Hard Disk vs. SSD: What's the Difference?
Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:46PM EST
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With the MacBook Air's arrival, Solid State Drives, or SSDs, seem to be making a run for the mainstream. (Numerous other vendors, including Dell and Fujitsu, sell them preloaded in laptops.) But many look at the extra thousand bucks or so that an SSD costs vs. an old-school hard drive and wonder.... um, is this really worth it? What is an SSD anyway? Well, I've heard the question enough times now that it's time to answer it in depth.
What is an SSD? A solid state drive is designed to act just like a hard drive as far as the user or the computer is concerned (and even looks similar on the outside), but it has no moving parts. SSDs have no spinning platters; instead they are based on flash memory, the same stuff in a camera memory card or a USB thumbdrive. Only there's lots more of it: Most SSDs are now 32GB or 64GB in size. That's a lot of flash memory.
SSDs are faster than hard drives (up to hundreds of times faster), use less power, and weigh less than traditional spinning hard drives. They don't crash when you drop them, and they don't make any noise. Over time, we should see far greater capacities in the same amount of physical space, too. Sounds great so far. But there's one catch: Magnetic hard drive technology is dirt cheap. Flash memory is very expensive. 64GB of hard drive space would cost you less than $50 (if you could even find a new drive that small). 64GB in SSD format? At least $1,000.
And there's the rub. All of flash's advantages are obviated if they double the total cost of your computer. Many people look at SSD drives and say, Hey, I'm accident-prone, and my drive won't crash if I drop the laptop... so maybe I should get an SSD. Well, maybe... but you could actually replace any broken hard drive for $100 or so. And you're making your backups, right? Is the SSD's insurance really worth 10 times the price of a spare hard disk?
In time, SSDs will probably completely replace hard drives in many applications, especially notebooks, but for now, they're really just a luxury toy for the ultra-rich who want a quieter, lighter, and more ghastly expensive laptop. Give it four years, then ask me again. For now: Just get a hard drive.
Comments on Hard Disk vs. SSD: What's the Difference?
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2 Posted by coloisla on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:28PM EDT Report Abuse
Once again tech raises the bar. Patience is a virtue when thi sort of techbology pops up. I WILL get cheaper so... cool it!
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3 Posted by leeemingerwayne on Thu Sep 3, 2009 6:48PM EDT Report Abuse
that,s funny he say,s you cant get a hard-drive 64gbs i have them i sell them everyday in my computer shop ,-he should get his FACTS right befor he opens his big mouth
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4 Posted by dusters_dark_knight on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:50PM EDT Report Abuse
Dell sells SSD's and they arent a 1000 bucks for em either. plus the good side is that a ssd drive is alot faster than a IDE or sata. checkout comparisons on youtube. i know for gaming it would rock.
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5 Posted by stogie414 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:45PM EDT Report Abuse
A bunch of memory manufacturers, including Micron/Lexar, announced CES that they would jump into the SSD market this spring. Look for the prices of SSDs to go weak by the summer and be in free fall by year's end (just as the price of flash drives is currently in freefall). Platter spinning HDs are as dead as the floppy drive, they just don't know it yet. People will look back 4 years from now and see that the only platter spinning harddrives remaining are used as backup units or deep archive for servers. And how much memory does one need anyhow? A bunch of SSD manufacturers are making 64GB SSDs now, and I don't have a single computer, whether my laptop or desktop, that has more than 40GB stored on it.
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6 Posted by m_knopp on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:32PM EDT Report Abuse
stogie414, if it weren't for video and pictures I would be the same way. However, it doesn't take many minutes of home video to fill up 64 GB of space. And while it does take more time it isn't inconceivable that a person could fill 64GB of space with digital pictures, especially as the pixel count goes up on cameras. The computer industry has been working very hard on merging with media for these very reasons. If it weren't for doing video and graphics computers from four or five years ago are all that anyone needs. I doubt any single family could fill up 64GB with text or spreadsheets and does it really take a dual core 2GHz processor to send email and surf the web?
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7 Posted by middlenamefrank on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:19PM EDT Report Abuse
I don't do video piracy, and only rip my own CD's or buy mp3's legally, so I could get by on 64GB of space. I'm currently using just a bit more than that on my 100GB laptop drive, and I'd have no problem trimming down to that size. I am very attracted by the smaller size, lower power consumption and cooler running of SSD's. Higher performance (though I don't think you'll realize anything like 100x performance in real life) is just a bonus. I'll probably get one in my next laptop, though that may be a couple of years from now. I'll pay a couple hundred more (which is all it should be by then) for the cooler operation, smaller size and increased battery life. In my opinion, the time to switch over is fast approaching....if it isn't already here.
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8 Posted by lewinjon on Thu Sep 3, 2009 6:49PM EDT Report Abuse
I remember well, back in the late 70's when Winchester introduced its 5 and 10 MB (Yes, Megabyte) drives. They sold for over $3000.00. Some of us drooled over them, others claimed nobody would ever need such a huge amount of storage. Now, such a drive couldn't even hold one of Vista's desktop gadgets. Our spinning disk drives will go the way of the floppy and SSD's will quietly take over and we won't give them a second thought
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9 Posted by fox95630 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:02PM EDT Report Abuse
lewinjon, I've been thinking the same thing. It won't be long before we marvel at magnetic drives in the Smithsonian.
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10 Posted by rogueist on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:49PM EDT Report Abuse
Sheesh... And here I have about 1TB of storage space connected to my poor laptop and not even 30GB of free space... Windows is horribly inefficient - I have the SAME PROGRAMS installed on my MAC and I have not even used 20Gb yet!
1 Posted by alan_r_cam on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:49PM EDT Report Abuse
Four years? It's a date (er, appointment). Put a note in your calendar.