For years hard drives have been problematic for some. Breakdowns and file fragmentation are major concerns that affect or could affect all users. Since hard drives have moving parts, they are prone to mechanical failure. File fragmentation can lead to a performance issue as the hard drive needs to move its read/write head to find the pieces of a file. A new type of hard drive that is gaining more recognition will solve some issues with the current technology.
In this post I will examine this new type of hard drive, called SSD (solid state drive), as well as some advantages and disadvantages to this type.
What is a Solid State Drive?
Many of you are familiar with flash memory cards. These are the little cards you insert into your digital camera that will store your photos. Unlike some traditional storage devices, such as hard drives, these cards contain no moving parts.
Along those same lines, a SSD (solid state drive) hard drive is comprised of memory that emulates a hard drive. Although these hard drives don’t use flash memory, they use SRAM or DRAM instead.
The image below shows a current hard drive on the left, and a SSD hard drive on the right.
There are both advantages and disadvantages to SSD hard drives, which I will discuss in the next few sections.
Advantages of SSD
There are several advantages to SSD hard drives:
- No moving parts. This means that a SSD hard drive is more durable than a regular hard drive as there is a huge reduction in mechanical failure.
- No noise. Since there are no moving parts, there is no noise generated by the drive, unless a cooling fan is used.
- Faster start up time. Since the drive doesn’t need to spin up, the drive can start up much faster.
- Fast random access for reading. Unlike traditional hard drives that move a read/write head, SSD hard drives don’t use a read/write head.
- File fragmentation doesn’t reduce performance. The seek time on a SSD hard drive is known, and constant, so having to read pieces of a file from different locations won’t decrease performance.
The above lists some of the advantages to SSD hard drives. There are, however, disadvantages to these hard drives as well, which are listed below.
Disadvantages of SSD
The following lists the disadvantages of SSD hard drives:
- SSD hard drives are much more expensive. As of this post, a SSD hard drive costs roughly $3.50USD per gigabyte compare to $0.40USD per gigabyte for a traditional hard drive.
- Lower storage space. Since the SSD hard drives are newer, the maximum capacity of these drives is 250GB, compared to 1TB for current hard drives.
- Slower write speeds. Some SSDs have slower write speeds compared to current hard drives.
- Limited write cycles. Some SSD hard drives have a limited number of write cycles that can easily be reached on very active machines.
Summary
This post discussed SSD hard drives and compared these new hard drives to the current hard drive. Although it will take many years before they become standard, it looks like in the future all computers will use these hard drives instead of the traditional ones.
Have Your Say
- Do you have an SSD hard drive? If you do, how does it compare with current hard drives?
- If price wasn’t an issue, would you install a current hard drive or a SSD hard drive?
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on July 31, 2008 at 3:49 am
I would absolutely buy one of these if price were not an issue. I think (but have no idea) that not are they quieter, but no moving parts also means that they don’t have to be cooled as much, right? And if they don’t have to be cooled as much, the fan wouldn’t be as loud either.
on July 31, 2008 at 8:55 am
I don’t think they would need to be cooled as much. However, they may generate some heat when they are used more, but I’m not entirely sure.
on July 31, 2008 at 9:15 am
Depends for me. I would go with a SSD for my laptop, especially since I hear my current hard drive making funny noises when I tip the laptop at a certain angle! For a desktop, I’d probably stick with the old hard drive just so that I can max out at 1 TB
on July 31, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I think laptops will be the largest consumers of these hard drives. There are currently many models that use them.
Since laptops are constantly being handled, the hard drives are more prone to mechanical breakdowns. SSD hard drives are have no moving parts so would be better suited for laptops.
Also, with less power consumption, an SSD hard drive may make laptop batteries last long.
on July 31, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I’m waiting for my Asus EEE laptop with SSD. Tried the Acer Aspire One with SSD, and its fast.
I think SSD will do well.
on August 1, 2008 at 7:48 am
I believe Apple’s ipod that requires less hard disk space uses SSD, which is particularly good if you are using your ipod when you are jogging because as you have said there is no moving parts.
Thanks for highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of SSD, it’s certainly a useful list.
on August 1, 2008 at 10:07 am
@marie: You are probably right, but I think my iPod Video still uses a hard drive. I can hear it spinning up when I start a song or video.
on August 5, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I hope that SSD manufacturers come up with a standard for SSDs.
on November 18, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Do you have an SSD hard drive? If you do, how does it compare with current hard drives?
I have just acquired a SSD on my convertible @ work. It was rather expensive and took some convincing of my IT Manager. He said it alone cost the price he usually buys a laptop for.
The reasoning was need for stability in the truck I drive @ work over rough roads, and its ability to run without skipping and damaging the drive.
So far I have been very happy with it but the cost has to come down before it would become a common alternative or common.
on May 14, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Hi. There. Becuase. I. Am. A. Hard. Core. Gamer I. Would. Chose. The. Fast. Ssd. Drive. Because. I. Want. Fast. Gaming. Not. Of. Cost. Or. Efficency
on May 14, 2009 at 11:14 pm
hi. There. I. Notice. That. Some. High. End. Gaming. Computers. Offer. A. 1. Terabytes. Ssd. In. 6. 160. Gb. Ssd. Soo. I. Would. Wait. A. Few. Years. When. Multi-terabytes. Ssd. Computers. Hit. The. Market. Instead. Of. A. Terabytes. Hard. Drive. They. Have. 6.5. Terabyte. Ssd. Prototype. Ssd
on January 18, 2010 at 2:30 pm
hi there im an netbook user compaqmini 100c so
2gbram, win7 ultimate intel i7 processr + intel x-25-m ssd 150 gb.
win7 statuptime 5 seconds. imagine, i can play games n it.
if you play simulator games, they often need fast hdd/ssd to update the textures, which is very good for ssd- intel cuz its inreadibly fast
on May 30, 2011 at 10:05 pm
“SSD hard drive” is an oxymoron. There are solid-state drives and hard disk drives.
File fragmentation is largely a problem of filesystems that we haven’t had to worry about all that much since FAT32 stopped being used as the default filesystem in the Windows world. NTFS, ext2/3/4, HFS+, ZFS, etc. all reduce fragmentation to extremely low levels.