock.

I ordered a 64GB one for myself and plan to use it to install my frequently loaded applications and games. I will also put the Windows swap file on it.

Mwave upped the price on the 64GB by $30 yesterday. Probably the most popular one. That's the one I bought. I'll post some benchmarks when I get it.

I received my OCZ 64GB SSD SATAII Core series drive a few days ago and have some time to test it in my Sager 9262.

The HD Tune 2.55 drive speed tests are pretty much as advertised.

Maximum Transfer Rate was 122.4 MB/s (Average 110.5)
Access Time 0.4ms
Burst Rate of 116.9 MB/s
CPU usage of 2.3%

I transfered my Windows XP Pro installation to the new drive and it worked great, for a while. Windows startup times were faster than even my desktop with a pair of 7200rpm WD 500GB SATA drives in RAID0. Hibernation recovery was faster also. Windows was snappy and responsive with non cached applications opening almost as fast as when they are cached which is a huge advantage in XP.

Unfortunately after only a few reboots the drive crashed and became unbootable. I repaired the installation with my Windows install CD but now it ran slower than my original 5400rpm Fujitsu drive that came with the Sager 9262. There were frequent hickups and slowdowns that became increasingly worse the more I used the drive. Eventually the drive stopped working altogether and the entire installation was lost. I rebooted from the original drive and attempted to reformat the OCS SSD and was again able to use it but file transfer times were slow and paused frequently. HD Tune benchmarks appeared normal but the drive was essentially unusable.

The drive's performance continued to deteriorate until I was no longer even able to see the drive and it was causing Windows Explorer to hang so I was forced to physically remove it from the computer.

There have been numerous reports posted online of problems with this drive by end users and my problems appear consistent with everyone else's. OCZ recommends ensuring your motherboard's chipset drivers are up to date and of course I'm using the drivers that came with my new Sager 9262 which are the newest available. There is talk that the problem lies in the onboard controller rather than the memory chips themselves but I have no way of determining this myself.

I will attempt several more tests including running the drive in a different computer and then I will be contacting OCZ directly.

One other important note is that the rebate requires almost immediate response to be valid. You must submit the rebate within 12 days of the original order date so by the time the unit ships and arrives you may have only a few days to prepare and postmark the rebate request or lose the opportunity to redeem it. Of course if you missed the rebate period most vendors will accept returns for the full amount within 30 days. This means you don't want to order one of these drives from a vendor unless they have it in stock and ship it immediately if you plan on redeeming the rebate. After testing the drive I think I understand why OCZ requires the rebate to be submitted right away because once you submit it you can't return it to the vendor.

In the meantime I recommend caution when purchasing and using an OCZ Core Series SSD. Hopefully OZC has fixed these problems with the version 2 of this drive and will upgrade or repair the original Core Series drives that customers have purchased. They do come with a two year warranty.