SSD vs HHD
Advantages of SSD compared to HDD:
After reading about SSD these are my conclusions:
Because SSD has no moving parts it is:
1) Super fast.
2) Rugged. It can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.
3) Runs cool with no heat.
4) No vibration and quiet.
5) Reliable with a very long life.
6) Less drain on the battery.
After a few years when the price comes down, they'll be the future with HDDs a thing of the past..... its days are numbered.
What I plan to do is to bite the bullet and go ahead with the SSD (even though it has less storage space and is more expensive) and a couple of years later get an external 500GB SSD to store for example photos. Or maybe I could replace the internal SSD with a larger one then? ..... just thinkin' aloud .....
After reading about SSD these are my conclusions:
Because SSD has no moving parts it is:
1) Super fast.
2) Rugged. It can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.
3) Runs cool with no heat.
4) No vibration and quiet.
5) Reliable with a very long life.
6) Less drain on the battery.
After a few years when the price comes down, they'll be the future with HDDs a thing of the past..... its days are numbered.
What I plan to do is to bite the bullet and go ahead with the SSD (even though it has less storage space and is more expensive) and a couple of years later get an external 500GB SSD to store for example photos. Or maybe I could replace the internal SSD with a larger one then? ..... just thinkin' aloud .....
Comments
Advantages of SSD compared to HDD:
After reading about SSD these are my conclusions:
Because SSD has no moving parts it is:
1) Super fast.
2) Rugged. It can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.
3) Runs cool with no heat.
4) No vibration and quiet.
5) Reliable with a very long life.
6) Less drain on the battery.
After a few years when the price comes down, they'll be the future with HDDs a thing of the past..... its days are numbered.
What I plan to do is to bite the bullet and go ahead with the SSD (even though it has less storage space and is more expensive) and a couple of years later get an external 500GB SSD to store for example photos. Or maybe I could replace the internal SSD with a larger one then? ..... just thinkin' aloud .....
I was under the impression from some early MacBook Air performance tests that the speed improvement from and SSD wasn't really much. The main advantage detected was lower power consumption at a far higher price, obviously.
Further, I'm not sure why there's such hoopla over SSDs while at the same time people keep saying they need bigger drive capacities to hold more video media.
I wouldn't take the Macbook Air SSD as some statement of SSD performance. The thing to watch out for
is the actual controller chipset used in the SSD. Many of the low cost SSD do not perform well.
However performance has improved greatly. Intel's MLC based SSD is very fast and Toshiba's claiming their
upcoming 512MB SSD will have 200 MBps read and 240MBps write. That's faster than any other SSD I know
of today.
Remember SSD don't slow down as they begin to fill up. Their latency is very good. Just look at the above link
to see some "hidden" benefits of SSD. For multitasking they rock (if you have a fast drive)
Also keep in mind that since we're talking silicon here you have Moore's Law. Intel and Micron are already
getting ready to fab 34nm 64Gb modules which means we could see fast MLC based drive almost half in price
due to the fabbing efficiency.
If you have a Quad Core or higher computer you owe it to yourself to ante up for a fast SSD and push the large
data to maybe a connected JBOD.
I mean don't you want the perfomance of a 15k drive without the heat and vibration?
I'd use the money saved on getting a HDD to buy more main memory.
The story may change in a year when the capacity gets better. That will change the cost/benefit ratio.
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/858178...ate+Hard+Drive
Apple's 128GB SSD is just £350.
Intel's X25-M gets the best reviews but is one of the more expensive models and not very large capacity.
As long as you get a model of SSD that has definitely sorted random write issues, it should be much faster than a standard hard drive.
Tell me this hmurch, if I bought a MacBook Air what SSD would you recommend buying?
I think the Macbook Air uses a 1.8" drive right? I think there are more options coming this year in that size from Micron and Toshiba and Sandisk (I think) and these options will likely be faster than Apple's SSD option
I would not get an SSD. Too costly for the benefits. Specifically, you should cross out number 1 and number 6. It super fast in random writes/reads, but slower in sustained writes/reads. So performance-wise it evens out with hard disks. It has less power consumption, but the hard drive is a fairly small part of a computers power budget. It's really the screen, the CPU, the GPU, and northbridge, then the HDD. It also has less capacity.
I'd use the money saved on getting a HDD to buy more main memory.
The story may change in a year when the capacity gets better. That will change the cost/benefit ratio.
THT as much of a fan of SSD as I am I will admit that I agree with you fully. $600 for an Intel SSD that doesn't even surpass 100GB is ludicrous really. Looking at NAND prices it's clear that SSD is in that phase where its markup is desirous to vendors seeking new margin opportunity.
I think SSD is still two years from going mainstream. In a nutshell here's what we need.
1. 160-256GB drives that perform much better than HDD yet cost under $300
2. Network storage to become the favored solution for large data repository
3. Faster controllers ...simply attaching an SSD bank of memory to today's antiquated controllers shows the limitation of the controller.
The market is heating up. Intel is partnering with Micron and Hitachi for SSD.
Samsung is working on packing more data onto SSD
Sandisk is talking about performance boosting technology
and while Seagate and Western Digital are playing it cool they certainly have to be working on SSD lines to complement their HDD biz.
The Intel X18-M might be out by now, I'm about to Google it to find out more. Any of you guys know of a better 1.8" 160GB SSD out there?
I see the best value 2.5" SSD's are found @ NewEgg, I'm very likely getting this one for a MacBook Pro I'm getting. It's not for me.
I'm looking for the best 1.8" links you guys know of. Thanks peeps.
Yeah the Air has a 1.8" SSD. I'm learning about these SSD now. I was never interested before as these drives were just too expensive, but they have dropped enough to gain some of my interest.
The Intel X18-M might be out by now, I'm about to Google it to find out more. Any of you guys know of a better 1.8" 160GB SSD out there?
I see the best value 2.5" SSD's are found @ NewEgg, I'm very likely getting this one for a MacBook Pro I'm getting. It's not for me.
I'm looking for the best 1.8" links you guys know of. Thanks peeps.
Keep your eyes on Micron as well
http://www.micron.com/products/real_ssd/ssd/index
.... Specifically, you should cross out number 1 and number 6. ...
I would also add Number 5 to your list. With HDDs, the main reliability issue is mechanical failure. We actually live with minor media damage. With SSDs, we simply do not have the real world data to show that they are equal to or exceed HDDs in the number of read/write cycles.
It seems like several of my SSD conclusions are getting shot down. And I never thought that my 5th conclusion (Reliable) would get shot!! Am I pissed? Hell no! The negative criticism is what I needed and wanted to avoid an expensive and horrible future mistake. By mid February I plan to order a MacBook Pro 17" and I better know what I'm doing since it ain't cheap. After reading the comments above I'm leaning towards the 320GB @ 7200 rpm. for now. Are there any other negative comments about SSD?
I do have one more question which I was going to ask earlier. If money was not a concern which would you rather have ..... 1) more memory and a big fast HDD or 2) less memory with a large SSD and why?
Thanks for your comments and advise!
First of all I want to apologize for the thread's typo .... instead of HHD it should be HDD .... as I'm wiping egg off my face.
It seems like several of my SSD conclusions are getting shot down. And I never thought that my 5th conclusion (Reliable) would get shot!! Am I pissed? Hell no! The negative criticism is what I needed and wanted to avoid an expensive and horrible future mistake. By mid February I plan to order a MacBook Pro 17" and I better know what I'm doing since it ain't cheap. After reading the comments above I'm leaning towards the 320GB @ 7200 rpm. for now. Are there any other negative comments about SSD?
I do have one more question which I was going to ask earlier. If money was not a concern which would you rather have ..... 1) more memory and a big fast HDD or 2) less memory with a large SSD and why?
Thanks for your comments and advise!
There's nothing wrong with buying an SSD but to answer your question... here's what I would do if I was making the purchase for myself:
Go with the larger HDD. Reason -- you can run out of effective storage space on a computer and you have to assume that large media files will become more commonplace over time. The issues of speed and power consumption are much more esoteric by comparison. It's unlikely you'll ever run into a situation that your computer can't handle because of the HDD's speed or power need.
Keep your eyes on Micron as well
http://www.micron.com/products/real_ssd/ssd/index
That website just annoyed the crap out of me, thank you!
It seems like several of my SSD conclusions are getting shot down. And I never thought that my 5th conclusion (Reliable) would get shot!! Am I pissed? Hell no!
But I think they are reliable, that getting shot down is based on a guess really. I suspect they will prove highly reliable.
For your MacBook Pro get this. Just go for it!
They are over $1000!
But I think they are reliable, that getting shot down is based on a guess really. ...
It is based on previous information and personal experience with flash drives.
Many of us have been cheering for SSDs for the last 30 years. Few people doubt that they will eventually surpass HDDs. The question is when? For some applications, that time has already come. For those, SSDs are the best choice. USB flash drives, certain models of the iPod, and the iPhone are storage applications in this category.
The question here is about more general-purpose computing. I notice that almost nobody [except the manufacturers] talks about using SSDs in desktop computers and servers, segments in which many computers run 24/7. The issue is usually confined to laptops where the SSDs' miserly power requirements, light weight, and lack of moving parts are extremely attractive.
But whether a computer is a laptop, desktop, or server, it continually reads and writes to its backing store. This is caused by its virtual memory system. If you have ever had a flash drive to fail, then it failed after the read/write cycle equivalent of a few seconds or minutes of a hard drive running MacOS X. I have also had flash drives to fail. Now I write to them no more than two or three times a day.
Micron claims 2 million hours MTBF. However, Micron does not say how many read/write cycles are performed each hour or how many read/write cycles its drives can expect between failures. Micron also claims that its SSDs have lower replacement costs. It does not explain how a drive that costs six times as much than the competing technology costs less to replace than the competing technology.
From what I gathered I assume that the following is the SSD that can be an option for the MacBook Pro -->
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...cbook_air.html
And the following is info. about an external 500GB SSD that I might consider 2 or 3 years from now when the price comes down?? -->
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/06...he-mac-addict/
~~off to dreamland~~
http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp08.html
INSIGHTS
NO SLOW DOWN AS DRIVE FILLS
The first two graphs above show what happens when each drive fills up. Both SSDs maintained their transfer speed no matter how full the drives became. Conventional hard drives (HDDs) get significantly slower as the drive fills up. The Hitachi 7K320 we tested dropped from 75MB/s when empty to 44MB/s at 90% capacity. The WD Scorpio dropped from 76MB/s to 42Mb/s.
A FAST READ
The Intel X25-M is "off the hook" when it comes to large sustained READ speed. It also blew the others away on the small random READs which gives it the advantage for booting, waking, and app launching.
BUT CAUTION - SLOW WRITE ZONE
Both SSDs were beaten by at least one of the HDDs on the large sustained WRITE tests.
And the OCZ SSD suffers from the reported "stutter*" on random writes. However, the Intel X25-M shows no stutter and shines on random writes per second as well as small random write transfer speed.
Really it boils down to do you really need the benefits of SSD now with a brand new computer. They seem to breathe life into computers that are starting to fall down the wrong side of the speed curve. But hell a new MBP and SSD would be just lovely to compute on.
I know ..it must be agonizing.
http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp08.html
Really it boils down to do you really need the benefits of SSD now with a brand new computer. They seem to breathe life into computers that are starting to fall down the wrong side of the speed curve. But hell a new MBP and SSD would be just lovely to compute on.
What the Barefeats testing doesn't mention is that the read and write speeds of the tested HDDs didn't change much until well after they were past the actual capacities of the SSDs. In other words, they were claiming the 250th MB (for example) was much slower than the 1st MB but the 80th MB (equal to the Intel drive size) or the 128th MB (equal to the OCZ drive size) were not all that different.
Advantages of SSD compared to HDD:
After reading about SSD these are my conclusions:
Because SSD has no moving parts it is:
1) Super fast.
That is not a given at all. In fact there is a far wider range of performance specs for what can be called SSD than you might realize. At the high end SSD can perform very well indeed, especially for reads. Write to disks however are still highly variable.
2) Rugged. It can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.
Mechanically yes.
Electrically it is a different story altogether. They do wear out in a way that magnetic drives don't. How fast they will wear out depends on your usage and the wear leveling program. In certain types of server duty SSD can wear out in a few months.
3) Runs cool with no heat.
This is likely the biggest advantage.
4) No vibration and quiet.
Well yeah but I've yet to even hear my MBP.
5) Reliable with a very long life.
That depends, for many applications they are excellent though.
6) Less drain on the battery.
Marginally better but realize you have far less storage. Currently around one third capacity verses the magnetic drives.
After a few years when the price comes down, they'll be the future with HDDs a thing of the past..... its days are numbered.
After a few years I'd expect flash to die as a high density secondary storage device. This due to all the researh going into alternative solid state storage structures. In other words I don't exspect flash based SSD to be around as long as the magnetic technologies.
What I plan to do is to bite the bullet and go ahead with the SSD (even though it has less storage space and is more expensive) and a couple of years later get an external 500GB SSD to store for example photos.
That would be a mistake in my mind, especially for laptops. The problem is all that storage you think you you have quickly gets used up. Backups are one thing but you don't want your content sitting on a bunch of different drives. Especially if one of those is in a laptop.
Or maybe I could replace the internal SSD with a larger one then? ..... just thinkin' aloud .....
The larger the better if it is reliable. If you are talking laptops I wouldn't go SSD unless you can find one larger than 320GB. 320 GB being the largest lappie magnetic drive with a reliable track reccord.
Now a SSD will offer up some minor advantages even today. You just need to realize that if you are into media with large files you will run out of space real fast.
Dave