I always wonder why any 2-tier brand try to make SSDs if there is Crucial by Micron as most reliable brand and Samsung as fastest brand.
1. Same reason WD makes the Blue series .... people don't wanna pay for the performance on a low budget.
2. SSDs give great benchmark .... but productivity doesn't budge as there's one component that you can't upgrade .... the user.
We have SSDs and SSHDs in all our boxes, but only because budget is not an issue and it saves me the time of creating an extra partition for the OS. However, has any legal secretary every typed an extra legal briefer because her firm put an SSD in her box ? Has any data entry clerk entered data for 1 more customer because he had an SSD ? Has any architect ever completed an extra room design because he had an SSD ? Has any gamer ever reached an further waypoint because he / she had an SSD ? I can boot several boxes here from either a SSD, SSHD or a HD. Results are:
Samsung Pro SSD = 15.6 seconds
Seagate 2 TB 7200 rpm SSHD = 16.5 seconds
Seagate 2 TB 7200 rpm HD = 21.2 seconds
What would be the impact of taking out the SSD and booting from th SSHD or even the HD ? The 1st answer I usually get is well the SSD gives you 5.6 seconds of your life back, time which could be used more productively. Well ....
1. The box is rarely rebooted
2. When I do shut it off and I arrive in office, my routine is a) turn on PC, b) listen to phone messages, c) return calls d) see what mail/ interoffice memos are in my in box and often enough e) grab a cup of java.
When one wants to demonstrate an SSD is, typical tasks are a) Open 100 tabs in chrome b) Zip / unzip a series of large files c) copy / paste 1 TB of storage d) back up a 4 TB HD e) Open up a large footprint game. a) never done, b) never done c) maybe once every couple of years (unattended background task) d) happens when I'm sleeping and e) Im busy doing other things. After launching game, I will open browser and associated web pages, unplug rear phone from charging cable, launch discord, put on headphones and, more often than not... grab a snackie as I transition from work to play time. Using 5 users over 6 week periods with both laptops and desktops, we disabled theier SSDs and had them boot off SSHDs or HDs.... no one noticed. The was one exception when switching from desktop to HD ... on one morning one user said 'seemed to boot a lil slower today".
Of course in certain instances a premium SSD will have a real world time and money payback such as in rendering and video editing. But these represent only a small % of SSD installations. We haven't bought a HD in 7 years other than the one use for referenced testing. In those 7 years, we have had 3 SSD failures and 0 SSHD failures. Two SSDs were older models purchased in the 1st 3 years ... one of them was replaced under warranty and the replacement also failed. No SSDs purchased since November 2013 have failed.
In summary... for 98% of folks having a premium performance SSD is really not going to affect their lives in any measurable way unless they have to replace it. I wouldn't recommend purchasing any storage device that didn't have a 5 year or more warranty and this fits that bill. If someone was to sneak into anyone's house and swap their premium SSD for a lesser one, I strongly doubt they'd ever notice. Kinda like on of those where's waldo crowd pics ... you're not going to notice waldo unless you go looking for him.
