How badly did you get hosed on your first SSD?

[BonzaiDuck]

You can't really speak of "getting hosed" with newly-introduced product prices in comparison to the present. Production costs come down; uncertainties about demand resolve themselves; product improvement occurs; the up-front R&D costs are eventually recouped through sales during an earlier time.

I spent about $190 on an Intel Elm Crest 128GB in 2011, mostly hoping to use it in an ISRT configuration. It was too big for ISRT; the ISRT drivers at that time were buggy, but quickly fixed. I purchased a Patriot Pyro for about $140 to replace it, and moved the Elm Crest to Mom's LGA-775 system where it seems to be working just fine.

Mom doesn't complain about hourglass delays -- a reprieve for other complaints while she loads up her e-mail inbox with Publishers' Clearinghouse announcements and other spam. So it was more or less worth the price in unintended ways.

 

[Sable]

Samsung 830 Series 256GB - £309.98

Back in 2011.

Worth. Every. Penny.

 

[Sable]

Bought a second one in Aug 2012 for £145.00 so 8 months later it was less than half the price and still amazing.

Worth. DOUBLE. Every. Penny.

 

[ChippyUK]

I paid $300 (£180) for Intel Gen 2 80gb and still running strong today. Mind you, I paid £130 last August year for a 512gb SSD. Look forward to spend < £200 for a 1TB version in the future.

 

[corkyg]

September 2012 - Samsung 830, 256GB, $217. Great SSD, great value - no hosing.

 

[Towermax]

May 2010--bought my first SSD, an OCZ Vertex 60GB for $149. It's still running fine in my HTPC.

Yes, I have bigger, faster, and cheaper SSDs now. But I don't care--it was the biggest performance improvement in years. I'd do it again in a flash.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I heard all of the claims about SSDs in this forum, and quite frankly, I was skeptical. I never noticed slowdowns, using HDDs. I'm a patient person, I guess.

Normally I would say you were either full of beans or a Linux CLI-only user.

But I recently had a friend switch over to an SSD, who swore up and down they didn't notice a difference. (Never reboots, leaves their favorite two applications open, plenty of RAM.)

It was a week before they took some pictures and launched iPhoto. THEN they noticed.

So I guess it's safe to say that a light desktop workload that's 90% Internet and Word isn't particularly disk-bottlenecked.

(IMO, Word is a lot less doggy too, but they don't believe me.)

 

[blastingcap]

Black Friday, 2010, OCZ Vertex 2 SSD. 90GB for $152 including shipping, but I'm pretty sure it had a rebate that brought down the price.

Immediately flashed firmware. Never had any problems with it. Sold it for cheap a couple of years later.

Performance of the Vertex 2 was slow by today's standards, but still easily beat HDDs.

 

[sze5003]

My first drive, 128gb m4 I paid $160. This was a couple months after it was out. The second one I have is the Samsung 830 256gb I also paid $160 sometime last year.

I'm thinking of getting another 120gb ssd to install as a hackingtosh since all my hard ware is compatible.

Eventually I want to replace the 256 drive with a 512 and keep Windows 8 on there.

 

[996GT2]

My first SSD was a 40GB Kingston SSDNow V Series which was around $80-90 AR. That was back in 2009.

Flashed it with Intel X-25V firmware to enable TRIM. Ah, the good old days.

The first time I used it, I was mind=blown at how much faster it felt compared to my 7200 RPM HDD at the time.

 

[Hulk]

You can't really speak of "getting hosed" with newly-introduced product prices in comparison to the present. Production costs come down; uncertainties about demand resolve themselves; product improvement occurs; the up-front R&D costs are eventually recouped through sales during an earlier time.

I spent about $190 on an Intel Elm Crest 128GB in 2011, mostly hoping to use it in an ISRT configuration. It was too big for ISRT; the ISRT drivers at that time were buggy, but quickly fixed. I purchased a Patriot Pyro for about $140 to replace it, and moved the Elm Crest to Mom's LGA-775 system where it seems to be working just fine.

Mom doesn't complain about hourglass delays -- a reprieve for other complaints while she loads up her e-mail inbox with Publishers' Clearinghouse announcements and other spam. So it was more or less worth the price in unintended ways.

I'm writing this in a joking manner. Of course you don't get hosed. You get early use of a new product and you pay for that privilege.

I mean looking back it "feels" like you got hosed as the prices drop.
Early adopters subsidize mass production for future price decreases.

 

[F1shF4t]

First two SSDs bought were ~500AU for 80GB G1 x25-m and ~440AU for 120GB Falcon.
Expensive but well worth the price. The quietness and performance were jaw dropping coming from a raptor.

 

[Charlie98]

I paid $90 on Black Friday 2011 for my 64GB Agility3... Despite the shaky SF2281 controller, I've been very happy with it and it continues to soldier on in HTPC duty. No 'hose...' I wouldn't have bought it if I didn't think it was worth it.

Speaking of 'hosed...' same invoice... I bought a 500GB Hitachi spinner... for $100. Today on NE: WD Blue 500GB, $40

You pays your money and you takes your chances.

 

[fleshconsumed]

160GB Intel G2 a few months after it was released. I don't remember what I paid, I think about $440, and that was a big discount at the time - basically I got lucky paying that much. I cringe right now at the thought of spending almost half a grand on SSD, but it made my Windows 7 box fly. I have since "retired" it from my main box due to its age. It is still alive and kicking, but it is now in my server as a D drive doing light DB duty and storage for temp files.

In retrospect I'm really glad I got it, but I'm a lot more price conscious now so I'd never spend that much on SSD again. I also haven't bought any more RAM in the last year and a half because what I have is enough and the prices are at all time high. Basically I'm a money pinching asshole right now, I don't want to be pinching money, but c'est la vie...

 

[Maximilian]

Still waiting on the 1TB drives to be cheap :awe:

 

[fuzzymath10]

Paid C$400 for my first 80GB X25-M G1 in early 2009, and still using it today. Worth every penny. Every system booting from a spindle drive since then has made me cringe.

 

[abbcccus]

December 2009, OCZ Vertex $190 after rebate

At the time, it was a good price, so I would say not hosed. The drive still works perfectly (as do all the rest of my OCZ SSDs - 1 Solid and 3 Agility 3s).

 

[JManInPhoenix]

Samsung 840 128GB, $145 last Summer.

 

[Wuzup101]

$170 each for 2x 160GB intel 320s (after a pretty sizeable rebate of like $60 each).

 

[FiLeZz]

I bought 2 corsair force GT hard drives 240gb each at a price tag of $600 each..

That was a total of $1200 to get me started in the SSD world.

 

[dud]

I just made my first SSD purchase this weekend. $64 for a 120 GB Crucial M500 shipped.

Only time will tell ...

 

[Red Squirrel]

I waited because I kept hearing a lot about people having issues, so figured I'd just wait till I build a new machine and they'd possibly get better by then.

Though I did end up getting an OCZ one not realizing those are bad. So far so good though.

Seems you really have to do your research with stuff in general these days though, as there are sometimes issues with certain models/brands that are defective by design and they just keep selling them anyway.

 

[edm]

My first SSD was a 60GB Vertex 2 that cost $145, purchased back in 2010.

 

[nitromullet]

I bought a Corsair F120 back in 2011 for ~$250, and I had to replace it when I upgraded to Haswell. Apparently, those old SATA II drives weren't as tight with SATA specs as they needed to be. I never regretted a dime of that purchase.

I actually regret the Kingston 120GB SSD I got for $70 that I am currently using more. It was a fair price (and it's a perfectly good SSD), but 120GB is really just too small to use as an OS SSD with a few choice apps.

 

[dighn]

intel x25-m 80 GB (first gen) for about $450. it was worth it.