Mushkin Chronos 120 GB SATA 6.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (MKNSSDCR120GB)

If you are looking at a SSD, you are already technically saavy.First off, what is in the box. These come with a 3.5" tray, so that will save you a few bucks. It does not come with SATA 6.0 cable, so you may want to order that with your purchase.I considered a lot of things when I finally chose the mushkin. Mushkin is a great brand. It has been one of the top two or three RAM manufacturers for a long time. For the enthusiast market, mushkin is right there at the top when considering reliability and performance.I looked at Samsung, OCZ, Corsair and Intel. One thing I consistently saw from customers reviews was that ocz and corsair frustrated people. Either the firmware was outdated, or the published speeds weren't met. Intel is a great bit overpriced. Especially the 530s. So I narrowed my choice between Samsung and mushkin. When I considered the ten dollars I would have to spend for the 3.5" tray with the Samsung, the Samsung would be about 20% more expensive. And performance of the mushkin actually outperforms the Samsung. Samsung has great reliability track record in the ssd market, but that reliability wasn't worth 20% to meOkay, that being said...how has my experience been? Great! I decided to do a fresh install. I was running two raptors in raid 0, so I was operating with the best of the platter HD era. My computer was already lightning fast. Safe to say, my computer is even faster now. Boot time is faster. My PC was already booting up under one minute, and I boot even faster now. The computer wakes from sleep instantly.Surprisingly, the best part of my ssd experience is surfing the web. As soon as I click on a page, chrome loads it. I really can't put into words just how fast it is. I never realized how much my HD was slowing down my web surfing. The difference is probably under a second, but the experience difference is significant.Listen, if you think prices will come down significantly, you will find yourself waiting atleast a year before that happens. Hard drives are the biggest bottleneck on today's computers. With this ssd, your HD with no longer be the choke point.This is a great product. Mushkin is a great brand. The price is fantastic. If you are trying to speed up an aging computer, or you want the best computing experience, I highly recommend this drive. If you have a nice computer that works well, then you can afford to wait. I bought this drive to reduce the noise and temp of my computer. Also, I wanted to save some money off my electric bill. I am very happy with my purchase. If you got your heart set on a ssd, this drive should be tops on your list.On a final note. I went with this version rather than the deluxe. The difference between the two is minimal. The only real difference is the NAND...basically how the hard drives compress data. $25 isn't a big difference in price, but the performance difference in real world experience is also minimal. If you want the bleeding edge of technology, then go with the deluxe. But I decided to go with the regular enhanced version because I figured I wouldn't notice the difference either way. For me, it made no sense to pay $25 for a difference that I truly would not notice in real world use.P.S. make sure you set your HD BIOS settings to ACHI when installing a SSD. Make sure you set the ACHI for the SATA 6.0 slot. Motherboards have separate controllers for SATA II and SATA III. My SATA III setting was hidden. You can change it to ACHI after you install windows if you have vista or windows 7. But like anything, safer to do it before you install windows.P.S.S. These score a 7.7 on Windows Experience. I guess 2 in raid 0 will get 7.9...but meh, it's such a nebulous standard.*UPDATE* This hard drive is still working great and now score a 7.9 on Windows 8.

Took a deep breath and picked this drive over the Corsair, Samsung, and Intel (having never tried a Mushkin product or even heard of it) because of the incredible price (amazon's) hoping that by saving $50-$70 would still purchase something very good: Couldn't be more delighted! its a quality product (great construction made in the US) and the increase in performance is incredible! windows benchmark went from 5.2 to 7.7!Update: July 4th 2012Similar to other users regarding the failure of the Drive Recognition by the Bios occurred this morning.. completely dead! contacting Mushkin tomorrow for RMA however data recovery from an SSD is very difficult/expensive (Geeksquad starts at $500 all the way up to $1600); therefore do not use as Primary without a daily back-up!! extremely disappointing as this seems to be a known issue with this model - took the chance based on the positive reviews but it didn't pan out.Update: July 17th 2012I am giving this product 4 stars now - as Mushkin customer care was Excellent with no hassles and immediately approved a replacement (they also had an option to replace prior to receiving the defective unit upon a credit card hold which I did not opt for). New drive is in place and there is also a firmware update which hopefully improves reliability.

Easy to install and very fast for a month. 2 days after the return window it dies without warning. It is now no longer detected by the BIOS like many other reviewers described.

PROS: It's a SSD. Tech support is readily available, boot times are super fast, and makes my computer run like a top...CONS:...until it decides to completely stop working. These drives just don't seem to be designed to have the staying power as your traditional HDD. Mushkin has seriously costed me hours and hours to re-installing my OS, problem solving and diagnostics. The first drive I had lasted about 8 months, the second drive lasted less than a month. What really gets me is that whenever I tried to email the company to actually diagnose my problem, they would just send me a printable RMA return label along with a copy-pasted apology. So now (since I dumped all my money into my computer) I am stuck with a drive that I really have no idea when it will quit out on me again, and no funds to purchase a drive through a different company. If you decide to buy this discount drive, make sure you have a complete system backup, and backup often to a different drive. I really wanted to support this company, but I'm not gonna sugar coat this issue. My experience with Mushkin drives has been a pretty bad one, and all they seem to want to do is just send out replacement products.Like I said, Customer Service is readily available, but all they seem to want to do is send a shipping label and send a new one, rather than trying to help you with the drive you currently have. If you complain enough you can get the drive over-nighted to you at Mushkins expense, which is seriously the least they could do when its their drive that completely ruins the software on your computer. An upgrade to a different and more stable drive would be much appreciated.OVERALL: I am currently on my 3rd drive...in less than a year. I get that there are some duds in electronics, but I have never had so many problems with one single computer component. Two stars for Customer Service, ease of RMA, and that cool Tech Support Guy...I think his name was Greg.