Best budget SSD option to buy

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jonwil

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Dec 29, 2014
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Right now I have a 250GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD as my main drive, a 500GB WD spinning drive and a 250GB external Maxtor. All 3 drives are running low on disk space. I could probably free up a fair bit on the 500GB WD and the 250GB external Maxtor if I really wanted to but both disks are fairly slow compared to my SSD so I am thinking of buying new SSD to supplement the current one.

What should I buy in the 500GB range for a SATA SSD if I am looking for something that isn't super-expensive? I am seeing some good local deals on both the WD Green and WD Blue but I have no clue if WD makes good SSDs or not and what the difference between the green and blue are...

Also if I do go ahead and buy a new SSD is there a way I can clone my current boot drive onto it (expanding the partition to the full size of the SSD) and then use that as my boot drive without having to reinstall Windows and all my stuff?

My motherboard is a Gigabyte H170M-D3H with a Core i5, 16GB of Kingston DDR4 memory and a GTX 750.
 
The largest SSD currently is 2TB in size. Are you looking for speed or space? What is your price range?

Yes, you can clone your drive to a new drive.
 
I am looking for a 500GB drive or thereabouts and price is the biggest factor for me rather than speed. I want inexpensive but I dont want crappy quality (hence the question about the WD options)
 
Wish I could help on the Australian dollar conversion rate. Adata seems to have some good offerings. Samsung has been pretty much the go to drive for most people. I've used a few SanDisks in a few different computers. I have a WD Blue M.2 in my esxi machine, but I haven't run that for very long yet.
 
I would suggest
https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product...2gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-ssdpeknw512g8xt
or
https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/6yKcCJ/samsung-860-evo-500gb-25-solid-state-drive-mz-76e500bam
or
https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/ft8j4D/crucial-mx500-500gb-25-solid-state-drive-ct500mx500ssd1

The intel one is a bit slower in writes, but still plenty fast. WD should also be solid drives, the green drives have better endurance, but are limited in size, 240GB is the max, the blue ones are more alround drives and faster then the green ones and go up to 2TB
 
Do you need M.2 or regular 2 1/2" ssd? And yes you should be able to clone the drive. Most manufacturers offer free cloning software.
 
I would say the Adata SU800. It's pricing is in the realm of DRAMless models but has the same controller as the MX500 with the DRAM. Another solid choice is a brand no one has heard of, an Addlink S20. If you can score a good deal on models no longer made like Crucials BX300, MX500, Samsung 750 Evo (or any aside from 840), you can't lose.
 
I would say the Adata SU800. It's pricing is in the realm of DRAMless models but has the same controller as the MX500 with the DRAM. Another solid choice is a brand no one has heard of, an Addlink S20. If you can score a good deal on models no longer made like Crucials BX300, MX500, Samsung 750 Evo (or any aside from 840), you can't lose.
 
Went to umart today and the guy suggested I buy this
https://www.umart.com.au/Crucial-P1-500GB-3D-NAND-NVMe-PCIe-M-2-SSD_49097G.html
He said that it was the best choice due to the deep discount being offered on the drive at that point.
I realized that an NVME SSD would actually be of benefit to me if I could get one in budget due to the amount of heavy-disk stuff I do (like compiling large projects with many source files) and so I went with the Crucial.
Currently running off it as I type this (only thing I had to do was to install an MS driver so Windows 7 would recognize the drive, do a full system backup with my usual backup setup then use the Crucial-specific copy of Acronis TrueImage to clone the disk, expanding the main partition in the process to fill the entire new drive).
 
There are only a handfull of companies that make the memory and the controllers inside the SSD's. All the companies buy those same parts and put their own name on stuff. There isn't much difference anymore. And even the worst offenders of the past have cleaned up their acts (Kingston and OCZ). The only real decision now-a-days is price, performance, and accessibility. Accessibility usually ends up being the major decider...what do you have access to. Reliability seems to be a non-issue now. They all are generally reliable.
 
I
jonwil said:
Went to umart today and the guy suggested I buy this
https://www.umart.com.au/Crucial-P1-500GB-3D-NAND-NVMe-PCIe-M-2-SSD_49097G.html
He said that it was the best choice due to the deep discount being offered on the drive at that point.
I realized that an NVME SSD would actually be of benefit to me if I could get one in budget due to the amount of heavy-disk stuff I do (like compiling large projects with many source files) and so I went with the Crucial.
Currently running off it as I type this (only thing I had to do was to install an MS driver so Windows 7 would recognize the drive, do a full system backup with my usual backup setup then use the Crucial-specific copy of Acronis TrueImage to clone the disk, expanding the main partition in the process to fill the entire new drive).
Click to expand...
I am a fan of Crucial drives but every once in a while they pump out some slower drives (BX200, BX500). If going for cheaper NVME drives, the Intel 760p, HP EX920, and Adata SX 8200 Pro are better choices than the QLC based P1. Bonus if you end up with an EX920, you can use the 760p driver from Intel for a performance boost.
 
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