Q&A: Can you recommend a really cheap, but reliable SSD for an older laptop?

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Question from Ari: The hard drive in my 6 year old Dell laptop died a few days ago. This has been a great machine and I don’t want to just trash it.

I’d like to replace the bad hard drive with an SSD, but I’d rather not spend a lot of money if I can help it.

After reading your post about replacing Windows with Linux, I’d like to install Linux Mint on this laptop and use it as my primary Internet computer. I won’t need a lot of storage space so a fairly small SSD should be ok.

What I’m looking for a really inexpensive SSD that’s large enough to hold the new Linux installation and maybe a few Chrome extensions. But I’d like the SSD to be as reliable as possible.

I know it’s probably going to be tough finding a dirt cheap drive that’s also reliable but I’d appreciate a recommendation if you have one.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Rick’s answer: I have good news for you, Ari. You can actually get a great SSD that perfectly meets your requirements for about the price of a decent pizza.

I found a highly rated, but relatively dirt-cheap PNY CS900 500GB SSD that’s plenty large enough to hold most any version of Linux and a slew of browser extensions with room to spare.

I agree with your decision not to simply “junk” your otherwise dependable laptop because the combination of this SSD and Linux Mint should make it perform quite well.

I hope this helps, Ari. Good luck!

Click here to read more about the PNY CS900 500GB SSD at Amazon.

Update from Ari: This is perfect, Rick. I just ordered one. Thanks for helping me find it.