SSDs are getting cheap

[valfaw]

newwgg just had a m4 128gb crucial for $99 that I just grabbed as a second to the first one I bought and have the better part of filled.

I's cost averaged down now to just about $1/gb as I paid $160 at teh beginning of the year for my first one.

as they say, if I only knew then what I know now...

[Saintor]

OCZ Vertex Plus 240 GB for $170 after $30 rebate on slickdeals.net

Don't.

My Vertex Plus has been a complete nightmare and specs are not so good. I won't bash systematically OCZ but spending a bit more for a better version (Vertex 4) sounds like a good idea.

[BRealistic]

Is the expected service life for SSDs still just a few years?

[Angry_Birds]

In theory they should last longer than regular mechanical drives, and if you buy from a quality manufacturer like Samsung or Crucial it probably will.

[O_G]

Is the expected service life for SSDs still just a few years?

SLC (single-layer) SSDs should last quite a while, but MLC (multi-layer) NAND has a significantly reduced lifespan.

NAND is rated for a certain number of cycles and as it shrinks (from 55nm to 22nm, for instance) the number of cycles decreases. The controller also implements wear leveling algorithms with space set aside. Enterprise SSDs tend to have more NAND space set aside. Controllers also determine write amplification via their design.

Remember that although NAND is programmed at the page level (4KB - 8KB), it can only be erased at the block level (512KB - 2048KB). This imbalance in write/erase granularity means that eventually you'll have to write more to NAND than you've sent to the host (e.g. go to write 8KB but have to read, modify, write an entire 2048KB block as there are no empty blocks to write to). The ratio of NAND to host writes is referred to as write amplification. The combination of workload and write amplification are what determine the longevity of any SSD.