What to consider when buying an SSD

One of the most important hardware elements of our PC is the hard drive, and thanks to the new SSD units, it can certainly mean a before and after in the performance of our computer. For this reason, below we are going to explain some essential concepts that you should take into account when buy an SSD drive.

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SSD disk price

Well yes, let's start with the price of SSD hard drives. This aspect is frequently highly debated, and we must not forget that SSD disks have recently appeared on the market, which makes their price still somewhat excessive, especially if we compare them with the traditional hard drives.

Of course, it is clear that the investment is worth it, since today it is one of the main changes we can make to our PC to improve its performance. However, these high prices are changing little by little, and more and more we find different manufacturers that bring with them new models that compete with each other and this represents a decrease in prices within the market.

At the same time, the sharp drop in the price of NAND flash memories It makes these discs increasingly accessible to the entire public, and overall we have been able to verify that in just five years the price of these devices has decreased by up to 90%.

However, it must also be taken into account that within the same manufacturer, their models may vary in price, and in this sense, the discs Higher capacity SSD They are more profitable than those with lower capacity, since each GB can reduce its price by even more than 50%.

SSD hard drive capacity

Another important aspect that we are going to take into account is the SSD hard drive capacity. As a general rule we are going to use it as the main boot disk for our computer, which is why we will generally have 250 GB to spare. We can even go down to 120 GB without excessive problem, since on this disk we are going to install only the operating system and the programs, transferring our files to an external hard drive that can be SSD if we want to enjoy maximum speed to the detriment of the savings, or directly a traditional hard drive with greater capacity, although we will ensure that it has a USB 3.0 connection to enjoy the maximum possible performance.

Performance of SSD hard drives

It is also essential that we pay attention to performance. In this sense, we strongly recommend that you do not purchase an SSD hard drive that offers a speed of less than 500 MB/s in both reading and writing.

This section must be taken into account, since currently we can find SSD hard drives with transfer speeds inferior and have a market price well below the rest of hard drives. However, the investment is not going to be as profitable, since we are not going to experience such a notable increase in speed while we are going to be paying an amount that is not really going to represent a considerable improvement.

That is, to stay with one speed of a traditional hard drive, we better choose to pay the price of a traditional hard drive and not spend on an SSD drive.

Take into account SSD failures

SSD hard drives have an important advantage, and that is that we completely forget about the mechanical failures, since it does not have components of this type as it does not have moving parts. However, we must keep in mind that we will not forget the electrical faults, and in this sense we must ensure that a constant and adequate electrical flow is always maintained, for which we recommend without a doubt that you use a SAI, which is nothing more than a device that is responsible for regulating the electrical current to avoid shocks and falls that are too strong. At the same time, they also usually have a battery that in the event of a power outage will allow us to save all our work and turn off the equipment safely and stably.

However, it must also be taken into account that the new SSD hard drives have memory cells additional ones that will be used to reassign sectors that may have been damaged. For this reason, the warranty that we can find depending on the manufacturer ranges between three and five years, while it is estimated that the lifespan of an SSD hard drive It will last at least 5 to 7 years without causing problems.

At the same time, the new hard drives are demonstrating surprising resistance, and fundamentally we are going to take into account that they expire depending on the data that enters and leaves, that is, we will be able to perform writes with an established limit. However, these tests make it clear that we can currently exceed two petabytes on each hard drive, an amount that obviously none of those present will need at any time except in very exceptional cases.