PCFormat Forum Archive

I took this vid link from Toms hardware and here is the article link. Decide for yourselves if its worth getting one even if it is just to get windows and office up and running.



http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd ... ,3023.html

Wow! Old news is so exciting!

I Know! It's like seeing all the things you missed the first time around

haha! SSD all the way!

Way too lazy to search... Shameless hijack.

I heard something that the drives tend to wear and tear. What is the life expectancy of these babies? I have a 80gig in the drawer.

capanno wrote:I heard something that the drives tend to wear and tear

Hard to wear and tear with no moving parts

The older generation SSD's were susceptible to corruption after prolonged periods of disk thrashing.
The 'fix' for this was to disable the superfetch service in the OS.

Err, no. They do have 'n limited life expectancy- it's linked to the write operations. Long explanation short- every time you write to the drive, the nand cells weaken- it's an attribute of the way the write process and nand cells in general work. Newer drives have an MTBF of 1 000 000 hours or more. There are also some clever algorithms built in to ensure that the drive writes over all the cells instead of re-using just a couple of specific ones. This is done to prolong the life of the drive- all cells get worn down evenly. So all in all it's not too much of problem- you'll probably upgrade your ssd long before it dies on you.

Now if only the capacity goes up and price comes down

Suppose we'll have to wait another 2-3 years before this technology replaces conventional HDD; provided that convention HDD don't develop new technologies like perpendicular (vertically stack charge) recording technology.

Provided that the HDD still remains the slowest component in modern PC's, Super fast responsive PC, can hardly wait.

Dustman1 wrote:Suppose we'll have to wait another 2-3 years before this technology replaces conventional HDD; provided that convention HDD don't develop new technologies like perpendicular (vertically stack charge) recording technology.

Say what?

Too much provided's

Currently, for me the price vs space for SSD's is still too expensive, thus the reason I don't believe SSD's will replace convention HDD's too soon. Propable after a couple on Node shrinks e.g. 22nm and below, the price vs space may become more comparable. Although, it seems that the reliability of the NAND chips dropped when the 32nm shrink occured.

Regarding Perpendicular:
Conventional HDD had the capacity they can store increase via perpendicular recording technology. Normally the charge was stored horizontally, but required more space; resulting in less space per platter.

I actually read that they are investigating heating the platter at the point where they write to, apparently allows the charge to be stored better, e.g. smaller section required = increase disc space. To read this data, the area you read has to be cooled down, results in more accurate reads, required due to above process. Seems complex, so don't believe this technology will be available anytime soon.

I don't agree, SSDs are only expensive because a) It's newer tech than HDDs and b) It's faster than HDDs. It's new and shiny syndrome, everyone wants the new and shiny gadget, which = inflated prices.

If a faster better alternative came along SSDs prices would drop like stones out of the sky. Case in point CD > DVD > Blu-ray. I remember a time when DVD writers cost upward of R1500, now they go for roughly R200 while Blu-ray writers sit at R1500+.

As to your last statement, I can't see that happening anytime soon.

Even with any of those new fancy technologies (which I don't see happening soon anyway), fact is conventional HDDs will never be as fast as SSDs simply because they are mechanical drives. They have the storage capacity edge, but that too can easily be mitigated if manufacturers wish to do so.

Hman wrote:It's new and shiny syndrome, everyone wants the new and shiny gadget, which = inflated prices.

thatisall

If you got cash, go SSD. If you dont have that much but windows boot times and office load time is important then get a small windows/office ssd.