Hi I'm planning to build a new computer and I'm deciding whether to go with a SSD or just a HDD. I have a few questions. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using SSD? Why is the price for SSD so high? What is largest storage capacity for SSD available in the market? Any help will be appreciated, thank you.
The most capacity I've seen was 512GB. SSDs cost a lot because they still are a relatively new concept for replacing a HDD. The most recommended configuration with a SSD is to buy an affordable SSD drive and set it as the master drive and just store your operating system and programs on that drive. Then have a HDD for storage of personal files. The advantages of an SSDs, they don't produce any sound (no moving parts), they claim to have better performance then a HDD, but in real world tests HDDs and SSDs perform about the same. Since the last time I checked anyways. Only the high end and expensive drives have really good performance. the Intel line I believe does. Disadvantages are the high price, reliability is still to be seen since it is a new technology, and some of the cheaper drives are slower then a traditional HDD. IMO, I wouldn't bother with a SSD. You can get a 1TB HDD for $75 now.
Agreed. Their price doesn't make up for their performance IMHO. The advantages of SSD's are: They are fast...damned fast. My VelociRaptor can't come close to the performance of a good SSD drive. The More the Merrier! Everything seems to load at the same speed off the drive. There are no read/write heads, and with read speeds approaching 200MB/sec+ you can do a lot in a little bit of time. Fast. Just making sure I mentioned it. The disadvantages: Be prepared to sell body parts. An SSD is expensive. A good SSD is very expensive. New technology means that you get to pay the new tax. Limited to 512GB*. Coupled with (1) and you've got the makings of limited, expensive storage. 1.5TB conventional HDDs are larger and much less pricey... Will degrade over time. As the drive nears 100%, performance will take a hit. Also, each cell on an SSD can only take ~10,000 erases before going kaput. This really isn't too much of an issue due to the way SSD manufacturers set up their drives (and I like the 3 pros with 3 cons). I think this article says it best: The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ (anandtech.com). *--Will go up eventually and by the time others read it, it could already be beyond this meager boundary...
The Intel line is still on top, yes, but drives based on Indilinx's Barefoot controller (which currently includes OCZ's Vertex and Agility, G-Skill's Falcon, SuperTalent's UltraDrive, and Patriot's TorqX) also offer massively improved performance over traditional HDDs. The primary reason that, as you say, real-world tests between SSDs and HDDs were often quite close while benchmarks showed massive disparities was because the drives being tested were based on the jMicron 602-series controller. It offered great sequential read/write performance (which is all benchmarks ever really test), but random performance suffered from a flaw best described as "stuttering" - a delay of about half a second during random writes that would cause the entire system to freeze for said half second. So when, say, your IM client updated your history, your browser stored a cookie, etc., the system would freeze for a split second. Chain a few of those together and your system would become very unresponsive very quickly - hence the closer numbers in real-world testing. It is possible to configure your system to eliminate some situations that would cause those stutters, but not all. Especially as an application drive, they really aren't a good choice. But Intel drives, Samsung-based drives, and Indilinx-based drives eliminate the stuttering issue, and jMicron's upcoming 612-series controller will supposedly be immune to it as well. If you pick a non-stuttering drive and set it as your system/application drive, you will see immediate benefits in things like boot time, application loading time, and general system responsiveness. No more defragmenting causing massive read delays, no more speed limitations based on rotation speed, etc. If you can afford one that fits your system and program folders, I would personally recommend purchasing one. You can get a decent estimate of the capacity you should shoot for by selecting your Windows and Program Files folders and seeing how large they are. Ideally, you'd want to configure your system to put your documents, pictures, music, videos, etc. on your hard drive rather than your SSD, as deep storage is rather the purpose of having a dual SSD/HDD setup. Programs like TweakVI will allow you to change the default location of the My Documents, My Pictures, etc. folders if you're not comfortable with a little registry hacking. If you want to know way more than I've just told you, Anandtech has written some fantastic SSD articles: [Intel SSD benchmarking and an explanation of the stuttering issue] [A look at SSD performance over time and comparison of the OCZ Vertex with an Intel drive] EDIT: Yay for jamesthebard linking to the same article! I have to start writing my posts more quickly... [Vertex firmware updates and comparison with the SuperTalent UltraDrive] Have fun! - Diosjenin -
