The Crucial M500 SSD, the first SSD to offer a very large capacity (960GB) at a reasonable price ($600).

The Best SSDs and HDDs For Your Money?

By that, I mean the drives that offer the best performance, reliability and/or most capacity at a given price.

Why would you want that?
Because you want the best bang for the buck, the best possible drive for your hard-earned money and the highest performance, reliability and capacity possible!

If you have the time…

Reading SSDs/HDDs reviews are a lot of fun. However, most of us don’t have the time to do the research and just want to know the best option for our budget.

This is where this article comes in, by recommending to you the best SSDs and the best hard drives for your money, at various price points.

Keep in mind:
1. This list is based on the best U.S. prices from NewEgg and/or Amazon that I’ve seen as May 21st 2013. Prices and availability change everyday. I can’t keep up with accurate pricing everyday, but I can suggest to you great drives that you won’t regret buying.
2. All prices are based on new drives prices, no used or open box drives are listed; they might be a good deal but come with trade offs such as limited return policy, limited warranty, etc.

This article is in three parts:

1. The Best Solid State Drives (SSDs) For Your Money.
2. The Best Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) For Your Money.
3. RAID 0,1,5 and 10: A quick and easy summary.

The Best SSDs For Your Money:

SSD FAQ:

If you wondering “Who are SSDs for?”, if you want a quick recap on what a SSD is, wonder about reports of SSDs slowing down over time or want to learn more about TRIM and/or TRIM with RAID, I invite you to read our SSD FAQ.

What size should I get for my SSD?
Common sizes are: 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 960GB.

I recommend leaving about 20% of your SSD unused, to keep its performance high.

• 64GB: Good to install the OS and a few select programs. Another drive for additional storage is a must.
• 128GB: Good for the OS and some programs/games with a bit of music. Another drive for additional storage is highly recommended.
• 256GB: Good choice for a some programs, some games, some music files and some TV shows/movies. Another drive for additional storage is recommended, especially if you have a lot of TV/movies, even more so in HD.
• 512GB: Great for many programs, games, your music collection and some TV shows/movies. Another drive for additional storage can be useful for HD content.
• 960GB: Best option if your SSD is your only drive and have many programs, games, a music collection and High-definition TV shows/movies. Another drive for additional storage isn’t necessary, unless you have a vast collection of HD content.

May 2013 Update: Higher performance at lower prices!

- Corsair: Corsair recently launched their Neutron and Neutron GTX line-ups of SSDs. The Neutron isn’t a bad SSD, but suffers from rather poor write speeds. The Neutron GTX offers better writes speeds and higher performance, but is priced high compared to competitors offering similar performance at lower prices or superior performance at similar prices, which is why I don’t recommend the Corsair Neutron and Neutron GTX SSDs.
- Crucial: Crucial launched the M500 series of SSDs. Unfortunately, their performance and prices are nothing to write home about, but the great news is that they offer a 960GB model at a reasonable price, which is great if you want a single high-capacity SSD, for example for a notebook.
- Intel: Avoid the 330 and 520 series, as they are much older products that don’t offer good performance compared to newer SSDs. The 335 series offers pretty good performance, competing with the Samsung 840 (non-Pro) series, but unfortunately at a much higher price, which matches the Samsung 840 Pro (which offers far better performance).
- Kingston: The HyperX SSDs offer good performance, but at far too high prices considering the competition. The V300 series offers lower performance at lower prices, but once again, at prices too high to recommend considering the competition.
- Mushkin: Mushkin hasn’t launched anything interesting lately and their older SSDs aren’t competitive from a performance/price point of view. On top of that, the reliability of Mushkin SSDs is far from top-notch.
- OCZ: Their new Vector SSDs offer great performance, but OCZ terrible reliability keeps hunting them and due to that reason, I recommend avoiding OCZ products..
- Plextor: The M5S series gets beaten by the Samsung 840 (non-Pro) both on performance and prices. The M5P outperforms the Samsung 840 (non-Pro) but with prices approaching the Samsung 840 Pro which offer far superior performance.
- Samsung: Samsung recently launched the 840 and 840 Pro series of SSDs. The Samsung 840 offers great performance (similar to the previous 830 series, which was the fastest 2.5″ SSD prior to the 840 Pro) at outstanding low prices, while the Samsung 840 Pro offers unmatched performance at reasonable prices. On top of that, Samsung SSDs reliability is unmatched. The Samsung 840 and 840 Pro SSDs also offer some of the lowest power consumption at idle for SSDs, making them ideal for notebooks.

SSD Failure Rates:

From Marc Prieur, of hardware.fr, here are the SSDs failures rates according to a French e-tailer as of May 2013:
- Samsung 0,05%
- Plextor 0,16%
- Intel 0,37%
- Crucial 1,12%
- Corsair 1,61%
- OCZ 6,64% (!)

The failure rates are based on parts sold between April 1st 2012 and October 1st 2012, for returns before April 2013, which represents 6 months to one year of usage. The statistics per brand are based on a sample of at least 500 sales.

Do note that although these numbers don’t paint the complete picture of world wide failure rates, but they are still an interesting sample to look at.

All hard drives and all SSDs are prone to failure though, which is why you should Have a Backup System that you can rely on!

Best SSD for $70:

$70 – ADATA S510 60GB 2.5″ SATA III SSD

• Price: $70
• Capacity: 60GB
• Price per GB: $1.17/GB
• Warranty: 3 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? Yes.

At $70, this is the least expensive SSD that I recommend.

Recommended if you want a reliable 64GB SSD with great performance, at a low price.

If you’re looking for a SSD to upgrade an older machine, or simply to host the OS along with a few important applications/games, at a minimum cost, this is my recommendation.

It’s not the largest nor fastest SSD, but for $70, it offers great performance for a SSD its size and it’s a great choice to give a second life to an older machine or laptop that doesn’t need much capacity, or as a boot drive that hosts the OS along with a few important applications/games.

Best SSD for $90:

$90 -Samsung 840 120GB 2.5″ SATA III SSD

• Price: $90
• Capacity: 120GB
• Price per GB: $0.75/GB
• Warranty: 3 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? No.

The Samsung 840 120GB offers great performance, great reliability but more importantly it offers 120GB of storage capacity for only $90, or $0.75 per GB.

Recommended if you want a reliable and fast 120GB SSD at a great price.

It does not includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter, so if you want to use it in a desktop, make sure that either your case supports 2.5″ drives or get a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket, such as the $6- Rosewill RX-C200P 2.5″ SSD / HDD Mounting Kit for 3.5″ Drive Bay adapter.

Best SSD for $130:

$130 -Samsung 840 Pro 128GB 2.5″ SATA III SSD

• Price: $130
• Capacity: 128GB
• Price per GB: $1.02/GB
• Warranty: 5 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? No.

The Samsung 840 Pro is the fastest 2.5″ SSD available on the market right now, it offers top-notch reliability and a 5 years warranty.

Recommended if you want the fastest 128GB 2.5″ SSD.

It does not includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter, so if you want to use it in a desktop, make sure that either your case supports 2.5″ drives or get a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket, such as the $5- Rosewill RX-C200P 2.5″ SSD / HDD Mounting Kit for 3.5″ Drive Bay adapter.

Best SSD for $170:

$171 – Samsung 840 250GB 2.5″ SATA III SSD

• Price: $171
• Capacity: 250GB
• Price per GB: $0.68/GB
• Warranty: 3 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? No.

The Samsung 840 offers great performance and outstanding reliability at a incredibly low price of $170 for 250GB of storage capacity or $0.68/GB!

It does not includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter, so if you want to use it in a desktop, make sure that either your case supports 2.5″ drives or get a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket, such as the $5- Rosewill RX-C200P 2.5″ SSD / HDD Mounting Kit for 3.5″ Drive Bay adapter.

Best SSD for $250:

$240 – Samsung 840 Pro 256GB 2.5″ SATA III SSD

• Price: $240
• Capacity: 256GB
• Price per GB: $0.94/GB
• Warranty: 5 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? No.

Offering top-notch performance (9.5) and top-notch reliability, the Samsung 840 Pro is the fastest 2.5″ SSD, comes with a 5 years warranty and at $240 for 256GB, it’s also an excellent deal for such high-performance.

It does not includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter, so if you want to use it in a desktop, make sure that either your case supports 2.5″ drives or get a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket, such as the $5- Rosewill RX-C200P 2.5″ SSD / HDD Mounting Kit for 3.5″ Drive Bay adapter.

Best SSD for $340:

$350 – Samsung 840 500GB 2.5″ SATA III SSD

• Price: $341
• Capacity: 500GB
• Price per GiB: $0.68/GB
• Warranty: 3 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? No.

The Samsung 840 offers great performance and top-notch reliability at a incredibly low price of $341 for 500GB of storage capacity or $0.68/GB!

It does not includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter, so if you want to use it in a desktop, make sure that either your case supports 2.5″ drives or get a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket, such as the $5- Rosewill RX-C200P 2.5″ SSD / HDD Mounting Kit for 3.5″ Drive Bay adapter.

Best SSD for $475:

$473 – Samsung 840 Pro 512GB 2.5″ SATA III SSD

• Price: $473
• Capacity: 512GB
• Price per GB: $0.92/GB
• Warranty: 5 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? No.

If the Samsung 840 non-Pro isn’t fast enough and you want the fastest 2.5″ SSD, the Samsung 840 Pro 512GB is the way to go.

It does not includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter, so if you want to use it in a desktop, make sure that either your case supports 2.5″ drives or get a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket, such as the $5- Rosewill RX-C200P 2.5″ SSD / HDD Mounting Kit for 3.5″ Drive Bay adapter.

Best SSD for $600:

$600 – Crucial M500 960GB 2.5″ SATA III SSD

• Price: $600
• Capacity: 960GB
• Price per GB: $0.63/GB
• Warranty: 3 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? No

If you want a high capacity and affordable SSD, the $600 Crucial M500 960GB is the way to go!

At a cost of only $0.63 per GB, it also offers the lowest cost per GB on the market for a SSD.

It does not includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter, so if you want to use it in a desktop, make sure that either your case supports 2.5″ drives or get a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket, such as the $5- Rosewill RX-C200P 2.5″ SSD / HDD Mounting Kit for 3.5″ Drive Bay adapter.

Best SSD for $1000:

$982 – OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 480GB PCI-Express 2.0 4x SSD

• Price: $982
• Capacity: 480GB
• Price per GB: $2.05/GB
• Warranty: 3 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? N/A: PCI-Express card.

From AnandTech preview:

“For the majority of users the RevoDrive 3 X2 is simply overkill. I even demonstrated in some of our IO bound tests that you’re bottlenecked by the workload before you’re limited by the hardware. That being said, if you have the right workload – I’ve already shown that you can push nearly 1.5GB/s of data through the card and hit random IOPS numbers of over 180K (~756MB/s in our QD32 test)…”

Simply put, this solution isn’t for the average gamer, it is more targeted to Workstation users, who work with heavy workloads, such as HD+ videos, big databases, etc.

Best SSD for $1500:

OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 960GB PCI-Express 2.0 4x SSD

• Price: $1507
• Capacity: 960GB
• Price per GB: $1.57/GB
• Warranty: 3 years
• Includes a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bracket adapter? N/A: PCI-Express card.

Same as the previous recommendation, simply with twice the storage capacity.

Updating the SSD firmware

Recommended to get the latest bug fixes and the best performance possible out of your SSD.

Before you start using your SSD, I strongly urge you to update the SSD’s firmware to get the latest bug fixes and the best performance. Make sure to read the instructions available on each update page, in order to understand how to properly update the firmware.

Most SSDs have newer firmware available than the one that they are shipped with, so make sure to double-check your SSD’s firmware version and to update it if’s not the latest.

If you update your SSD’s firmware after starting to use it, make sure to backup your data beforehand, as something could go wrong during the update process and you could lose the data on the SSD.

If you have questions regarding firmware updates, contact the manufacturer or visit their support forums.

To find the latest firmware for your SSD, simply visit the manufacturer’s website, find your SSD and look for the latest firmware. Instructions on how to update the firmware should be found on the same page, or in a link to a .pdf file.

The Best Hard Drives For Your Money

May 2013 update:

Performance

Performance wise, the Seagate hard drives top the charts, followed by the Western Digital Caviar Black and Red and the Hitachi drives in last place. Keep in mind that the performance difference between each hard drive isn’t significant enough to make a perceivable impact in the vast majority of situations.

SATA II 3.0Gb/s vs SATA III 6.0Gb/s: No performance difference for hard drives!

SATA 3.0 Gb/s (SATA II) and SATA 6.0Gb/s (SATA III) refer to the speed of the connection between the drive and the motherboard.

However, the best hard drives reach about 210MB/s (or 1.68Gb/s) in best scenarios. SATA 3.0Gb/s is plenty enough to handle that and for hard drives, SATA 6.0Gb/s does not offer any performance advantage, since the hard drives can’t even max out a SATA II 3.0Gb/s connection.

Only SSDs take advantage of SATA 6.0Gb/s due to their higher transfer rates.

In other words, if you take two otherwise identical hard drives, the SATA III model will not be faster than the SATA II model. SATA III for hard drives is just a marketing scheme

Hard Drive Failure Rates:

From Marc Prieur, of hardware.fr, here are the hard drives failures rates according to a French e-tailer as of May 2013:

1. Toshiba 1.15%
2. Seagate 1.44%
3. Western Digital 1.55%
4. Samsung 2.24%. Note that the Samsung hard drive division is now owned by Seagate and consists mostly of rebranded Seagate drives.
5. Hitachi 2.40%

The failure rates are based on parts sold between April 1st 2012 and October 1st 2012, for returns before April 2013, which represents 6 months to one year of usage. The statistics per brand are based on a sample of at least 500 sales.

Do note that although these numbers don’t paint the complete picture of world wide failure rates, but they are still an interesting sample to look at.

All hard drives and all SSDs are prone to failure though, which is why you should Have a Backup System that you can rely on!

The Best Hard Drives For Your Money:

Prices as of May 21st 2013:

The recommended Best Hard Drives For Your Money are in Bold
Alternatives are in Italic

High performance 7,200rpm hard drives:

320GB Hard Drives:

1. $45 – Western Digital Caviar Blue 320 GB WD3200AAJS – Offers good performance and reliability at a reasonable price.
2. $35 – Seagate ST3320620AS 7200.10 320GB – Performance isn’t as high seeing as this is an older model, but it’s also $10 less expensive than the Western Digital drive above.

500GB Hard Drives:

1. $56 – Seagate 500GB 7200rpm ST500DM002 – Less expensive and faster than other alternatives, the Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200rpm ST500DM002 is the way to go if you want a fast reliable 500GB hard drive.

1TB Hard Drives:

1. $70 – Seagate ST1000DM003 1TB 7200rpm - Faster than other alternatives and only $5 more than the much slower Western Digital Blue 1TB, the Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200rpm ST1000DM003 is the way to go if you want a fast reliable 1TB hard drive.

2+TB Hard Drives:

1. $99 – Seagate ST2000DM001 2TB 7200rpm – Fast and inexpensive at 2TB for $99.
2. $132 – Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB 7200rpm – Fast and affordable at 3TB for $132.
3. $178 – Seagate 4 TB ST4000DM000 7200rpm – Fast and reasonably price at 4TB for $178.

Lower performance/lower power consumption hard drives, ideal for a single drive external enclosure:

• $52 – WD Green 500 GB
• $71 – WD Green 1 TB
• $84 – WD Green 1.5 TB
• $99 – WD Green 2 TB
• $131 – WD Green 3 TB

Low power/moderate performance hard drive, designed for 24/7 usage, ideal for a multiple drives enclosures (NAS), workstations and RAID:

• $82 – WD Red 1 TB
• $113 – WD Red 2 TB
• $150 – WD Red 3 TB

RAID 0,1,5 and 10: A quick and easy summary

I’ve been asked by a few of you to explain RAID and the different modes in simple terms. In short, RAID consists of combining two or more hard drives (or SSDs) to improve performance and/or reliability.

While there are other modes than 0, 1, 5 and 10 (1+0), these are the main ones that usually come integrated on motherboards (Not all motherboards support RAID) , so they are the modes that most of you have access to, hence why I’ll focus on these. Let’s get started!

Regarding RAID and SSDs:
While RAID 0 can be used to improve performance and RAID 1 for data redundancy, RAID 5 and other higher levels of RAID are not recommended for SSDs, as they greatly increase the quantity of data writes, reducing the lifespan of SSDs.

An important note on using RAID for data loss protection:

Hard drives and SSDs do fail and RAID is not perfect. Sometimes, multiple drives will fail at once (Due to a faulty power supply, power surge, etc.). RAID has limits and is not a 100% fool proof solution for data backup.

It should only be used as one of many steps to protect your data, along with a Backup System that you can rely on!

Note:

In most cases, with motherboard’s integrated RAID controller, you must set up RAID within the BIOS and/or disk manager (i.e. Intel Matrix) prior to installing the OS. Consult your motherboard manual for details on how to set up RAID.

RAID 0:

Using a minimum of two drives and as many as you can install (3,4,5,6,etc.), the data is spread across all the drives, basically combining their read and write performance into one ultra-fast array.

The easiest and cheapest option to improve performance, you keep 100% of the combined drives capacity, but if any drive fails, you lose all data.

Important:

The more drives that you have in your RAID 0 array, the more likely it is to fail. You also get diminishing returns as you add more and more drives:

• Two drives, get a theoretical 100% I/O performance gain but double risk of failure.
• Three drives, get a theoretical 50% further performance gain but triple risk of failure.
• Four drives, get a theoretical 25% further performance gain but quadruple risk of failure.
• Five drives, get a theoretical 20% further performance gain and so on…

So you’ll want to avoid putting critical data that you can’t afford to lose on a RAID 0 array or at the very least, you’ll want to back it up somewhere else as well, since this is the least reliable solution, even less than a single drive.

RAID 1:

Using two drives, the second drive is a live backup of the first one, being an exact copy of it.

You lose a bit of write speed compared to a single drive (due to the overhead of copying the same data in real-time to two different drives), do gain read performance (Since the OS can read from both the drives) but you only get the capacity of one of the two drives (Two 1TB drives in RAID 1 =1TB total capacity).

The main pro is that you get a higher level of redundancy/reliability, compared to a single drive.

If one drive fails you do not lose data, you are still able to use the PC, but you will need to replace the drive and rebuild the RAID array before regaining redundancy and data loss protection from RAID 1.

RAID 5:

Requires a minimum of three drives. Unlike RAID 1 where data is identical on every drive, with RAID 5, data is spread across the drives, with parity bits spread across the drives in a way that if one drive fails, the RAID array will continue to function without any apparent change, other than some performance loss.

However, like with RAID 1, if you lose a drive, you’ll need to replace it before regaining redundancy and data loss protection from RAID 5.

RAID 1 vs RAID 5:

Both RAID 1 (mirroring or duplexing) or RAID 5 (striping with parity) offer good data redundancy should a single drive in a RAID array fail. The major difference however can be found in the system performance between RAID 1 and RAID 5.

RAID 5 experiences more heavy write overhead because of the additional parity data that has to be created and is then written to the disk array. RAID 1 does not experience this overhead.

Read performance, on the other hand, is usually better with a RAID 5 setup. This gets even better if your RAID 5 array has more than 3 disk.

RAID 5 read performance increases with more drives in an array because the more drives there are, the more read/write heads there are, and RAID 5 arrays have the awesome ability to read simultaneously from all the drives at the same time.

RAID 1 only has two drives by nature and is therefore limited in the number of read/write heads.

So in short, if all you want is decent redundancy and don’t care that much about performance, RAID 1 will be just fine. If you want more read performance (For faster applications launch, faster OS and game loading) and capacity (since RAID 1 is limited to two drives in most cases and more would be somewhat pointless), RAID 5 is the best out of the two.

RAID 10 (1+0):

However, if you want top notch performance and redundancy, RAID 1+0 (or 10, same thing) is the way to go. Basically, it’s a combination of RAID 1 redundancy with RAID 0 performance.

While RAID 1+0 is possible with two drives, four drives is preferable if you want the performance benefits.