Better living with(out) solid state drives

Well there is this "new" technology. Solid state disks. Pretty much the same as those neat little usb-sticks dangling off your keychain for some years now.

Anyways, they're faster than conventional hard drives, in the same proportion they're more expensive.

So there is this new solid state drive that costs about 10 times as much as an old hard disk which makes it at reasonable prices chronically too small for almost any application.

And then there is this reliability thing: It breaks!
I thought one of the key features of solid state is, that there are no moving parts involved and therefore nothing can happen to your data. In theory. And then there is reality where lots of people in various forums and blogs tell their story about lost data. One guy lost his data ~4 months after purchase, got it replaced and the replaced drive broke again after about half a year.

In conclusion solid state drives are fast.

Use solid state drives if you want to...
...run out of disk space. Fast.
...loose money. Fast.
...loose data. Fast.