I was given a dead i5 laptop recently . The hard-drive has failed completely ... all the usual tricks for accessing a dying drive have not worked. I'm thinking of buying a small , inexpensive SSD as an easy way of making it a test-bed for various Operating Systems ,VMs etc. My problem is that I have no personal experience of SSDs , and which brands I should be looking at , or avoiding. I won't be doing any gaming or video editing , so value-for-money is more important than size . Any tips and advice will be much appreciated .
Put Linux on a USB stick and boot and test the laptop from that prior to buying an SSD drive. Linux runs fine from a USB stick. Try Ubuntu Linux or Linux Mint. Use Rufus to create a bootable USB stick from a Linux ISO. An 8gb USB stick is large enough to do this.
Thanks for that Antilope. We are on the same wave-length ! I started thread in the Linux forum earlier , on this very topic .... in particular lightweight Linux distros. But ultimately I'm going to want to install a permanent OS on the machine , and that's where my interest in SSD comes from.
No problems here with Samsung, Crucial and Intel. And to save money, you don't need the fastest 6GB/S transfer rate - a slower 3GB/S is still magnitudes above any laptop hard drive. I've bought used "factory pulls" from reputable eBay sellers - never disappointed.
The 850 Samsung 250 gb SSD's are going for the $100. price, which is really cheap compared to last year
Amazon has a department they call "Warehouse Deals" that re-sells customer returns, open box items, damaged box items, shelf worn items, and just one of a kind old stock, etc with the full Amazon warranty. If you are an Amazon Prime member (I am) everything in the "Warehouse Deals" department is eligible for the Prime 2-day free shipping. They currently have several really good SSD drive deals there: (most are one of a kind) Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD - $84 Kingston Digital HyperX FURY 240GB SSD - $78 Samsung 850 EVO 120GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD - $64 SanDisk Ultra II 240GB SSD - $75 etc, etc. To find this department, go to the Amazon main webpage. Click on "Today's Deals", then click on "Open Box & Used". From there, search for "SSD Drives".
Thanks to all for your advice .... just what I needed , a good overview. There's plenty for me to consider here , but I'm liking the the look of the Amazon " Warehouse deals " !