Solid State Drives (SSDs) : Pros and Cons
What’s the deal with solid-state drives (SSDs)? How do they compare to standard HDDs? You might be asking these questions when you’re considering purchasing your new laptop (or Macbook Air). Here’s what we’ve found.
Time:
Standard HDDs are mechanical. Heads move and platters spin in order to find your data or write new data. First, the platters start spinning: this is called the spin-up time. Then, we have the time it takes for the platters to spin to the correct position, and the time for the head to position itself above the data it wants to read or write. With SSDs, we have none of these delays. There is nothing to move or spin up.
Reliability:
Let’s face it. You’ve dropped your laptop a few times. You might have even lost data because of this. This might not have happened if you had an SSD in there (see? it doesn’t pay to be a cheap ass). The reason is that the heads of a standard HDD, or even the platters, can become damaged with excessive shock, or just standard wear and tear. SSDs are much more fall-off-the-table friendly, and are better able to deal with temperature or altitude extremes.
Cost:
There’s currently a big difference between the cost of an HDD and the cost of an SSD. You can get an HDD way, way bigger than an SSD for way less than what the SSD will cost. You might pay an extra $400 on a laptop to get a 160GB SSD instead of a 300GB HDD. You’ll have to decide whether the advantages of an SSD are worth the price.
Size:
Here’s the other disadvantage of an SSD. Even if you’re willing to drop serious cash on one, you still can’t get one as big as the biggest HDDs. Maybe you can store your pr0n collection on DVD from now on?
Cool:
… but, come on. Price and size aside, SSDs are totally sick. They are quiet, light, fast… and none of your friends have them yet.
Reference:
www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/Adv_SSD_ART.pdf
