HDD prices from hell, should I go with SSD?

Greetings everyone.

My original plan was Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB. At the time I had that in mind, its price was $74.

With all the flood problems in Thailand, prices have skyrocketed. The cheapest I can find is $118 and the second cheapest is already $154.

Now I'm killing myself for not buying it earlier. I was aware of flood in Thailand, but I guess it took my country's market a bit longer to raise the prices than USA's market. I was under the impression we won't be affected as much, but damn, we definitely are.

Paying that much for HDD is out of the question so I was considering buying a small SSD to use as main drive and use my old IDE drive for storage until HDD prices return back to normal.

First one that came up as affordable is OCZ Vertex Plus, but it has HORRIBLE feedback on NewEgg.

Every other SSD I considered is way too expensive where I live (usually $100-150+ for way too little capacity).

What should I do? Is using my old ATA with ATA to SATA converter a good idea?

Thanks for help.