What is your opinion of the current SSD Market and which types will be supported in the future?

[GreaseMonkey255]

Hi Dan,

I'm currently thinking about investing in a SSD. The SSD I picked has an endurance rating that would easily last 10 years. However, it is a SATA SSD with a 2.5'' HDD form factor. It's the only form factor that would fit my current laptop. My question is, is it wise to buy this SSD now, or could the 2.5'' SSDs be phased out in laptops within the next year or so? Everyone seems to be moving toward M.2.

Thanks.

 

[xandros9]

TL;DR, SATA 2.5" drives aren't anywhere going for the most part although models that need to be compact will axe it.

Not Dan but this is probably as good a general body question as any.

Anyways, there's nothing wrong with SATA. My 2014 laptop has SATA and I noticed that it tends to be the ultraportables with the M.2. (although I think my model may actually have an M.2 slot...)

I would expect SATA to stick around for time to come in mid-size and larger laptop, especially in laptops that will continue to have traditional spinning hard drives as cheaper, larger capacity options as SSD's are still more pricey per GB and HDD's or even hybrid drives are still good enough.

Even then, do you plan on keeping this drive with you for the full estimated 10-year lifespan? Swapping from computer to computer it sounds like and even a couple years from now, prices per GB are only going to go down, bar unforeseen natural disasters. It sounds like this SSD decision is a significant financial decision though so SATA is even more of a not-bad idea as spinning hard drives won't go the way of the dodo anytime soon in lower-end variants of computers and the higher-specced models will likely have the same internal design. (e.g. my computer came in a 500 GB HDD configuration, a 120 GB SSD, a 256 GB SSD, etc.)

Be sure to watch a computer's repairability though! The Surface Pro tablets are not something that you'll want to attempt to repair, but say, a ThinkPad T-series is a whole lot simpler to swap parts in.

Heck, even if what I consider highly unlikely happens, (that is, a 100% SATA to M.2 switch) there is no shortage of SATA to USB adapters.