[ale] [semi OT] encouraging and discouraging HDD and SSD observations

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Hi all,

I was wandering around Frys today and looking at all the pretty tech stuff trying to get me to spend money.

Now we all know the variation on Murphy's law that says a "thing" will fail within a few weeks after the warranty runs out, and many of us have probably seen that happen.

So, discouraging observation: it is now almost impossible to find any HDD or SSD with a warranty of more than 2-3 years.  Are they KIDDING?  There's no way I want to replace my drives every 2-3 years.  In the past, I would only buy 5 year drives, and still prefer to do that.

Note that WD Black and Velociraptor HDD's still have 5 year warranties.

I couldn't find warranties on Seagate's website in a few minutes, but the last time I looked at the boxes in the store, I had a very hard time finding any with a 5 year warranty.

In terms of SSD's, the only one with a 5 year warranty I found at Frys was the Samsung Pro series.

Hint: Pro level SSD's cost MORE than $ 1 / GB.

Encouraging observation: Frys had a pretty large selection of SSD's with pretty good prices, if you consider $ 1 / GB good.  Of course, big spinning hard drives are below $ 0.10 / GB.

I decided to wait, partly because I just upgraded the boot drive on my main machine to a 1 TB spinning drive since the 500 GB one was getting too small.

I'm not ready to pony up $ 500 - $ 1000 just to get to sub 30 second boots with minimal other benefits.

By the way, I've heard there's a way an SSD can act as a cache to provide fast boots without having to restructure your entire / drive.  Other than hybrid drives, anyone know how that works?

Sincerely,

Ron



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Ron Frazier
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