Has anyone been following the market regarding these lately? I've wanted to invest in an SSD setup for a long time, but I need something like half a TB of storage, which is mad expensive to get. Are there any signs that the tech will plummet price-wise any time soonish? It's been up there for a long time now and I gave up keeping an eye on the industry about 8 months ago.

Has anyone been following the market regarding these lately? I've wanted to invest in an SSD setup for a long time, but I need something like half a TB of storage, which is mad expensive to get. Are there any signs that the tech will plummet price-wise any time soonish? It's been up there for a long time now and I gave up keeping an eye on the industry about 8 months ago.

Assuming that we're talking about a workstation or desktop here, why would you need half a terabyte of ridiculously fast storage? Why not get a 200 GB SSD for everything that needs to be fast and that you're actively using, and a huge mechanical drive for long-time storage?

Why? Sample packs and video streaming for editing purposes. Both of these can be ridiculously demanding on storage access and nowadays 200GB no longer cuts it if you want to go with a single dedicated drive (there's always the option to use multiple drives, but using anything smaller than 120GB can leave you picking out your hair and is just plain frustrating for anything sizable). SSDs are a heaven send for multimedia workstations, but sadly not so if you're not running a big studio.

Why? Sample packs and video streaming for editing purposes. Both of these can be ridiculously demanding on storage access and nowadays 200GB no longer cuts it if you want to go with a single dedicated drive (there's always the option to use multiple drives, but using anything smaller than 120GB can leave you picking out your hair and is just plain frustrating for anything sizable). SSDs are a heaven send for multimedia workstations, but sadly not so if you're not running a big studio.

Yeah, I guess that would rule out the middle way. I know a lot of people who blow crazy money on solid state storage for their oversized music collection that they don't even listen to, so I was curious about whether your use case actually required the speed offered by SSDs or if it was just another case of "SSDs are neat, I need one!"

How about getting two 250 GB disk and setting them up in raid 0? Then it will look like a 500 GB disk to the OS and you, but you are in the more comfortable middle of the price spectrum.

I've wanted to invest in an SSD setup for a long time

If you want to treat SSD as an investment, then calculate the time saved vs. price vs. expected lifetime.

Otherwise, treat it as a write-off and buy whatever you can afford.

but I need something like half a TB of storage, which is mad expensive to get.[/quote]

If you *need* it, then price is not a factor. Either you need that much space because you cannot get work done otherwise, or because it will make your work so much faster.

Otherwise, you don't *need* it.

their oversized music collection that they don't even listen to[/quote]
Noise. Power consumption. Form. And even access times, scanning ID3 tags of 5000 files is quite slow on standard HDs.

You could do what I'm doing for my new build, 128GB SSD for OS and a few choice programs, then a 1TB drive linked to a 64GB SSD SRT drive to speed up the 1TB of storage.

Though admittedly I'm not sure if SRT is beneficial for video editing. You might want to see benchmarks first.

I plan on having a ton of games on my 1TB of storage and the benefits of SRT on gaming and application launching is huge.

You might have to get a new mobo though, I think z68 is the only chipset to support SRT so far.

their oversized music collection that they don't even listen to

Noise. Power consumption. Form. And even access times, scanning ID3 tags of 5000 files is quite slow on standard HDs.
[/quote]Yeah, those are valid concerns. However, the reason quoted for that storage solution is HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO FAST I CAN MAKE FIVE COPIES OF THIS ALBUM IN LIKE NO TIME AT ALL rather than the others. Of course, if that's what you want to do with your money then that's an equally valid reason. Doesn't seem very reasonable to me though.

Yeah, those are valid concerns. However, the reason quoted for that storage solution is HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO FAST I CAN MAKE FIVE COPIES OF THIS ALBUM IN LIKE NO TIME AT ALL rather than the others. Of course, if that's what you want to do with your money then that's an equally valid reason. Doesn't seem very reasonable to me though.

When someone shows you their new car, they aren't going to elaborate on properties of shock absorbers. They'll rev the engine, since that's something you can see and hear.

But when they were choosing it, they considered the whole package. If some drive had same properties, but produced the sound of a lawnmower, they wouldn't buy it, despite being able to copy fast.

See: Apple. Style, design, brand and looks do sell. At least for those with enough disposable income.

As a side note, as they're selling like bread I've seen a shop around there selling the Revodrive 3 at the same price of the Agility...
A friend of mine got a CF adapter. Write is slow as death but the 0.1ms sustained random read is just awesome for small files. Bad news is, it's more expensive than mainstream SSD on a per-GiB basis.