Newsflash: SSD Pricing Is Getting Enticing
Back in January I rather impulsively purchased a 120 GB Sandisk Ultra SSD. At $120 it was just too tempting to pass up. Until recently that disk lived in my HP Mini 5102 netbook.
In truth, 120 GB was on the borderline of being large enough for what I need. I have a 50 GB paid Dropbox account. That dictates that s very small disk will present certain inconveniences.
The SSD in the netbook achieved what I had hoped. The little PC booted faster, ran faster and had longer battery life than with the stock WD Scopio drive.
The events of past week or two have resulted in my having a spare 750 GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive. I’ve swapped that into the netbook for now. That leaves the SSD without a home, a situation that I will surely remedy shortly.
SSD pricing keeps dropping. The deal on the SanDisk Ultra was based on the fact that they were SATA-2 drives when the coming generation was based upon the faster SATA-3 interface. In refitting an existing computer there may be little merit in the faster interface.
The best deals on SSDs have thus far been on 60 GB and 120 GB models
Manufacturers and resellers still seem to substantially upcharge an SSD as a configuration option. I suspect that it might be more cost effective to buy a promo desktop, then clone the boot disk to an SSD, leaving the 1 TB drive for user data.
For me this is a matter that will impact my professional life as well as personal computers. My employer just began shipping a new product that is more mission-critical than any past offering. One of the strategies they have employed in the design of the device is to have it boot from a RAID 1 pair of SSDs connected to a battery backed RAID controller.
Have you been using SSDs in your regular ride? Do you have any experience or advice to share? Are there tweaks to the OS that can benefit s system so equipped?