One Year With SSD - Time for a New One?
It's been a year since I upgraded my laptop to an SSD. I know this because I added a reminder to my calendar at the time to remind me that after 1 year it might be worth swapping it out. Why? Because I read some horror stories regarding their reliability and expected life-spans (most died within a year in the cases highlighted here).
My plan was to change it after the first year. Should I though? Seems a crazy thing to do. considering the cost. But then, if it did fail, I'd curse myself for not having done so.
You can now get 512GB SSD drives, which you couldn't a year ago. Although they're not cheap. Crucial's is going for £500 on Amazon! If I did swap it then I'd remove the slave spinning-disk HDD from the laptop and use the "old" SSD there - making it a twin SSD laptop. So I wouldn't throw it away or anything daft.
I'm not sure what to do though. The laptop itself is now getting on a bit. It's nearly two and half years old! Seems ancient to me. Although, because I gave it 8GB of RAM and look after it (don't install anything other than the essentials) it still feels perfectly adequate. Again no good reason to change.
Decisions, decisions.
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Go with your gut feeling and what you have in your bank account. It never fails.
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You could consider a Hybrid drive... http://www.amazon.co.uk/SEAGATE-Mom.. ../dp/B0068QO82G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330522350&sr=8-2
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My suggestion:
1. Put aside enough money to buy a new SSD (with express delivery), and don't touch it.
2. Get a *really* good hourly backup solution. If you were using a Mac, Time Machine with an external platter drive would be perfect.
3. Go as long as you can without replacing the drive. When it goes kablooey, you'll be back up within a day.
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of course you need 2. anyway. If you went a little while on your new drive and it failed you'd be just as sorry as if you'd kept your old one and it failed.
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The other benefit of the approach Brian suggests is that you'll get more storage and performance for your money down the road than today. I agree - if you're backed-up, keep it running till it croaks, take a business holiday while the replacement ships and save the money till then.
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I agree with Brian, except I would go one step further. Have an old or inexpensive disk sitting on the shelf. Every so often clone the drive. If your primary HDD fails, replace the drive immediately and go order your new one. No downtime at all!
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Assuming you are making backups of non-recoverables I don't see any reason why you would want to replace a component that works in anticipation that it may fail. If you don't need more performance or space, keep what you have, and keep the money in your business.
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When you look up upgrade the laptop get a msata SSD for boot and a 2.5" 1TB HDD for data. This setup rocks.
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