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what's up with solid state hard drives?

matamaticmatamatic 488 Posts
edited June 2009 in Strut Central
I noticed if you get a laptop and want a solid state drive, it costs more and the hd doesn't have as much storage space as a regular hd. Why is that and is it worth it to drop extra loot for one?

  Comments

  • spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
    I was really surprised when I saw the benchmarks for macbooks w/solid state vs. hard disks. Unsurprisingly, solid state wins in small transfers and searches, but not by an overwhelming margin, and for larger files is a tad bit slower.

    Hard disk technology has had much more time to mature and SSD hasn't had time to take full advantage of its speed potential, which won't happen until they really nail down the fastest way to get from RAM -> SSD flash memomry -> SSD drive. I mean they only really got that process down in a commercial product two years ago when Intel did it.

    That said some people swear by SSD and say that it makes a huge real-world speed difference. I want to A/B it for myself before I buy my next laptop.
  • djbrigidopedjbrigidope 166 Posts
    aren't they supposed to be more reliable as far as holding information? i was under the assumption that solid state means no moving parts and is more resistant to shock screwing magnetics and other parts up (in addition to the benefits of supposedly being faster as previously mentioned)? the trade off, as i understand it, is that solid state hds actually have a maximum number of times they can be written to.
  • serch4beatzserch4beatz Switzerland 521 Posts
    SSD's are very expensive at the moment. For storage they have just memory chips on it no mechanical parts like the normal discs that are in common harddrives. They are very reliable and fast but the technology is still not very "ripe". So yeah some Intel SSD's with 32gb cost like 600 bucks iirc.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_disk
  • 4YearGraduate4YearGraduate 2,945 Posts
    I APPROVE. Less battery, almost zero fail rate and damn near indestructibility. If you have a flash card or any other memory sticks you're already down with SS. It's only a matter of time until optical drives are a wrap i think.
  • highschemehighscheme 784 Posts
    switching to a solid state drive from a hard drive is the biggest performance boost you can make

    once they have 512 GB for $600 or so I am definitely copping
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