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How Much Do Solid State Drives Cost
Offering many advantages over magnetic drives, such as dramatically improved access times, quicker startups and improved shock resistance - the solid state drive continues to become increasingly cost competitive. As less energy consumed when operating and improved read-write limits have added to their appeal.
Outright Pricing/Based on Per Unit of Storage
The cost for an internal solid state drive (SATA III) will vary mainly by the drive's capacity rating, by interface type and by brand. Noting that many of the ssd brands have no basis of comparison in terms of their own label of magnetic drive.- Small SSD's (under 90 GB) - though not the smallest ssd on the market, new 30 GB's
are priced at $50 to $65. This includes the intel 525 series at the high end ($2.17/GB) and the Kingston SS200
at around $54.00 ($1.80/GB). More modest capacity drives are available although these may be packaged as SATA II
or mSATA interface and are priced accordingly. While the Sandisk 32 GB is lower, about $45.00 ($1.41/GB) with a ReadyCache
version at $120.
The Kingston in a 60 GB will run $1/GB at around $60 or $80 in a notebook bundle. Corsair found in the same capacity is about $70.00.
The 64 GB prices depend, as do others, on performance factors such as random reads and writes versus sustained sequential reads and writes (which is commonly priced at two to three times as much).
Many brand models among the 80 GB & 90 GB range are $1.00 to $120 per GB. - 120 GB to 256 GB - both Kingston ($75, or $.625 per GB) and Samsung ($85.00, or $.708) are in the
popular 120 GB solid state size. Joining Toshiba, and PNY - which is about the least expensive in its class or about
$65.00 ($.542 a GB). Intel is among the least cost competitive in the range - usually topping a hundred dollars.
The 128 GB drives are priced similarly with few exceptions.
Overall the 240 GB's take another price drop, at around $.50 a GB for certain Crucial and Kingston starters, progressing on to Intel and the HyperX (Kingston). The popular Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB is at the low end at $135 ($.52 GB). - 300 GB to 512 GB - among this class, prices tend to swing back on the rise. Costing a dollar and greater per gigabyte among the 300's and then tapering back down to earth for some of the mainstream 512 GB's at around sixty to seventy cents per GB.
- Large Capacity to 1 TB - the biggest drives, the 750 GB and 1 TB exhibit somewhat of a fortune reversal. With certain brand 1TB's actually priced out less than their 750 GB model. For instance, with the Samsung 840 EVO.
Other Aspects of Usage
Adapting to a desktop machine may mean the need for a mounting kit/adapter bracket if one is not included. These convert the standard internal 3.5" HDD mount down to a 2.5" drive bay form factor. Roughly at $5.00 to $9.00 for basic models.An indirect cost of operating the SSD is their endurance limit imposed by write cycles. Having a drive that automatically monitors the total number of writes via packaged utility might assist in maximizing of the life of the drive & thus delay or avoid the future cost of replacement.
Recovering data from encrypted solid state disks is costlier compared with other drives. Where support/inbuilt help from the drive manufacturer is unavailable, recovery costs can reach multiples.
If the solid state disk is being setup as a main boot OS drive, an additional expenditure could come into play for arranging writes to another separate drive for storage purposes, be it a magnetic HDD other media.