Originally Posted By: ThirdeYe
I've always wanted to try a SSD, but I've heard bad things about the reliability of the drives. Would it be wise to swap in a SSD for the operating system and applications, and use an external USB drive for pics, music, games, etc.?
This is what I intend to do with our desktop at home. I've already moved our data over from the internal HDD to an external USB 3.0 HDD. Not for reliability of SSDs, though...but because of cost. We fill up most of a 500 GB HDD with OS/apps/songs/pics/videos, and that will only grow with time. 500 GB SSDs are prohibitively expensive for us, 1 TB SSDs even moreso...and we'd need one of these (preferrably the 1 TB) if everything were kept on one drive. Our OS (Windows 8.1) and applications take only about 50 GB. So I'll have a 120 GB SSD in the machine with a 500 GB USB 3.0 HDD.
That USB HDD gets cloned (backed up) once a month to a nearly identical one I have (that's only USB 2.0), and that cloned copy stays locked in the Sentry fire safe in our closet. This guards against HDD failure on our main computer, but also against data loss due to theft or fire. If your only data backup is a second internal HDD, you have protection against mechanical failure, but not from someone jacking your computer during a quick smash-and-grab.
We also have our data on an external drive this way...so we can carry it with us if we travel with our laptop.