Samsung 840 Series Solid State Drives (SSD): 500GB 840 Series + Far Cry 3 Game Coupon $314, 512GB 840 Pro Series + Assassin's Creed III Game Coupon $456, 250GB 840 Series $144

Great drive, paid 189 for this thing a few months back.

what are the chances of amazon matching this within the next month? I have 100 dollars in gift cards that i was assuming id be spending on an ssd from amazon. If not ill just pull the trigger on this and use the GC on something else.

Quote from HeathAU25 : soooo anyone else with another answer?

Mechanical drives: speed deteriorates with time,annoying sounds..etc,the last on the liist is a sudden loss of data,and the percentage of this type of problem is low.
SSD:First problem to face is sudden loss of data and black/blue screen of death,if you buy buy a reliable brand like samsung with low failure rate compared to other brands,if you are a speed sensitive guy buy ssd,if not stay with mechanical.

Quote from HeathAU25 : soooo anyone else with another answer?

Really depends, if you're talking physical durability, SSD's should be more robust with no mechanical parts and can be shaken, dropped.(laphroaigh's point). If you get a good brand SSD (Crucial, Intel, Samsung (830), they should be as reliable as any conventional mechanical drive. Nevertheless, Mechanical drives have been around for decades which De-Cuss might be referring to. I think SSD's have matured enough to the same reliability as conventional hard drives.

That said, this 840 does not have any hard data on its reliability plus it uses a cheaper NAND, if you want reliability, look at the Intel 520 180gb at $130 at amazon and bestbuy, I just bought the 520 for the 5 year warranty, though I'm currently using the Crucial m4, Samsung 830 (all 128gb) and and gskill 60gb (had to RMA this drive 2 times, but that was 2 years ago )

Damn, if it was anything other than the 840, id be all over it. 840 have sketckhy issues related to reliability. They are not the 830's or 840 pro's. Reliability is important to me so I tend to stick with intel, or Samsung 830's.

i had frys price match

Good Price! About the same price I bought during black friday. It's my first SSD and it's been great so far!

Quote from HeathAU25 : soooo anyone else with another answer?

I hope I can clear things up:

SSD: like people have said, extreme physical durability. My flash drives have been through a lot (including the washer and dryer) and are still perfectly fine (I should also note that my flash drive, like most, uses TLC memory). The "reliability" issue that people are mentioning with TLC is because TLC stores 3 bits per cell instead of 2, over time (many reads/writes) these bits can start to overlap and cause data corruption. But the key to this is over time, because for the average desktop user, it will be many years before this starts happening. The other problem with SSD drives is the firmware, which obviously can screw the memory up. Reliable companies like Intel and Samsung have good firmware developers and thus have reliable drives.

HDD: Moving parts cause wear and tear in the drive over time, and thus the drive can get noisy etc, and because there are physical parts in the first place, the drive is susceptible to physical damage from bumps and drops (which is why it can be an issue in laptops). But overall, HDDs are reliable because they have no "firmware" issues due to being around for such a long time.

tldr; SSD's are physically durable, but can suffer reliability issues from firmware and storing multiple bits per cell, whereas HDD's aren't as physically durable and have moving parts which wear over time, but have no firmware issues. In a perfect world, SSD's win, but practically, it depends on firmware/SLC vs MLC vs TLC (which is why companies use fancy enterprise SLC SSD's).

Still holding out for a Samsung 250Gb SSD (or Crucial M4) for one Benjamin and I'll bite. Hopefully this spring it will be lowered to that price point.

Quote from HeathAU25 : Thanks for the info and repped. Ill probably do the raid 1 setup. Its going in a desktop. Cooling is excessive in my build. Good circulation in antec 300 illusion case. And I realize it's more than just boot times. Not transferring/saving/starting huge programs so speed isn't too huge of a difference for me. But you're saying that ssd has little increased reliability in a desktop setup? I understand how it's much more reliable in a laptop... but not to much of a difference in a desktop?

Yes, but what HD to use for the RAID? Whenever I get started on reading reviews on amazon/newegg I get immediately turned off because of all the negative reviews.

Quote from Doom5 : Neither the 840 or 840 Pro have any long-term reliability data available. The 840 uses TLC NAND, which is pretty new, versus the MLC NAND in the 840 Pro. I'll agree with you that the real-world long-term reliability of the TLC NAND isn't well established at this point.

there's nothing to establish, you apply known physics (electricity) to known chemistry (TLC, MLC, SLC ingredients) and you have a known long term outcome.

you don't put it all in an SSD and then magically expect a different outcome.

granted, if you're the type that throws out hard drives every 2 years of so just because there's something newer/better out there, then by all means, the laws of physics won't catch up with you before you dump the drive. but for those that keep their drives for say 5+ years, you're asking for trouble with a TLC drive.

i'm still confused why samsung would put out an inferior product and charge more for it than they did the 830's... did they just want to milk their good rep from the 830's?

WOW. I paid $200 for the 256GB 830 series like 2 months ago. Crazy to see the newer version priced 30% lower just a few months later.

Cliff is coming...

I have an 840, they are good for home use