Intel finally got TRIM support on their 34nm X-25 series (labelled with the G2 suffix), so I went and got myself an 80GB X-25M G2
(~250USD total including shipping to Asia)
It's still in the mail somewhere, and I'm in no hurry to receive it since I'm too busy to have much time to play with it, but I hope it performs as well as what I've been reading in reviews. There won't be much data on it anyway (how much anime can you put on an 80GB disk?), I have an NAS for that, and I have regular backups so data integrity is not an issue.
For raw data throughput, a Raptor is not going to lose to an SSD by any significant margin. Where SSDs really shine are when it comes to access times and random read/write operations. If you've been doing fine so far with a platter-based HDD, you're not going to lose out by buying a Raptor (you still get a speed increase anyway, just less of an increase in some aspects as compared to an SSD); it all depends on what you're looking for in a drive, I guess.
I had other reasons for getting the X25 as well; silence and mechanical robustness, among other things. Hopefully lower temperatures as well. But most importantly, the price finally fell enough for me to take the leap (I had been waiting for the price to drop below 250USD). Newegg stocks it for $289, but I found it cheaper elsewhere; it was selling for $10 more than the WD Raptor 300GB on Newegg
Actually, I have been waiting on SSDs for quite some time too. Early reports of slowing performance, bugged controllers that were optimised for sequential throughput but not random read/write, as well as the crazy price, put me off them (although always with an eye out for news). With the release of the
Intel X-25M G2, I felt it was finally time to leap.
Much progress has been made with SSD drives this year, and most opinions (from my own reading) agree that the Intel drives are the best overall, followed closely by the Indilinx-based drives (OCZ, Patriot, SuperTalent etc).
TRIM (i.e. SSD cleanup) is still not fully supported in software just yet (Windows 7 and Linux already have OS support for it though) so for most people it might not be time to leap yet, but at least firmware-wise the Intel X25-M G2 already has it. Some of the Indilinx drives implement it in an OS-independent manner, with the controller self-cleaning when idle; this has its advantages and disadvantages.
Personally I'm looking towards setups with more SSDs for system OS and files, and a bunch of WD Caviar Greens or similar low-powered drives for multi-terabyte network storage (once you go beyond 10 drives, spinup current becomes a factor for consideration). I might get a few performance-oriented platter-drives for holding huge files that I'm working with (going to start happening more often, with renders, photography and possibly some encoding involved in my projects list), but otherwise I won't have as much need for them.
Just think of it the same way we think of multi-level caches in memory
L1&L2 cache <--> SSDs
Main system RAM <--> HDDs
They each have their advantages and shortcomings, pick whichever fits your needs (or budget) better.
