Pre-anticipation Of Cyber-Monday, Friday Buying Itch

[nomdeplume]

I did a very dumb, read conservative planning and adult behavior, thing and bought a super cheap desktop that I don't want to spend a dime more than necessary on. A month and half before the one item it desperately needs will nosedive to the lowest prices of the year. As it stands I have a considerable number of legacy hdd's jammed to the gills with intimately useful stuff I could never bear to part with. Much less sacrifice to lowly boot disk use.

Basically I'm torn over how to solve this need for a ssd boot drive and larger spinning storage drive in the most intelligent fashion. Ideally, the ssd will add great value to the machine when I sell it off in the Spring and my data will safely come with me on the larger drive without installing 6 separate instances of Windows.

Buy and install Windows on a large spinning drive>>clone to ssd nigh on December?
Throw away money on a full price ssd>>hope to have forgotten the pain in April?
Sullenly procrastinate for the next month and half?

 

[slozomby]

the most cost effective method is wait a month and a half.

if the new machine already has a hard drive then the safest method is buy a large spinning disk and COPY all your irreplaceable stuff there so you have a backup of it at the very least.

the ssd is a quality of life improvement not a requirement ( some will argue that)
the backup of your irreplaceable stuff is a necessity as far as I'm concerned.

edit: formatted to make more sense.

 

[nomdeplume]

No hdd in the machine currently. Any recommendations for cheap 120GB 2.5" ssd's?

The low end of the market is very competitive. Flooded might be a better term. Once you start reaching 10 SKU's for a single item it gets daunting. If it was just a case of OEM and one or two revisions for parts/manufacturing plant. Somewhere in India or Asia some tech bros are having a chuckle no doubt.

 

[slozomby]

No hdd in the machine currently. Any recommendations for cheap 120GB 2.5" ssd's?

The low end of the market is very competitive. Flooded might be a better term. Once you start reaching 10 SKU's for a single item it gets daunting. If it was just a case of OEM and one or two revisions for parts/manufacturing plant. Somewhere in India or Asia some tech bros are having a chuckle no doubt.

one of these 2 would be my choice in that size. altho I haven't bought one that small in a long time.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F9G414U/?tag=tec06d-20

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AAKZRPW/?tag=tec06d-20

a cheap 250gb is not a whole lot more
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F9G43WU/?tag=tec06d-20

 

[Caring1]

Buy a cheap NAS and use your old spinners in there.
Place a small SSD in the computer for boot disk.

 

[slozomby]

Buy a cheap NAS and use your old spinners in there.
Place a small SSD in the computer for boot disk.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a cheap 6 bay nas that isn't built from parts you already own.

 

[timta2]

If you're waiting for long periods of time, for a sale, where you might save a few dollars, at most, for something you need rather soon, you're doing it wrong.

 

[Caring1]

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a cheap 6 bay nas that isn't built from parts you already own.

He could pick one up on eBay without drives, or a Gov surplus auction etc.
It doesn't have to be new, only working.
Edit: just did a quick look on eBay and can pick up a diskless 6 bay NAS for $300AU.
Depending on which country the OP is from, it might be cheaper there.

 

[nomdeplume]

With $20 invested thus far I figured the tone was set for scraping the bottom of the barrel for deals. What I'm asking is out of the lower scrum what is the most useful ssd? Since a proven winner is unlikely to surface in that barrel. Nearly unpronounceable sub-brands, dodgy logos that subtly integrate foreboding images, or at least known lower end brands that won't shit the bed between so so performances. Very much the exact type of product I work overtime to keep out of my house. The pre-anticipation buying itch is to stop myself from the only truly intelligent play of getting something that fully saturates a SATA III port. Live dangerously, take chances, google translate Chinese error messages from a cell phone picture, etc.

On the other note. A 4TB drive would more than suffice for my storage needs (If my pile of smaller drives all prove stable enough to act as backups.) After much thought I've concluded merely being able to sit down and compile all like files in one place to eliminate redundancy is going to be more valuable than making redundant copies of junk I need to clean out. That line about Government Surplus really hammered it home that I was headed in very much the wrong direction. I might be pushing the boundaries of taste and social acceptance but there is no way that type of appliance is the answer. All vacuum tubes and 1950's sci fi blinking lights while sawing through massive amounts of power and personal space. If I partake in any amount of deep dicking with computers it won't be some ineffectually sweaty affair with a gut I can't see over.