Chances of getting bad Solid State Drive

[switcher3365]

I want to buy a solid state drive for my MacBook Pro. My memory seems adequate, and I barely use any processing power, so I can extend the life of this for a while with a faster drive.

The drives that I have looked at by Kingston, Crucial, OCZ, and others have overall great reviews, but the negative reviews on Amazon talk about these drives dying after a week, month or so.

Is the drive dying on me soon after purchase a big possibility, or is this just another example of "most people will go out of their way to complain than to praise?"

I can go to my local Best Buy and walk out with this PNY drive TODAY (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-opt...ulti/8193026.p?id=1219315689843&skuId=8193026) or I can spend more and potentially wait a week for this supposedly superior OWC drive (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/YSSDMP240/).

Am I safe going with the local purchase option?

 

[larrysing1963]

I want to buy a solid state drive for my MacBook Pro. My memory seems adequate, and I barely use any processing power, so I can extend the life of this for a while with a faster drive.

The drives that I have looked at by Kingston, Crucial, OCZ, and others have overall great reviews, but the negative reviews on Amazon talk about these drives dying after a week, month or so.

Is the drive dying on me soon after purchase a big possibility, or is this just another example of "most people will go out of their way to complain than to praise?"

I can go to my local Best Buy and walk out with this PNY drive TODAY (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-opt...ulti/8193026.p?id=1219315689843&skuId=8193026) or I can spend more and potentially wait a week for this supposedly superior OWC drive (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/YSSDMP240/).

Am I safe going with the local purchase option?

There is really no way to "guarantee" that you don't get a bad drive. It happens. It's a lottery. Most are fine, but there are a few bad ones that slip through.

Personally, I have supported PCs and Macs for about 25 years, and the failure rate of hard drives is really very low overall.

Just buy an extended warranty on whatever you buy, if you are overly concerned about early failure. Then you have peace of mind.

Best of luck !!

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Eople voice their negative comments, not the positive ones. So a flurry of bad reviews from sellers sides are expected.

 

[matreya]

Am I safe going with the local purchase option?

PNY do not have a great reputation. I'd go with either a Samsung 850 Pro from Amazon or that OWC one you quoted. I've used Samsung 840 Pro and OWC SSDs without issue.

 

[thedeske]

5 EVO 840s purchased over the last 14 months for iMacs & MBP. 1 was returned.
Not a bad average

 

[switcher3365]

I decided to spend a little more and go with a Crucial drive. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KFAGCWK/ref=cm_sw_su_dp Actually, I ended up with a $25 Amazon gift card for doing a GM recall repair, so I ended up spending the same as I would have spent on the PNY drive.

I've only installed memory, so hopefully this install will go well.

 

[65535]

The Crucial is a good choice, your laptop has a Sata I (1.5Gb/s) interface so you won't be getting the best possible performance out of the drive. Hell compared to what these SSD's are capable of you won't even get good performance. However it will make your computer feel brand new and with the random reads you'll enjoy using your computer more.

I have an Early 2008 15" MBP with an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD in it I bought a few years ago. Makes a hell of a difference, even though I only see 120MB/s.

 

[switcher3365]

So, I installed the hard drive last night. I did a clean install of OS X and was going to manually reinstall everything in case there was something corrupt, but I just let Migration Assistant do its thing overnight.

WOW. Boot time is crazy fast. The spinning beachball is buried somewhere as I haven't seen it yet. Apps like MS Office aren't taking forever to open.

I may not be getting the full speed out of this drive, but now I can put off the purchase of a new computer for a little longer while I focus on other big ticket things I need to buy.

The installation video from OWC was awesome. I kind of wish I bought the drive from them as their video provided so much value. Well, they do sell other things I may need in the future.

I had been thinking about doing this for months. I wish I would've done it sooner!