SSDs are getting pretty mainstream these days. Several years ago, I’ve posted about how SSDs are the best upgrade you can do for your notebook. Today, new Apple notebooks no longer come with conventional hard disk drives. It’s not uncommon to see flash-only storages on many new ultrabook computers from other manufacturers.
The cost of SSDs has also come down tremendously. The Crucial M500 240GB SSD, for example recently sold for only US$109 on Amazon (with free shipping to Singapore on orders above $US125). That’s under US$0.50 or S$0.60 per GB.
SSDs still cost a pricey premium over conventional hard disk drives. Still possibly by a factor of 10. Some people still want to hold out for SSD prices to fall further. It probably will fall further, but I think, you cannot expect SSD prices to converge to, or near to, conventional hard disk drive prices. They just aren’t the same thing. Unless, conventional hard disk drives get wiped out entirely. Not impossible, but improbable in the foreseeable future.
We should not try to equate SSDs to conventional hard disk drives, but understand that they serve different purposes. One is extremely fast, excellent for installation the base operating system and applications. The other is cheap for extremely large capacities, excellent for storing media files (music, photos and videos).
Today, SSDs have also gotten so fast that, ahem, their performance seems to matter not that much anymore. It’s not necessary to get the best and the fastest anymore. Anything relatively current will pretty much do. The above Crucial M500 is one such example. It’s no match for Samsung’s EVO and EVO PRO, but it’s pretty good, especially when you’re considering it as an upgrade from a conventional hard disk drive.
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It’s also proudly made in Singapore at Bendemeer Road!
The only thing that’s probably would have made this post quite holistic: a hard drive enclosure for the replaced hard drive; a measly $10-$20 box (depending on USB 2.0/3.0 ). Otherwise, short and sweet!
Reliability is a concern. I’ve ran into Crucials (with old buggy firmware, but a quick update fixed it and data was still intact), slowed/faulty Samsungs, and dead OCZs. Intel still number 1 in terms of reliability. Consumers need to be well educated on these to make informed purchase decisions.