[qasdfdsaq]

Yeah prices have dropped like mad, though again the rate of decrease seems to have slowed. My 256GB SSD (mid-range, so not the cheapest) bought in late 2012 was £120, or 47p per gigabyte.

Monitoring is all good and all, if wear is the actual problem. Unfortunately often they show no signs of wear before one day the controller just catastrophically fails. Not only catastrophically failing itself, but then going on to explicitly overwrite known-good data while the device is inaccessible! Go figure.

Plus you can't always monitor SD cards properly, especially when used in phones or cameras.