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33 Comments
- anachronaut, on 02/07/2009, -0/+20That article was garbage and a waste of time. Buried.
- 1Bad, on 02/07/2009, -0/+18They claim SSD facts are "myths" and then say, those things they just labeled as myths are actually facts. None of those are myths, they are all true. What they mean to say is this stuff is true but people don't understand how it truly effects their computers performance. That is a misconception, not a myth.
I agree, this article doesn't make sense. - wush, on 02/07/2009, -0/+15With the bottleneck of disk access gone, attention turns to articles needlessly spread over 4 pages.
- ScionAltera, on 02/07/2009, -0/+13Buried as inaccurate.
In #1: "But when you get to 64GB or 80GB or 128GB -- and you have some room to feel confident about carrying the additional software you need around with you --you start to add time to the boot process." This is completely irrelevant. A reasonable test would be to do a fresh install of the OS on two identical machines, one with a standard hard drive and one with an SSD. The machine with the SSD will boot significantly faster. Any software you install after that and allow to start automatically has nothing to do whatsoever with how fast your OS booted, or how fast your disk is. Changing the configuration invalidates the test.
In #2: While there are other things that eat up power, those too are irrelevant. The proper test would be two identical systems, one with an SSD and one with a standard disk. Run an identical workload on both until their batteries run out. You will find that the SSD machine lasts longer because the SSD does in fact use up less power than a standard hard drive. Other devices that also use power, even ones which use more power, are completely irrelevant to the test.
In #3: This test is also flawed. They say they used "a third drive" as the source and destination drive in the tests, but they don't say what kind of drive it was. They were accidentally timing the read and write speeds for this mysterious third drive because in both cases the fast drives had to stop and wait for it to catch up. - urvaius, on 02/07/2009, -0/+12I don't get it. the guy says myth#1 myth #2 but then in his explanation it comes out it is not a myth just not as great as he thinks it should be. That's not a myth.
- cisaza, on 02/07/2009, -0/+10Buried - it doesn't tell me anything about getting the most out of your (i.e., *my*) SSD; just random factoids about SSD's on the market... I was hoping for some tips/tricks I could use today...
- inactive, on 02/07/2009, -0/+9buried for 4 pages
- SaxxonPike, on 02/07/2009, -0/+82 pages of info, and 2 pages to sell me things I don't want.
- trollick, on 02/08/2009, -0/+7Myth 3 - are you ***** kidding me??? They were using 3rd drive and got identical 264 sec results. BECAUSE THAT'S HOW FAST THAT ***** 3RD DRIVE WAS!
- Nouman6, on 02/07/2009, -1/+6these prices are getting ever so close to my WD Raptor....damn I should have waited
- r1ch137777, on 02/07/2009, -0/+5The author misses an important point as to why solid state drives perform better for booting.
The seek bandwidth of solid state drives is measured in microseconds, not milliseconds as are traditional drives. Todays software can have hundreds of dependencies which require opening hundreds of files. For the majority of file systems, this means traversing nodes for directories and their subdirectories, which each require their own series of seeks. Common drives with 9ms seek time can only handle a ~50-80 individual files per second.
The operating system gets around some of this by using the spare memory to cache recently read blocks from your hard drive, but when you first boot your computer, this has not happened yet.
With solid state drives, software can open faster more consistently because the drive is not wasting 95% of it's sequential read time continually seeking. - azbmr, on 02/07/2009, -1/+6SSD eats more battery power than a normal SATA drive. The SSD needs to keep the constant voltage higher than the idle platter disk and only when the platter is peaked does it use more than the SSD.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/01/ssds-save-batte ... - sadilak, on 02/08/2009, -0/+4I stopped reading when the editor said that SSD booting faster than the HDD is a myth. I have observed 40 - 50% decrease in booting speeds.
Also , SSD saves battery since there are no moving parts. - ScionAltera, on 02/07/2009, -1/+4That article is over six months old, and by now is out of date because it doesn't include the X-25.
- inactive, on 02/07/2009, -4/+7It never was speed to me it has been battery power. But I have been unable to get XP to boot from flash on my notebook. I did get Linux to work, but I am more comfortable in the Windows environment.
- teknikk7, on 02/08/2009, -0/+3I just got 4 Patriot SSD the ones pictured at Newegg for $80 each put them in RAID0 and am now getting 500mb throughput. Bursting to 1000mb. This trumps even 15K drives 2X.
- painkillr, on 02/08/2009, -0/+3yeah, don't know if you're trolling but that's completely false
- rolan1bp, on 02/08/2009, -0/+3Huh.
- antdude, on 02/08/2009, -0/+2http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArt ...
- asgardshill, on 02/07/2009, -0/+2-1? Y'all are sure grumpy today, aren't you?
- eihwaz, on 02/07/2009, -1/+3The biggest reason why I'd love to switch to SSD (as soon as they get cheaper) is that they don't have anything mechanic that can break. I carry my laptop around with me every day, and I get to change the HD almost once a year.
- painkillr, on 02/08/2009, -0/+2maybe you should do your homework on how slc addresses limited write cycles and write speed. the capacity and price is still an issue though
- asgardshill, on 02/08/2009, -0/+2@painkillr: I Dugg your comment up because yours is a valid point and I should have addressed it.
The phrase that pays is "wear leveling." I was already quite aware of the concept but find it to be a kludge at best. Its hard to imagine any solid-state device accumulating "wear" throughout its life cycle, even if there is a clever method such as wear leveling to reduce its impact. I just think that a bit more R&D needs to be done so that it is not a significant factor in SSDs.
When these gizmos hit the magic 1T capacity mark AND don't accumulate "wear" AND come down in price to something roughly comparable to an old-school hard drive, I'm there. With both feet. Let the early adopters have the snapping-in headaches with this technology. - Kratos76, on 02/08/2009, -1/+3FTA: "There is no way that an electronic device would use as much power as a mechanical device. Just starting a mechanical hard drive up from a dead stop draws power on the ampere level rather than the more modest milliamp power draw that just idling the drive requires. And because you're moving physical read/write heads back and forth across the mechanical drive's is the all-around winner in overall low-power draw. "
- painkillr, on 02/08/2009, -0/+1just threw a samsung 32gb mlc drive ($240 on newegg) into my thinkpad t60s and you are dead wrong about that whole garbage philsophy you just spouted. the boot time for vista32 is 24 seconds, half of which is probably bios loading, and app loading feels faster than my desktop. and that was before i enabled AHCI, which probably provided a performance increase that i couldn't notice.
- Danoz, on 02/09/2009, -0/+1I own both a raptor and an SSD (OCZ apex, not even as fast an the intel drives) and the SSD easily outperforms the raptor. What i cant believe is that in point 3 they are so ***** stupid they get the same result. Obviously this is because the source drive is slower that the drives they are testing.
- MoDinero, on 02/08/2009, -2/+2If you want to get the most out of your SSD try defragmenting it.
- mgbuddy, on 02/07/2009, -1/+1No, these disks are perfect for Servers. For DB Servers in fact.
- asgardshill, on 02/07/2009, -2/+2Until the bugs get worked out of its limited write cycle, small size and high cost issues, SSD technology is still not quite there as far as I'm concerned. I'd very much like it to be a viable alternative to all those moving parts in a standard hard drive.
- rolan1bp, on 02/07/2009, -3/+3I'm working form a Dell XPS M1330 with a 128GB SSD. I like it, I get great battery life (about 5hrs or so) at middle range screen brightness, great performance, and it's very light. I'm a fan.
- azbmr, on 02/07/2009, -3/+2http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/01/ssds-save-batte ...
- saywat2587, on 02/07/2009, -5/+1This guy isn't on the up and up with his material. SSD is and should be for netbooks, not laptops, but you could use them but why would u? It makes much more sense to put these drives in netbooks because netbooks are meant to be ultra portable, something you can just chuck into your backpack and not care if it gets a few scratches or dings and not worry about damaging the harddrive. Laptops are now more of portable desktop. They are for students and businessman. Although there are small laptops 13 inches and less that you could just throw around and not care. Idk I've always seen SSD for netbooks not laptops.
- Photar, on 02/07/2009, -8/+3I like the part with the solid state disk.
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