I'm debating between getting the 120gb Crucial M500 from Amazon for about $123 shipped or a 250gb Samsung 840 for $150 from someone on my local Craigslist. For the price difference, I'd much rather have the extra space though I would be worried about the warranty. I'm also considering a 120 gb 840 EVO series over the M500.
Well when I was first typing this reply I didn't bother to look up current prices so I typed out the part about the 840 off Craigslist which I'd only recommend if you can't afford to buy a new drive. The M500 isn't much of an upgrade from the M4 which is still a great drive, but there are better drives out there in my opinion.
If you're still interested in the 840 off Craigslist:
See if the guy from Craigslist will let you test it before buying it. Just open up a program like CrystalDiskInfo and check the SMART attributes. Also run a benchmark like AS SSD or CrystalDiskMark to make sure it performs how it should. If everything looks good I'd buy it. Apart from firmware or controller issues as long as it works it'll usually continue to work till the flash is worn out. Samsung makes great drives, the only drives I've heard about having problems are certain Sandforce based SSDs due to firmware issues which later got addressed and some of the older, crappy OCZ drives like the Petrol.
As far as SMART values here are the main two I'd pay attention to:
ID # 5 Reallocated Sector Count
The raw value of this attribute represents the number of sectors that have been moved as a result of a read error, write
error, or a verification error. If the firmware detects any of these types of errors, all valid data in the block the error
originates from must be transferred to a new block. This number should be low because a high number would indicate a
large number of failures.
ID # 177 Wear Leveling Count
This attribute represents the number of media program and erase operations (the number of times a block has been
erased). This value is directly related to the lifetime of the SSD. The raw value of this attribute shows the total count of
P/E Cycles.
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