Crucial SSDs hit $1/Gbyte, with a crucial caveat

The Bright Side of News (BSN, www.bsn.com) Web site reports today that Crucial is selling its M225 drives for $1/Gbyte (256Gbytes = $256) but there’s a catch or two depending on your perspective. First, the BSN site points out that these are MLC drives and implies that they’re not the world’s fastest SSDs but Crucial’s 256Gbyte M225 drive has a rated read/write speed of 250/200 Mbytes/sec, which is not a shabby speed rating at all. An internal 64Mbyte DRAM buffer no doubt helps in that department. Second, and perhaps more important, these are refurbished drives. What “refurbished” means in the context of an SSD is anyone’s guess and is not clarified by Crucial's Web store listing.