I prefer Samsung SSD's but have used Intel drives without issue in large deployments of computers that bake in mobile computers mounted near the windshield of vehicles.

 

If money is not an object and speed is important then my favorite is:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147193

 

A little cheaper

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147189

 

I recommend these assuming you have SATA III on your mobo. Shop around as you can probably get a better price and no sales tax.

 

Since you don't want to keep the other drive you can use mini xp on the Hirens cd to recover your old data. Optionally you can install the old disk as a secondary disk. Watch what you back up because I am still leaning towards a malware issue as oppressed to a hardware issue. It's a crapshoot

 

Good luck.

 

 

Murphdog - I have system up now, via installing another old hard drive and placing a one month old image of the SSD on that drive. I never was able to boot it in safe mode, not even safe mode with the command prompt. I think it had something to do with the file KDCOM.dll but not really sure. I ran all the Hirens diagnostics and it showed no hardware issues. As for memory yes the system has always handled the 24 gigs that I have in it. They are two banks of triple channel ram. When I was mucking around I reseated all the boards and blew out the dust and must not have had some of the memory seated fully. Reseated it and it sees the full 24 gigs now.

 

The question now is what SSD to get. The stuff I was looking at seems to suggest either Intel or Samsung. Probably looking at 180-250 gig. Any suggestion on a particular model to go for would be welcomed.

Seriously look at the tear downs of the air and both retina MBPs. They might use commodity chips and controllers, but they are proprietary form factor.

 

As for stats, the Verizon guy might be measuring the abusiveness of his customer base.

 

Like you, we run various platforms without hardware issues outside of drops and such, and our policies don't encourage lying about damage. I'll bet yours are probably similar. We both don't have many issues. Look at a population of the lowest common denominator encouraged to lie about causes of failure, and the rate shoots up.

I can't figure out what form factor has to do with anything? I agree Apple takes commodity hardware and "uniquely fits it together" better than most. However, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the MTBF of the actual components [unless it's something caused by an overheating situation due to poor design like someone mentioned before]. Yes, Apple does have some custom components for their form factor but not all of them. So if they are using SSDs made by SanDisk their MTBF is the same as any Samsung, Toshiba, Dell, etc PC or Cell that uses SSDs based on same underlying technology.

 

As for the stats, my friend works for Verizon Corp, not a store or retailer - ie the stats are for retail and corporate accounts. The conversation we were having was strictly about hardware and the comment was that Apple iPhones had the highest percentage of bad hardware. That is what I was told. I don't know the methodology of how the numbers were collected or the scope. 

 

Who do know at Verizon? PM me and I'll ask this person myself.

I'm not going to out a high level Verizon corporate employee who told me Apple is just as crappy as any other manufacturer to someone I don't even know on the internet. Sorry.

Slave the sad drive and see if you can access the partition

Meant ssd drive. Damn spell check

Image on flash might be corrupt I don't trust flash regardless of how reliable there supposed to be. I've had too many graphics on me. My opinion your boot is crapped/ get a linux boot and replace ... if you need step by step pm me.. sounds Like you know enough to do it.

 

Rarely is hardware and when it is you usually don't get past post.

 

Windows xp goes on all my pcs, anything after sucks.. then again so does xp. If all you do is browse the web and watch videos run linux.

 

I prefer Samsung SSD's but have used Intel drives without issue in large deployments of computers that bake in mobile computers mounted near the windshield of vehicles.

 

If money is not an object and speed is important then my favorite is:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147193

 

A little cheaper

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147189

 

I recommend these assuming you have SATA III on your mobo. Shop around as you can probably get a better price and no sales tax.

 

Since you don't want to keep the other drive you can use mini xp on the Hirens cd to recover your old data. Optionally you can install the old disk as a secondary disk. Watch what you back up because I am still leaning towards a malware issue as oppressed to a hardware issue. It's a crapshoot

 

Good luck.

 

 

Thanks.  Off to Bermuda for the rest of the week, so I will attack this when I get back.  What performance difference can I expect from the two Samsung drives you suggested.  I am Running a ASUS P6X58D which has six 3GB/sec Sata ports AND two 6GB/Sec Sata ports.  The processor is an Intel i7-930 at 2.8ghz.  I use the SSD just for the operating system and software, all data is on four internal 2TB hard drives.  Thanks

You won't see much difference if any at all. The pro has a little faster write and a better warranty. It is hard for me to justify the extra money for the pro version. Unless you are really stuck on speed specs the 840 should be fine. Enjoy the vacation.

I'm not going to out a high level Verizon corporate employee who told me Apple is just as crappy as any other manufacturer to someone I don't even know on the internet. Sorry.

 

That's kind of my point. Phones in general are not something I see a lot of hardware issues with that are eligible for warranty coverage. Mostly impact and moisture damage with some handsets. Everything hardware related that I have encountered is not a matter of defect but poor choices in engineering like my samasung galaxy S and it's worlds worst wi-fi reception and totally messed up GPS.

 

One consulting firm for british telecom found the hardware related support incidents (in 2011) for andorid to be 14%, windows phone 7 9%, iOS 7%, and blackberry 3.7% over a sample of 600,000 incidents. They grouped by OS. IF you decide to count the iphone, a single model of phone, against any other single model of phone, and then count pure number of issues, you will likely come up with the most returns as it has outsold every other model significantly until the galaxy SIII. Failure rate tracking is also not necessarily indicative of what a customer will run into as they may divide up their perception of the world differently. For example, they ask for the most reliable phone, they don't want the OS, they want a make and model they can go out and buy, but they will probably pester you for a recommendation of a platform and want you to tell them android, iphone, or blackberry.