I just got a new laptop today and when I saw the ssd it blew my mind. Most of my old drives are like the second from left and it’s what I think of as a normal drive, buying a standard ssd still feels small to me. But look at that tiny thing to the right! It’s the size of a postage stamp!
Assuming I managed to find the right specs (it is a Microscience hh-1050): The monster on the far left is from 1990, holds 40mb, read/write of 0.625mb/s, and weighs almost exactly 2kg. The baby on the far right I got in the mail today, holds 1tb, read/write of 5150mb/s, and weighs about 2.85 grams.
So we’re looking at 25,000 times more storage, 8,240 times faster, and 1/700th the weight! And the one on the right is just 1tb, they make one that same model but 2tb. I can barely believe it exists even though I’m literally holding it in my hands.
And they crap out so quickly. I can’t even count the number of SD cards I’ve had to throw in the trash. I don’t think I’ve ever had a 2.5" or 3.5" drive completely crap out on me (though I have had bad SMART data indicative of a dying drive) and I have been running a media server with dozens of TBs for over a decade now.
This is why for retro computers, I tend to prefer CompactFlash. IDE->CF adapters are cheap, and the cards are much higher quality. They effectively become an SSD that works on old stuff. (Just because I like retro computing stuff doesn’t mean I want the whole experience, like waiting for disk heads to move, or worse, tape drives to finish reading. I’m old enough that I remember dealing with it and I don’t need to deal with it again.)
Not a lot of call for them otherwise, though. SD cards have gotten increasingly good bandwidth, which means they’re good enough for a lot of higher end cameras. CF is getting squeezed out.
Invest in Samsung Pro Endurane SD cards, they last a lot longer. I believe Sandisk has a similar product but I have never used it.
There are way too many counterfeit cards mixed in with the legitimate stock out there for me to bother spending too much on any single card. I typically go for the midrange offerings and roll the dice.
I don’t know What everyone does to get counterfeit cards all the time. I never had one. Are they just less prevalent in Europe than in America? Maybe it’s because I don’t buy them online?
Probably the latter, I doubt any sizable brick and mortar store is likely to be sent a batch of counterfeits from their distributor.