I am in the parts selection phase of building a new computer, and the hard drive prices are still a bit ridiculously high. I do not have an old spare hard drive to use, I do however have a spare 500 gig external. Would it be a good idea to go ahead and spend the 180$ on a SSD as opposed to a HDD? I do eventually plan on buying a mechanical HDD, but 180$ could get me a fairly large SSD with all the benefits of its speed as well as more time to wait out the flood time prices.
Is there ANY reason why I should avoid going SSD/External? I would only have my OS, WoW, D3 (eventually), and perhaps office on the SSD. I can't see any reason why not but then again this will be my first PC I have built and therefore do not have much experience in the ways of building/part compatibility.
SSD I am looking at:
OCZ Technology 120 GB Agility 3 SSD- 3G SATA 6.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive AGT3-25SAT3-120G
You can easily get away with using an external drive in combination with a 120GB SSD as long as you just use it for storage. You can easily fit Windows, games and programs on a 120GB SSD, at least everything until you buy a HDD.
Agreed there. Do not buy OCZ. My original one died within 6months. They replaced it and even gave me a "better" version but upon reading reviews a lot of people have had issues. Intel SSD seem the best bet right now with seeing reviews.
Thanks for the heads up! I was looking at the reviews and they were very mixed, and for a first time builder that was not comforting. Are SSD's difficult to work with at all or are they usually a pop em in kinda deal?
With minor experience, SSD works exactly like EIDE(mechanical) when talking about installation and configuration. You probably should buy a "retail" version - or atleast make sure you get an adapter bracket. The SSD disks are a bit smaller than the mechanical, so you need this to install it in your case.
My choice: definetly go for a SSD and use the external disk as storage/backup.
---------- Post added 2011-12-15 at 11:13 AM ----------
Btw, if you can handle a screwdriver etc., you should be able to disassemble your external drive - inside is a normal mechanical one. I would always suggest an internal drive for main system-drive.