Intel's published reliability data shows a ~0.4% annual failure rate of the X-25M: http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/storage/Intel/320/reliability.jpg http://

Intel's published reliability data shows a ~0.4% annual failure rate of the X-25M: http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/storage/Intel/320/reliability.jpg http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/storage/Intel/320/reliab... They claim greater reliability for the new 320 series which is based on the same controller hardware, and have upped the warranty of that from 3 to 5 years: http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/05/19/chip-shot-new-5-year-limited-warranty-on-intel-ssd-320 http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011... There definitely has been a lot of noise about high failure rates in OCZ's Vertex series, but it doesn't seem to be anything inherent in SSDs or even the SandForce chipset. OCZ shipped SSDs with pre-release firmware, uses a number of different flash chip vendors, and may not test sufficiently prior to release. I'd say buying a reliable SSD is more difficult than buying a HDD since there are quite a few variables, but there is sufficient information available these days to make an informed choice. Performance is really worth it though! I wish there wasn't such a focus on boot times because I only have to reboot my MacBook Pro for certain OS updates or when it crashes, but high performance random IO makes a huge difference in day to day use. Applications launch almost instantly, I can do a find+grep on nested directories containing thousands of files in a fraction of a second, and compile times are pretty much only limited by CPU speed.