Building a new PC, need storage advice

[bupkus]

A friend wants me to build her a new desktop PC. Because of the high price in hard drives I'm thinking of an SSD. Her storage needs are not great so reliability, price and speed are each important in that order.

I keep reading how, in some people's opinions, SSD's still aren't ready for mainstream.

As the title says, need advice AND recommendations.

Thanks

PS... sorry about not reading the stickys but I've been up most the night with a chronic headache and I'm going back to bed after a vicodin.

 

[Jman13]

Buy an SSD from a reliable manufacturer (I'd recommend Intel, Samsung, Crucial or Corsair), and the drive should be more reliable than the average hard drive.

Price, however, is always going to go to the HDD camp. A good 128GB SSD costs about what a 2TB HDD costs right now. Look to spend about $80-100 for a 64GB SSD, between $150-$200 for a 128GB and about $300 for a 256GB.

Speed, of course, will be massively skewed towards an SSD, and I can't imagine that any modern SSD won't blow the doors off what she's been using.

The thing with SSDs is that unless you have very low storage needs, you almost always will need an additional hard drive to go with it, unless you want to shell out the huge bucks for a 512GB SSD, but I don't know what her storage needs are.

With ANY drive, I recommend a good backup strategy, though, whether it be SSD or HDD. I use CrashPlan, which backs up all my important files automatically to the cloud, including new files or any changes to old files. IMO, it's the best of the cloud backup services. Unlimited data backup costs me $3 a month (I have 1.3TB backed up there right now, which are mostly my photographs, as I'm a photographer). For 10GB, you can get it for $1.50 a month.

Or, if she doesn't want to pay, I'd recomment an external drive for at least on-site backup.

 

[Charlie98]

SSD's are getting better, if reliability is paramount, I would go with a Crucial M4 or Plextor M3.

Cost-wise I don't see how you could justify that... a 1TB HDD is $125 +/-, but a decently sized SSD (256GB) is twice that.

 

[Pinecone-sw]

Personally, I would use SSD for boot, OS and programs. HD for data.