By now you have heard all the buzz about a slick little storage medium called a solid state drive (SSD). Running the risk of oversimplification, these SSDs are essentially the same flash based memory that you find in your camera's SD Card or your cell phone's micro-SD. The SSDs have, for quite some time, been penetrating the upper echelons of the market where only the well-to-do, enthusiast computer user, or corporation could afford them. Well, now the prices of lower capacities have steadily dropped as larger ones have been released. The prices now beg the questions, is it time for me to upgrade to SSD(s) and what needs would these drives fulfill for the less tech savvy consumer. Although I can't answer the first question for you as that will depend on your needs. I can help you decide if a SSD upgrade is a good choice for you.
I have done a reasonable bit of leg work and have asked various people what they expect when they think of SSDs. The leg work involved testing two SSDs that each came from a different generation and a high capacity 1.5TB, 7200RPM drive from Seagate. I will first explain the reasoning for upgrading as that forms the foundation of why someone would set out to buy such a drive. Benchmarks and charts will be provided after my conclusions so the more tech oriented crowd can have some numbers to back up my thoughts.
SSD Benefits
1. Low power consumption. When SSDs were first entering the consumer realm, this was more of a marketing gimmick with few real numbers to back it up, now many SSDs sip power like it is the last bottle of alcohol on the planet.
2. It has no moving parts unlike its mechanical hard drive counterpart. Because of this, it can handle massive amounts of Gs. This is usually in the order of 1500Gs of shock resistance and this is a common spec for SSD manufacturers.
3. Very little heat output. Mechanical hard drives tend to add somewhat unsettling amounts of heat to a system. If there is little airflow within a computer case, the extra heat from a hard drive can be the make or break point.
4. Blisteringly fast performance in some cases (varies by manufacturer and product line).
5. Two words, firmware updates. Quite a few original SSDs suffered from issues with the JMicron controller used. To make matters worse, they had no ability to fix this with firmware updates. A good number of the drives now have different controllers and the ability to update the drive's firmware. Firmware works in a similar fashion to drivers that a user would install for a graphics card, sound card, printer, and etc.
6. Form factor is another key selling point. SSDs have the same 2.5" form factor as mechanical hard drives for notebooks (a select few SSDs have a 1.5" form factor). Many desktop computer cases now include mounts for 2.5" drives so that may also help make the case, no pun intended, for an upgrade in that component category.
For more info: email Nicholas at technic.amoroso@gmail.com
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