I was about to fork out the cash to get the OCz 2E 120gb drive.
I rationalised it down to the fact that I'm able to use it indefinately in future, where as most mechanical drives fail over time.
Then I read this in a private forum by a user, do you guys know if there is any merit to it at all? He's basically saying that sds will lose performace over time, and eventually halt to a grind as there's only so many times it can be written over.
Conn - I hope you'll read this as coming from an electrical engineer which was my first career.
SSD's are only half baked at this point. Transistors - even micro-sized ones as FETS on a chip, have a limited life. They can only transition states (binary 1/0) so many times. Therefore every SSD manufacturer has implemented different strategies to overcome this self-destructing nature of the drives. This creates various data blocks and allocation issues on the drives. All workable just not optimal.
Bottom line: if you use SSDs for data (like RAM) the drive will become useless over time. The harder you use the drive the faster it will self destruct. SSDs are best used for the system drive - bootup and programs that change very little over time. I do believe you get improved performance using them for that purpose.
However, I've seen results where Rapture disks and current advanced spinning media have 90% of SSDs performance at 20% of the price. There is a lot of technical websites out there that you can get good advice from. Worth a read.
Speed is IMO only a part of the equation. Power consumption, reliability, and data protection need to also be considered. For me, who would only use an SSD for the system bootup function those issues are unimportant - or at least at parity with spinning media.
Good luck...MS
Conn - I haven't studied the schematics of the technology since last year. The kinks I know they were working on were the fact that over time hard drive space actually diminished as part of the process to refresh and allocate transistor usage. I'm sure that has been optimized.
I'll look at it again since Intel's comment intrigues me as an engineer. Frankly this is a physics thing - a limitation of the materials and construction of IC circuits. Since we don't have technology past that I'm not sure how it could be solved. It's like miniaturization. You still need a certain amount of molecules to construct the circuit. So until you change the underlying technology or figure out string theory there will be a limitation to how far you can progress.
Let me give you another example: the reason that science fiction talks about 'biological machines." The greatest advances and research seem to be coming from modeling biological processes for electronics (actual use of organic materials instead of inactive compounds) - almost a return to analog. Storage devices that can capture a range of data (say from one to nine) instead of binary in a single unit. Just like your nerves can register pain in various degrees, not on/off.
GB made great points I hadn't considered: a laptop. I'm curious and will also research power consumption and durability. While SSD might be more impervious to physical damage I question their reliability under electrical duress.
If Intel puts their money (warranty) behind their words go for it. Then you can't lose. As to the rest, I'll get back to you...MS
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Okay I looked into this. The problem remains that the transistors do wear out. What exacerbated that problem was data had to be changed in large blocks. If you had a bit change an entire memory section of 128,000 bits had to be rewritten. Apparently Intel's new controller minimizes that problem. Based on the 'electronic' wear of SSD's and the 'mechanical' wear of spinning media both should have similar life expectancies.
The only issue now is price and scalability. The density of spinning media has not been equaled by SSD nor has price. The article link below give you the raw performance data to consider if the benefits outwieght the cost.
As the author points out SSDs are much more reliable and rugged than spinning media and are used in critical and military applications. This has me reconsidering an SSD for my laptop.
Here is a good and recent article at one of my go to technology sites:
I guess there is a workaround to this, limit the amount of writing to the mechanical drive and use the SSD for windows only.
However this means that sdd isn't a great option for netbook users with only one hard drive enclosure.
AND
I can't think of many programs that don't do some level of writing, windows live, firefox, word, etc all write very small files and use caching intensively.
WIndows uses a large swap file..
If you put all these files onto a mechanical drive, it kinda defeats the purpose of ssd as you'll have to put a lot of the regularly used files onto mechanical drives.
. So they'll be binned for new tech before they expire
