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View Full Version : What's so good about the coming versions of the Solid State Drives?



dnns123
December 9th, 2007, 04:40 AM
I've read many articles about the new SSDs coming next year, but how are they better then the magnetic harddrives currently?
e.g. do they have better performance writing files? cheaper? faster? lighter? larger memory space?

I've postponing buying a new 320gb harddrive just because of the the news about the SSDs.

Kingsley
December 9th, 2007, 04:57 AM
I didn't know about this until you mentioned it. This is what I found on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Advantages

According to the article, a 320GB SSD drive would be close to $2600.

aaaantoine
December 9th, 2007, 04:58 AM
I read a review this week regarding a particular SSD that's on average faster (both read and write) than a Western Digital Raptor. However, the drive is only 32GB and costs an extravagant amount of money. More info here: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/mtron_ssd_32_gb/

To use a common meme around these parts, embedded SSDs are "not ready for the desktop". They need to come down in price a lot more, and also increase capacity. There's almost no question that we are transitioning to solid state drives, but a drive that's ready for the mainstream could take anywhere between 1 and 5 years.

p_quarles
December 9th, 2007, 05:01 AM
The major advantages are that they contain no moving parts (and are therefore less prone to breaking), and that the cutting-edge drives do have amazing transfer rates.

Disadvantages: they're a lot more expensive, and they have a shorter lifespan than HDDs. They're a fantastic choice for lightweight portable devices (e.g., XO laptop, Asus Eee), but I think it'll be awhile before they're going to be the default choice for a full-fledged PC.

dnns123
December 9th, 2007, 05:03 AM
wow, i guess i cant afford these things... :P sorry, student budget :lolflag:

n3tfury
December 9th, 2007, 05:05 AM
don't even bother with SSD's in the large storage capacity sense right now. as with all new tech, it's way too expensive. i'd love a laptop with a 20GB SSD though, which should be pretty affordable fairly soon.

GrahamOtte
December 9th, 2007, 05:08 AM
i heard that apple is going to be putting ssd's in the next laptop release.

they said that it is going to be a cross between a small portable device and a laptop. it sounds kind of pointless to me though.:lolflag:

dasunst3r
December 9th, 2007, 05:08 AM
I bought myself a Lexar ExpressCard SSD, but it's at my parents' house so that I don't mess with it during finals time. I plan to take it and mount it as /usr to see whether that would increase performance.

n3tfury
December 9th, 2007, 05:09 AM
i heard that apple is going to be putting ssd's in the next laptop release.

they said that it is going to be a cross between a small portable device and a laptop. it sounds kind of pointless to me though.:lolflag:

why do you think it's pointless and how exactly is that funny?

popch
December 9th, 2007, 10:43 AM
Those solid state drives have several advantages

no seek time
no search time
possibly faster transfer rate
shock resistant
consume less electrical energy
disadvantages

more expensive
uncertain life time
As others already have said, there are computers appearing on the market which have those built in:

eee pc
xo

gn2
December 9th, 2007, 10:54 AM
The current 32gb SSD's have slower write speeds than conventional hard drives.

It's not a new concept, Compact Flash has been used this way for a while.

Once this SSD technology is developed conventional hard drives will all but disappear.
There are no moving parts is why.

Lster
December 9th, 2007, 12:42 PM
In the next laptop I buy, I'll look out for this as it sounds great! For now, I'm happy with my 250GB SATA drive with 1GB of Intel turbo memory. I haven't really got the money for a SSD laptop yet - and I've only just bought this one!

Mateo
December 9th, 2007, 03:56 PM
I have an Eee PC. One thing I can tell you about the SSD is that it is QUIET. By that I mean you can't even tell the thing is on, quiet.

prizrak
December 9th, 2007, 04:18 PM
SSD drives only have one advantage and that would be *drumroll* power consumption. They are faster than PATA drives but nowhere near SATA drives and are way too tiny for anything but highly portable devices.

popch
December 9th, 2007, 04:28 PM
SSD drives only have one advantage and that would be *drumroll* power consumption. They are faster than PATA drives but nowhere near SATA drives and are way too tiny for anything but highly portable devices.

They have several advantages, robustness being another one of them. That and your argument makes them prime candidates for portable devices.

However, they have grown in size and shrunk in specific price quite a bit faster than hard disks. If they keep on doing so, they could gain quite some market share from hard disk drives in the near future.

ssam
December 9th, 2007, 04:55 PM
the price of flash memory is falling fast.
from http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=14&subid=910
SSDs are about £6-7 / GB (i'd expect it to be half that in a years time)

32GB is big enough to install your OS onto, and then put all your data on you old hard disk. you wont get any speed benifit for putting all you music and video onto SSD.

i would not worry about lifetime. you'd have to be writing to it at full speed for years before you start loose many blocks. (the controllers are getting pretty smart, when a block goes bad the data is moved to a good block. you just loose some capacity) if it dies after 5 years replacing it will be vewry cheap.

toupeiro
December 9th, 2007, 06:47 PM
My biggest problem with SSD is that its way more susceptable to ESD than a standard hard drive. an ESD strap, a power supply, and a conditioned power source become the most important components in your system, I'm of the old school of using ESD straps when I work on computers, but some people who I've seen work on computers don't even know what one is, or laugh at the idea of using it. I've replaced more EEPROM chips due to people touching a component and sending static electricity through their system. People who don't understand how electronics work will probably give these drives press of high failure rates.

I live in California, the brown-out state.. I even have a conditioned power source, but if I ever got a SSD, I would replace it with something better.

dasunst3r
December 19th, 2007, 04:28 AM
I got a Lexar ExpressCard SSD not long ago, and here's the outputs from bonnie++ for my built-in hard drive and the card itself:

Internal hard drive (WDC WD800BEVS-75) - formatted EXT3:

Version 1.03 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
hastalavista2 4G 24330 54 24375 9 13228 5 34725 68 35164 8 138.0 0
------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
-Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
Remark: + means that the test completed too quickly for an accurate result to be obtained.

Lexar ExpressCard SSD - formatted FAT32:

Version 1.03 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
hastalavista2 4G 14840 41 18914 7 11999 7 29725 61 30002 7 2276 3
------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
-Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 115 99 328 99 1082 99 198 99 334 99 498 99
Remark: The attached screenshot shows how the SSD looks like to the computer. Observe that it is running off a USB port.

At this point, I do not know whether I should proceed with my experiment to determine whether putting /usr into the flash device would be a good idea. What do you all think? Also, does file system make a difference?

References
Bonnie++: http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/readme.html