For the third time within a month, my 128GB SSDNOW V100 has crapped out when restarting my Mac. For many months it was living as my boot drive installed where the CD drive normally lives. One day rebooting the Mac wouldn't come back up. Running disk utility from another disk reported invalid node structure and inability to repair. Only option is reformat and restore.

Thankfully I have recent backups at all times via Time Machine, so I'm only down a few hours for the restore process itself. The last time this happened I moved the drive over to the primary HD location just in case it was the Mac causing the disk to crap out due to an inability to enter hibernation when running from a drive in the CD location.

But his has happened with 50% battery level and searching the net I've found other affected people with a similar story. Many using OCZ Vertex products, but a number also using Kingston. Same invalid node structure. It seems that new firmware versions for the drives haven't been able to help. The only positive thing I saw was about some destructive firmware flash for the Vertex helping some of its customers - but none had replied to the thread to indicate performance after 3 weeks.

It looks like I'm going to send this thing back to Kingston, but I'm going to be super paranoid about installing whatever they send me back.

Has anyone had any long-term (1 year+) success with an SSD in a MacBook Pro? I may simply need to invest in a new drive from a different brand.

Can you get the official Apple part? I'm sure it's overpriced and not as fast, but maybe it actually works.

I haven't looked yet to find out what part they're using, but that's definitely an option. They don't appear to sell any retro-fit kits themselves however, so at best I'd be buying the OEM version

Last I looked, apple didn't offer ssd's for refit.

Per Mark's advice I bought an OCZ Agility II 120GB. Rev 1.25. Been running since Mar 2011.
Very fast boot as long as there are no errors in the startup.

Apps start with one bounce on the dock.

I suppose you cold try an Intel SSD -- they've come down a lot in price, and gone up a bit in performance. On those two fronts they're almost competitive with the mainstream brands.

Intel is a tad larger company than the others, and they do know a bit more about motherboard chipsets too so perhaps their own SSD/firmware will work better in a Mac.

I installed an Intel SSD a year ago with no problems since... Just sayin'...

I installed a Crucial M4 in my wife's laptop and it seems fine so far (maybe 6 months ago). Micron/Intel share a NAND fab, so the memory in them is the same but I suspect the controller is different.

Anand likes the new Samsung SSD drives. His review is here - according to him, Intel and Samsung are reliable options.

From the anand review: