Why is this SSD upgrade so cheap?

[Yumunum]

On the most expensive 27-inch iMac, the upgrade cost to a "256GB Solid State Drive" is $400. But the upgrade cost to a "1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive" is only $100 more - $600. Am I missing something here? Is a "Serial ATA Drive" a worse kind of SSD than the 256GB one? I'm just perplexed at how cheap the price is compared to the SSD upgrades for their other computers.

 

[ergdegdeg]

The "Serial ATA Drive" is just a regular HD, not SSD. They are pretty cheap to get these days.

 

[ZeD X]

The SSD is not cheap, both are overpriced.

$100 for an extra 1tb is a lot of money. The 2TB is more overpriced.

 

[RoelJuun]

The Serial ATA drive is no SSD, just a HDD. They cost nothing compared to SSD's.

Edit: Both beat me to it

 

[Yumunum]

The "Serial ATA Drive" is just a regular HD, not SSD. They are pretty cheap to get these days.

Oh wow, that's what I get for not paying enough attention to what I'm looking at... It's a normal HD + the SSD. Haha alright. Now I need to find out how having two drives at once would work...

 

[cirus]

On the most expensive 27-inch iMac, the upgrade cost to a "256GB Solid State Drive" is $400. But the upgrade cost to a "1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive" is only $100 more - $600. Am I missing something here? Is a "Serial ATA Drive" a worse kind of SSD than the 256GB one? I'm just perplexed at how cheap the price is compared to the SSD upgrades for their other computers.


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Sent from my second generation, tabular Apple product

Something is wrong with your math there.

Its not cheap at all, its a rip off. A 1 TB mechanical drive can be had for $75. A 256 GB SSD costs around $450. Apple charges $600 (the ssd and the 1TB drive as the 1 TB drive is included in the base price).

 

[Yumunum]

Something is wrong with your math there.

Its not cheap at all, its a rip off. A 1 TB mechanical drive can be had for $75. A 256 GB SSD costs around $450. Apple charges $600 (the ssd and the 1TB drive as the 1 TB drive is included in the base price).

Yep I know that now. In my last post I realized how I totally read it all wrong. Apple sucks at pricing things.

 

[roland.g]

Yep I know that now. In my last post I realized how I totally read it all wrong. Apple sucks at pricing things.

Agreed that they do. But news flash, they are in the business of making money. Their RAM prices have always been ridiculous, but luckily you can upgrade that yourself on just about any machine, even the Mac Mini.

If you think they rip off for HDDs, look at an HDD price at New Egg and then look at the same drive at OWC (macsales.com). I always get RAM from OWC, but never drives. Likewise, I will always find an external enclosure I like and get my own drive to put in there. You will almost always get a better rated/spec'd drive from New Egg for cheaper than you would at OWC. The OWC price for a 2TB drive is more than that enclosure from them plus the cost of the bare drive from New Egg, even for the exact same drive. They are in the business of making money. Apple is no different. Unfortunately, you can't very easily replace the drive in an iMac.

But then again, as I have learned the internal drive in an iMac need not be terribly large. iPhoto library, user directory, and system files and Apps. Maybe 500GB-1TB. That is all you really need.

With people's music and movie collections nowadays, the entire iTunes media folder should be on an external 2TB or larger FW. Get a 2nd 2TB for a clone, and a 3rd external the size of your internal for Time Machine. Set the clone to incremental backups so you don't mirror an accidental deletion and you're backup is set.