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by jmomo 4692 days ago
For those in the know, and for the benefit of laymen who don't have the time to do the research, what are the things that a buyer should look for in a SSD, in regards to reliability and longevity? Technology, brand, controller?
2 comments
andrewcooke 4691 days ago
the only critical thing is physical size. some (mainly ultralight) laptops take drives that are thinner than normal laptop drives (this is also an issue if you're buying a new spinning disk drive, of course).

apart from that, assuming you buy a popular, current model, it will just work (and be reliable). this article is bikeshedding for hardware and enterprise geeks. so, just like anything else, get something reasonably priced from a reputable make (longevity of support, availability). currently samsung seem pretty good.

and finally, if you don't already use one, get one. it's by far the best way to improve "perceived speed" of your computer (well, assuming you already have enough memory).

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mdpye 4691 days ago
My Intel X?? came as a superslim 2.5 package, but with a plastic bumper as part of the construction making it up to full height. Having to disassemble it first thing to remove the buffer went just fine, but wasn't a great start (warranty voided before I even powered it up?)
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gcb0 4691 days ago
Had to remove enclosure of a Kingston drive to fit a notebook also. Just cycled all the storage in the desktop before voiding my warranty... Still sucks

In your case it's double ironic since Intel is the one that pushed for slim ssd because of the ultrabook shenanigans while everyone was doing a standard size. Not that having smaller drivers is bad...

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miahi 4691 days ago
The only thing you have to know about reliability is "always have backups". I bought 5 SSDs and used them as OS drives on laptops and desktops. No SSD actually failed, but they had "glitches" - 3 of them, of different brands and on different PCs and OSes, lost data for no apparent reason - nothing in the SMART logs and tests. Twice the OS had to be restored from backups. The good news is that after the restore (on the same device) everything was fine and I continued using them.
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