Value SSD Roundup 2010

In the first half of 2010 the hard drive market went through quite a change. High capacity SATA 6GB/s drives became readily available, Western Digital upped the spec of their VelociRaptor range and SSDs evolved further with the release of new Sandforce based drives along with Crucial's Marvell based RealSSD C300. In June we took a snapshot of the high end of the market, looking at a number of those new drives to find out what they offered consumers who had a large budget to spend on storage.

In the last few months the budget end of the storage market has moved on as a result of the high end changing and now we have low cost versions of the Sandforce and Marvell drives available. So today we take a look at models from Corsair and Crucial, as well as two low cost alternatives from Intel and OCZ to establish whether they are worthwhile purchases for those looking to try an SSD.