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- netneutrality, on 06/18/2009, -1/+446Summarized: solid state drives are more rugged, lighter, have better performance and lower power requirements (laptop battery 137 vs. 132 minutes), yet hard disk drives still have 10 to 30 times the capacity for the same money.
- RAGEdemon, on 06/18/2009, -3/+284The article missed the point altogether. The people who buy SSDs don't use them for storage. They use them for speed. they put their boot OS and most used apps and the page file onto the SSD. for storage, they use they terrabyte hard disks.
The clear advantage is that while the average user waits many minutes for their machine to boot up or load an app, their computer does it almost instantly.
The other majr advantage is that 2,3,4 SSDs can be put into RAID-0 with virtually no overhead whereas traditional drives wll only gives you 1.5x the performance of the drives when 2 are in RAID-0.
4 SSDs is raid0 will give you around 600mbsec read/write with instant access times. When a poweruser needs to load apps and boot into multiple OSs instantly, this is the only way to go.
The article assumes that we are replacing the HDD with the SDD when this is just not true We are just augmenting our storage to make it more effiecient - the HDD is still the storage workhorse of our computers. Following the articles logic, we should all dump our ram and buy HDDs instead cause hey, its got larger storage x 1000 and its so much cheaper! - TheZorch, on 06/18/2009, -1/+183Eventually this technology will replace current magnetic media data storage. It may take years but its only a matter of time. The technology will improve, the price will come down, and the longevity of SSDs will also increase. Magnetic data storage is one its away out.
- Kamujin, on 06/18/2009, -0/+70Agreed.
Honestly, I am getting really tired of trying to filter through all the ***** that these supposedly "tech savy" writers pass off as journalism. - AGONYTUESDAY, on 06/18/2009, -0/+61when was this written? I bought a 1 T drive off of newegg a few days ago for 90 bucks. 9 cents a gig
- Lorddias, on 06/18/2009, -10/+63One thing I always thought about when it came to solid state disks was that, will they eventually result in PCs no longer requiring ram? From my understanding ram exists in the first place because hard drives couldn't send data fast enough, since solid state drives are only going to get faster on the read/write times, will ram cease to exist?
- richnrockville, on 06/18/2009, -3/+46I bought two of the Intel 80Gig SSD's and was blown away at the install time for Windows 7RC. and the power off to the desktop was around 10-15 seconds. Great and loading MS Office 2007 was almost instantaneous.
But $300 is a lot of money for the drive..
But then those of us on the Bleeding edge have to pay the price.
And this from a guy that paid over $800 for a 30 Megabyte hard disk back in the 80's <G>
Rich - brundlefly76, on 06/18/2009, -1/+43I have been using high-performance SSDs in my notebooks for years - first an MTRON, now an OCZ Vertex.
For notebooks, I highly recommend it, especially if you're like me and don't store stuff a lot of stuff on your notebook and use it 10 hours a day - its well worth it IMHO. Less power, no heat, no noise, don't have to worry about drops. Plus your notebook is typically less powerful overall than your desktop and an SSD helps the overall experience tremendously. Finally, your notebook will typically boot up and come out of sleep far more often than your desktop - coming out of sleep with an OCZ Vertex is, like, instant, and hibernation is obviously faster as well.
Of course, desktops tend to store a lot more stuff, and heat, noise, and power are not a big issue, you can get very fast desktop drives compared to notebooks also. I have tried switching my desktop to an SSD but I just cant deal with the lack of storage and the performance increase is not as noticeable.
I would also highly recommend a high-performance SSD for databases! I have thrown an SSD in as a replacement for a 15k Fujitsu MAS Ultra-SCSI for a rather unwieldy MySQL database and the performance gain on complex queries was astonishing. Its by far the easiest SQL optimization technique going IMHO. Databases love <1ms random access times.
The newer High-performance SSDs have write lifetimes on par or better than a hard drives MBTF, plus they suck less power and heat out of your datacenter than a 15k SCSI. - ba5e, on 06/18/2009, -5/+46Most people don't need the capacity they offer? What a load of rubbish!
- Jektal, on 06/18/2009, -1/+40SSDs are much faster than HDDs, but RAM is much much faster still. The two also serve fundamentally different purposes within the PC: RAM is (working) memory, the disk drive is (long term) storage.
You can do some stuff to mix the two (like booting from a RAM disk), so it is possible that you could design a PC without RAM... But due to the design requirements of both, there's no reason to believe that SSD speeds in 10 years will come close to matching RAM speeds 10 years from now. - lothar250, on 06/18/2009, -0/+32Agree! The best part is where they say that the normal user will hardly see a difference between the two. I think double the bootup speed and probably also double the startup speed for applications will be a noticeable difference...
- duewydo, on 06/18/2009, -2/+32Actually in theory this should be possible, but it makes more sense if you state it a little differently. You aren't eliminating your system "ram" instead eliminate your solid state storage and retain all programs in fast non volatile ram. If you think about it that way you can easily create a functional system model. The system BIOS could contain a system restore but it wouldn't have to operate like our current system model where it has to wait for the OS to load as the memory would be non volatile and could retain the system state at shutdown which means instantaneous resume.
- sirmasterboy, on 06/18/2009, -0/+26Clearly i'm better than you because I bought a 1.5TB drive 3 months ago from newegg for $120 so I only paied 8 cents a gig.
- GraceHead, on 06/18/2009, -2/+28Use Raid, and "kill bugs dead."
- shnuffy, on 06/18/2009, -0/+24This is true of everything; even SSDs will eventually go the way of the punch cards, magnetic tape storage, and analog tubes.
- bloodhound01, on 06/18/2009, -1/+25uhhhh
"hard-disk drive (HDD) counterparts, which offer 300GB of capacity or more for less than $100."
uhhhh, you can get 1TB HDD for 90 bucks off newegg. The price difference is _GIGANTIC_ - KingGorilla, on 06/18/2009, -1/+21Tell that to my porn collection
- inactive, on 06/18/2009, -1/+19I use cassette tape to store my data, so your comment is of no interest to me.
- judicar, on 06/18/2009, -0/+18Plus, it gives you 4-5x the chance to lose all your data .... AT NO EXTRA CHARGE!!!11
- inactive, on 06/18/2009, -0/+18Sure if you use a laptop, the choice between a 320 GB HDD and a 100 GB SDD can be a fairly difficult one. However in a stationary PC, you should get a 40-50 GB SDD and install your OS on that one while using the +300GB HDDs as storage. You computer will run faster this way.
- ImperialSoren, on 06/18/2009, -0/+16"Next I transferred a 1GB folder filled with photos and video files to the drives from a USB drive. Both the SSD and the HDD accomplished the file transfer in about 50 seconds (the Seagate was 2 seconds slower)."
nice test, next I suggest you transfer 1GB to an 8MB/s sd card and see if either drive will perform faster than card's bottleneck. I am interested to see how these drives perform in the "magic" category. - jrm125, on 06/18/2009, -6/+22ching ching
I'll be sticking with disks for the time being. - KMartSheriff, on 06/18/2009, -0/+16eugene259 - still making ignorant comments ;P
- KNO17, on 06/18/2009, -0/+15
This article is awful, the prices are off and the author basically neglects what an SSD is for.
I am building a new rig right now and it will come with a 64 GB SSD for 154 Euros. MLC based though, and that's something that would have interested me. what is the difference between SLC and MLC based SSDs and is it worth it buying an MLC based one for the OS and my 2-3 favourite games of the month? - sirmasterboy, on 06/18/2009, -0/+14and processor L3 cache is much faster than RAM and processor L2 cache is much faster than L3 cache and process L1 cache is much faster than L2 cache.
Whats faster than L1 processor cache?
Quick we need a processor with a 32GB L1 cache for my OS! - elmundio87, on 06/18/2009, -1/+15I use a piece of paper, and manually write the data in binary using a pen, so your comment is of no interest to me.
- Myztry, on 06/18/2009, -1/+15Porn. LOL. I have my terrabyte of storage fairly full.
Seriously though PPL - If you're on Digg (as I am) then you most likely don't fit under the category of "most people". Reality check :) - PaulPi3rce, on 06/18/2009, -0/+14Better article from Anandtech:
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3531
(warning, long, but all you should need to know about current SSD vs. HDD) - rblancarte, on 06/18/2009, -0/+13That article was terrible.
Summary: the CF card in my camera went bad, Flash is a bad technology. That is like saying, I was driving my car, someone hit me, I wrecked, Cars are bad.
Come on, NAND Flash technology is a very sound technology. And while it is agreed that it does have a lifespan issue (which is kind of overblown - the drives with fair use easily reach over 5 years of use), it is no different than any other issue with computer hardware, which can also break.
And I will tell you what, recovery of data from these drives seems a heck of a lot easier than magnetic HDs. A flash hard drive crash, the data is recoverable via a utility. If your magnetic drive crashes, you generally SOL, without spending an arm and a leg. - MxM111, on 06/18/2009, -0/+12Well, using SSD in RAID is even better.
Plus, access time in RAID is not much better... - tidu, on 06/18/2009, -0/+12x seconds? Pfft, my Mac can do it in x/2 seconds!
:| - Intrusionv2, on 06/18/2009, -2/+14No. At least not in the near future. Unless a manufacturer comes out with a way to make SSDs not lose performance over time, using SSDs as RAM will cause too much wear and tear on the SSD and eventually the read/write speed will significantly reduce.
- mudgie, on 06/18/2009, -0/+12I write my data in the sand on the beach with a stick, so this article is of no interest to me.
*****' high tide. - Suricou, on 06/18/2009, -0/+11Two reasons. Firstly, RAM is far, far more expensive per-gig, and has far lower storage density.
The largest memory modules you can buy currently are 4GB (Excluding some propritary parts for use in mainframes, which are physically larger). So for a 128-gig SSD, you'd need to get 32 of them. Try to fit 32 memory modules into a 2.5" drive volume. Can't be done. If it could be done, it'd be ridiculously expensive.
DRAM mass storage is available - but it's bulky and extremally expensive. The only niche in which it is successful is the extremally high performance database server. In this situation you'll usually find it in the form of a 1U or 2U rackmount box - that's how bulky it is. And if you want one of these - they are without doubt the fastest form of bulk storage it is currently possible to buy - say goodbye to your life's savings. Only the largest of companies can afford one.
You can also get things like the iRAM, desktop DRAM drives. But they can only hold 4 GB, or 8 GB for the newest ones, and even those cost far more than a 128GB SSD.
The other reason is that RAM needs power. It can be worked around by just installing a battery, but that adds volume and another potential area of failure. Batteries are not the most reliable of parts - they tend to fail after a few years, or in extremally cold conditions. It's also mean if you leave your computer unplugged for a couple of weeks while on holiday, you'd get back to find your drive erased. - jwolcott, on 06/18/2009, -0/+11"Perhaps someone with more time can give a point by point critique of why attempting to abolish RAM wouldn't work"
Translation: "I don't know what the ***** I'm talking about so please ignore everything I say. Oh, and I eat my snot." - inactive, on 06/18/2009, -1/+12I remember paying $3500 for a 1G drive to store CAD files and how people were astonished at the capacity. Now get off my lawn!
- specialK16, on 06/18/2009, -2/+13Use Raid, be happy.
- 3fingersalute, on 06/18/2009, -0/+10The price will continue to drop and eventually they'll replace standard hard drives. As far as the current capacites available, I don't think its that big of an issue for your everyday end-user. I can't tell you the amount of personal computers I've worked on for people that have 250, 300, 500GB etc. drives and are using 20GB or less of space. The average user has some documents, some digital pictures and an MP3 collection and have no need for these massive drives.
- AndrewWiggin, on 06/18/2009, -2/+12He said he was using standard prices, but that you can find them on sale for cheaper. But obviously only chumps (or average joes I guess) buy these things without looking around for a deal.
- kubedawg, on 06/18/2009, -1/+11That's true for now, but Solid state drives just started becoming popular. ATA drives have been on the market for years. It's only a matter of time before everyone will be using Solid state drives, and they will likely become cheaper than the ATA drives we know and loath today.
- joe7845, on 06/18/2009, -1/+11A desktop user wouldn't get much bang for the buck, but I'm surprised they didn't mention that website hosts with heavy disk load could find these SSDs useful. Instead of scaling by adding servers, you could use an SSD instead of a HDD, and it wouldn't cost you as much.
- ProfessorLX, on 06/18/2009, -0/+10bought a 1TB drive for 80 here in canada, which is like 65 bucks american, so i paid 6.5 cents a gig.
- inactive, on 06/18/2009, -0/+9before*
- Jektal, on 06/18/2009, -0/+9...Why?
- hmunkey, on 06/18/2009, -1/+9Well ***** you all. I stole one from my roommate, so it's 0 cents/gig.
- shnuffy, on 06/18/2009, -0/+8His crystal balls told him.
- joe1985, on 06/18/2009, -6/+14Buried for link to ComputerWorld.com
ComputerWorld is terrible. - Altotus, on 06/18/2009, -2/+10Correction: Windows, Linux and OS X all call it virtual memory. Windows' implementation is a "paging file" and can fragment, OS X implementation uses multiple unfragmented files and calls them swap files, and Linux simply calls it "swap" and it can be any combination of files, disk partitions, or whole unpartitioned disks (and there's also a filesystem that permits swap to serve double duty as a live filesystem at the same time).
Anyway, SSD will always be considerably slower than RAM on writes. It will also wear much faster than RAM.
One thing that's unappreciated is that SSD requires a different filesystem to achieve optimal performance since disk-based filesystems are geared quite specifically to take account of disk geometery, rotation, etc. and not wear leveling. As far as I know, Linux is the only OS yet that has an SSD-specific filesystem that realizes the performance potential of these disks. - mohsenxp, on 06/18/2009, -4/+12I wouldn't say it's being a cheapskate to stick with HDD for now. Just smart and wise.
- morepowerr, on 06/18/2009, -1/+9SSD for laptops/desktop OS and a HHD external for long term storage.
So if it is not an OS or something you use more then twice a week put it on you HHD and leave the smaller SSD handle the more day to day stuff. -
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