Do SSDs really make such a big difference? What's all the fuss about?
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 4:12PM Tweet SSDs have become cheaper over the past couple of months, and continues to drop in price. There is a lot of hype around them, that’s for sure. What’s the low down on this component? Is it really the holy grail of computers, as the techno geeks are making it out to be? Or is it yet another overpriced, under performing component that some rich Silicone Valley magnates are trying to shove down our throats?
Click through the break for the details, the lies and the promises of this new technology!
Firstly, what is an SSD, and what does it do? SSD stands for Solid State Drive. It’s a new type of hard drive that’s built out of the same modules that flash drives use, called flash memory. There are no moving parts, so it’s pretty robust. In fact, SSDs have the potential to be more reliable than traditional hard drives. Even though it’s a bit early in the life of this new technology to truly test this theory, drives from large OEMs such as Intel have a very good reliability record so far.
How does the technology work? Put simply, an SSD makes use of a controller that simultaneously writes to several different flash modules. This has a similar effect to a RAID setup, increasing the performance of the drive significantly. Due to the fact that there’s no disc that spins around and no hard drive head to search for a piece of information, the access times on an SSD have the potential to be spectacularly low. These two factors combined result in SSDs being blazingly fast.
What do SSDs promise to achieve? The marketers will have you believe that this is the fastest hard drive you will ever get, and that it will increase your user experience significantly. In fact, they’re so confident in their claims that they will tell you that it will be the single biggest component upgrade that you can make for your computer.
Is this accurate? Overall, yes. Putting your OS and frequently used applications on an SSD has a bigger impact than replacing a computer, in many cases. One of the best examples of this I’ve found is to open all the applications on my notebook at the same time. Select All ==> Right Click ==> Open. Where a hard drive would take 5 or more minutes to open all 40 odd applications and then close them again, the SSD would do the same thing in about 45 seconds. More importantly, the SSD equipped machine will remain responsive while doing so. Sure, this example focuses on the strengths of an SSD, but I get to do that because I’m writing the blog post!
SSDs certainly are fast, but the difference between many of these, won’t be noticeable for you, unless you test them next to each other in similarly specced machines. There are a few things to look out for, but that’s beyond the scope of this blog post. For now, just know that an SSD is faster than a hard drive, and any SSD will suit your needs perfectly. It’s not as important to look at brands or models, especially if you’re on a budget. Get any SSD that fits into your budget, and you’ll be making a good decision.
My experiences using SSDs varies over the last 8 to 10 months. I’ve used OCZ (in fact, this server runs on an OCZ SSD), Mushkin, Intel and lately, SuperTalent. All of these have been installed in a Macbook pro, and I can truly say that it’s an absolute pleasure to run a notebook on an SSD. However, some of the earlier drives (especially JMicron based drives) had performance issues. An in depth guide on what to buy is beyond this review, but I would suggest sticking to something with a Sandforce, Indilinx or Intel controller onboard.
The major disadvantage of an SSD is size and cost - for the price of a terabyte hard drive you will be lucky to get a 40gb SSD! For this reason I suggest the following - install your Windows/Mac/Linux OS onto the SSD and have the rest of your data on a traditional hard drive, meaning you only need a 64GB/128GB SSD. Though expensive, you won’t break the bank.
Do SSDs live up to the hype? Absolutely! This truly is the single biggest upgrade you can get for your machine. If you have the money to spend on an SSD, get one. It’s an awesome performance increaser, and one you won’t regret spending money on.
Here is a list of SSDs on Prophecy.co.za, and as always, give your comments below!
Happy shopping!
Reader Comments (5)
One of the best examples of this I’ve found is to open all the applications on my [application] at the same time.
And a full stop missing in the 9th paragraph. ;)
Linux on the other hand works fine with a 30GB SSD. My copy of Ubuntu takes up less than 10GB after I've installed all the necessary applications and services. One thing that you should look out for in Linux is the TRIM support. Ubuntu 10.04 comes with Linux kernel 2.6.32 which doesn't have TRIM support, but it is possible to upgrade the kernel.
There are quite a few optimizations that you have to do both before and after you've installed your operating system on a SSD. The optimizations range from performance increases to prolonging your SSD's lifespan.
IMO: SSD's are definitely worth it for workstations, since time is so valuable. I'm still not that convinced that it's worth it to buy an SSD for a gaming PC, since it's only going to decrease your loading times and not the in-game performance at all.
That is the benefit. For gaming, the benefits are somewhat diminished, but if you do other things on the computer too, I'd still say that there is a sizable performance benefit.
But yeah, with the older drives, or with older OSs, it can be a bit of a mindfield - thanks for pointing it out!