Solid state hard drives

It isn't just boot times, its application load times, cache writes, technically battery life (though you won't notice).
The big one is prefetch and cache. Just makes everything feel much smoother, assuming youhave a somewhat modern disk controller. Wouldn't bothers either unless you are running a modernish OS like Win7 or like a recent Linux distro.

 

It's a relatively newer tech at the consumer level, it isn't going to completelly displace or outpace the existing tech in the near future, nor is it without teething problems.

The RAM and Processor need to get the information from the harddrive in the first place, so drive speeds are always going to matter.

We're getting pretty close to the theoretical max-density for disc drive platters, so increasing disc space will come from stacking numberous platters per drive (already happens). SSDs are just the next step in data storage, they have a significantly larger theoretical maximum storage density, plus you're talking about storage in 3D vs storage in 2D. We should also get to the point where SSDs are cheaper (fewer rare materials) and more reliable than HDDs (not mechanical).

Prices for SSDs have also been dropping fairly quickly, which is why they are more common in consumer products. Do we need them? At the moment, we can do without, but it's new tech starting to blend in and replace the old.

 

I haven't used one in a build yet, but I noticed a huge difference between using a 5400rpm harddrive and a 10000rpm one as my "programs" drive on my last computer build. It's an incredible difference in load and start up times. I can only imagine how much better a solid state drive would serve the same purpose without sounding like a jet engine or aspiring to match the surface of the sun for heat output.

I'm not a tech guy, but from personal experience I can say that if you already have decent ram and a good CPU, the read speed on your hard drive turns into the the system bottleneck pretty quickly, especially if you're a multitasker who's constantly opening various programs.

And who says it's so expensive? Pick up the 1tb 5400 rpm drive you were going to build the pc with anyway and use it as file storage, then just drop an extra $100 on a SS for your OS and most important programs. That's as cheap as upgrading ram and cheaper than the difference between a good CPU and a really good CPU.

 

It might be worth it if you're constantly on the go. The product where it makes sense is the MacBook Air, which seems to be designed specifically for the needs of college students. With that said, there are Linux distro's that boot in less than one minute on conventional hardware. And there are OS's that don't "boot" at all.

 

Hard drives are a bottleneck in most builds. An SSD is the most noticeable upgrade you can make if you've got a relatively modern machine.

For an average user, the lifespan of the drive will exceed their length of ownership so I don't really see that as an issue.

If your on the fence, I would definitely go for it.

 

I had one of the WD Raptors in my last system. It was fast, don't get me wrong, but it was annoyingly noisy.

With higher speed drives, the tolerances need to be tighter and there is more strain on the internal components. Wear will happen quicker and the drive will be more susceptible to that wear. Of course, that's all very generic as much of it comes down to the QC of the manufacturer and the production specs they use.

 

In a contemporary computer, especially one that runs on batteries, "booting" is just one of the many different ways that the computer manages the relative capacity, speed, and power consumption of different types of memory.

Disk memory is slow, but has high capacity, and consumes no power when it isn't being accessed.

RAM is fast, but capacity sufficient for running an OS like Win32 or Linux requires a type of RAM that consumes a lot of power.

So, among its other ways of managing power, the computer stores the guts of the OS on disk and loads them into RAM when the computer starts. That's "booting."

But there are computers that require less overall memory, so they can use memory that consumes a lot less power, and eliminate the need for a low-power storage medium. An example is the old PalmOS, where the OS and all apps were all "running" concurrently, even when the device was turned "off."

The idea of the solid state disk is to change the balance of capacity, speed, and power, in a favorable way for people who need a computer to come up and down quickly. For your use, don't bother. I'd recommend the cheapest possible desktop system that will run a modern OS, unless you're a gamer. I just got a new desktop for under 300 bucks, and I expect it to last a decade, like its predecessor did.

 

I have one in a new HP Ultrabook. Boots in 20 seconds, accesses files quickly, and will travel in my briefcase getting bumped around - but there's no longer anything to worry about.

Solid state FTW..in laptops.

In a desktop, there's nothing wrong with big disc-based hard drives as far as I'm concerned.

 

They really shine in a laptop or ultrabook.

Lower battery consumption, dead quiet and most importantly, a lot more shock resistant than a set of platters spinning at 5000 rpm.

I go with 7200 rpm conventional in my desktops because I usually have a massive amount of RAM in a desktop so no file swapping, and I don't care about boot times. If I really need fast file speeds I stripe a RAID with the conventional drives.

 

I only have anecdotal experience with the raptor I used, but it lasted four years until the motherboard on my last PC fizzled out. I have it sitting around somewhere and it continued to run just fine the last time I plugged it into an external dock. The thing is noisy as hell though. I wouldn't have wanted it in the same room I'm recording in.

 

When you have 4 or 5 HDDs in a tower like me, you really notice the weight of all those drives. So replacing them with SSD is the way to go for that alone.

Read and write speeds are amazing now with the newer controller chips.

The prices are coming down and at least for a C: drive it totally makes sense.

 

I put a OCZ Vertex SSD in my laptop some years ago. The system has two drive bays, so I used the stock drive as strictly a storage/backup drive and the SSD as my OS drive. The difference was substantial! Well worth the money, IMO.

 

I'm still waiting.

 

Last I tried, mine was still working.

I just don't have a use for it, the extra noise wasn't worth the extra speed!

 

The book you're reading... Throw it away. There's a term...MTBF. Mean Time Between Failure and 15k drives typically have an MTBF upwards of 20 years. I don't know who wrote that book, but that is absolutely the dumbest thing I've ever heard on drive technology.

 

It might last a decade but don't put your expectations on it. I'd say 5-7 is a reasonable expectation with the realization that it will be slow in its older years.

Going back to noise levels, my first SCSI drive was a Micropolis drive. Full height, 3x taller than regular desktop drives. It weighed 10 lbs and sounded like rocks churning when it was in use. Fast but loud.

Just 15 years ago, solid state drives were the size of medium refrigerators and cost $25k USD. Yeah, we are getting there though.