gfunkdave

If you make it a point to check slickdeals.net daily for a week or two, you're bound to see some good deals on SSDs.

pseudoswede

Another point...

Most likely the only Black Friday SSD deals will be limited to 64GB and 128GB drives. I would be surprised to see anything larger deeply discounted.

nkedel

Yep.

Kind of dumb luck whether the particular models he's been looking at do (Samsung rather more likely than Seagate; not sure if I've successfully talked up the EVO), and the biggest ones (480/500/512gb) go on sale a bit less often.

Landing Gear

I bought a 512 GB Toshiba SSD for $250 at Newegg.

I'm not sure if you approve, nkedel, but the 256 GB version was OEM on my Sony and has been humming along for two and a half years with no problem.

Happy Thanksgiving to all on this forum and those who keep it running!

nkedel

Perfectly good drive, and anything under 50c/gig is a really, really good price.

(In another 18 months, we'll probably be going "people paid 75c/gig for SSDs, but so it goes.)

I don't have any direct track record on their newer drives' reliability but I'd expect it to be at least pretty good -- some much older Lenovo-rebranded Toshibas have been solid in some of the Thinkpads at work.

At that price, I'm tempted to pick one up myself.

Landing Gear

Thanks!

How about this? Acronis True Image 2014, $39.99 - $20 instant discount, $19.99 including free shipping from Newegg.

Use promo code EMCWWVM64, ends 12/1, that's tomorrow.

pseudoswede

I used this guide...

http://www.howtogeek.com/97242/

Both cloning software mentioned are free.

nkedel

Well, the Intel 530 Series 480gb have finally started showing up at retail... and while in principle, they've still got my highest recommendation for the balance of reliability/performance, unlike the very reasonably priced 240gb (just under $200, which is at the high end of prices for that size but still fairly reasonable) Amazon has them for $541... which is essentially undiscounted "...?" pricing.

Perhaps they'll be more reasonable in a couple of months, but with the next generation of controllers coming out (Sandforce 3700, for example) I suspect these are too late to be relevant for performance freaks, and with the Samsung EVO 1TB selling for less than the 480gb Intel, for anyone else, even with further discounting, these aren't terribly attractive.

For other folks, I have been incredibly pleased with the LAMD controller drives we've gotten (from Seagate, Corsair, and most recently from Hynix*) -- fast (if not the very fastest), very consistent performance (unlike Samsung), and so far extremely reliable in abusive server workloads. They're one to watch, at least until the new Sandforce controller has established more of a track record.

(* Hynix bought LAMD back in 2012, and they make their own flash; they mostly sell OEM drives, but the model in a couple of Dells we bought has been great. They used to sell older models with a different controller, which were rather "meh" but if they start getting into the first party drive business for consumers on a greater scale I think they've got a winner on their hands.)

Landing Gear

Edited to add: nkedel must have one of those Amazon accounts where he gets a deal; it was $550 when I looked. But there's free shipping.

Thanks. I'm happy I didn't wait. A price of $541 for a 480 GB SSD seems very high.

nkedel

Yeah, would not have been worth waiting on.

...and Amazon plays with prices; it's showing $550 (well, 549.99) for me now too.

Short supply and pent-up demand on that particular model, combined with nobody yet selling drives with a next-generation controller.

To really take advantage of the newest generation of controllers, you need a PCI-E (or SATA Express) connection rather than regular SATA... I doubt we'll see a lot of that even on Broadwell (except on Macs which have already ditched SATA), so we're talking at least a year out sometime on mainstream laptops.

Plenty of time for the costs to come down, but at the same time, I think the big growth is going to be on slow-ish (by SSD standards), cheap, very high capacity models like the 960gb Crucial or the 1TB Samsung. Both of which are cheaper than the Intel.