Laptops with Solid State Drives (SSD) A Good idea?

No doubt many of our current M-Tech shoppers have heard of this new wave in storage, SSD (Solid State Drive). Not a day goes by that someone doesn't inquire about how SSD in a laptop computer can change their life. Rumors of blinding speed, near zero battery drain and low temperature make this sound as if it would be the ideal candidate for your next laptop computer. After all, you can have the fastest CPU, the most potent GPU and tons of RAM, yet in the end your overall performance it limited by the computers hard disk drive (HDD). So it stands to reason that in reality your laptop cannot be any faster than the slowest component on it..the HDD. No wonder everybody is excited about the prospect of speeding up the slowest part of their laptop. If you can double the speed of your drives I/O you can double the speed o your laptop.

There is no question, SSD is the wave of the future, current history has shown us the solid state devices are faster, smaller and less energy hungry. that is why your MP3player, Cell Phone, PDA printer etc.. all use not just solid state parts but also use SSD. SSD's have been around for a few years now and price of the smaller capacity ones have dropped enough that many devices are using them with huge success. How about your next M-Tech Laptop? Should you go with a SSD In your laptop and drop the legacy HDD just now?

It has been a long time since we here at M-Tech have had a question that has so many dynamics to the answer. If ever there was a time to say the answer was "no doubt about it, a definite perhaps maybe...) this would be that time. Lets put it this way. SSD is lighter, has less battery draw ,generates less heat and quicker access time. All good stuff, however the overall real transfer rate is a fraction of what a good SATA II HDD is. So what is more important? Booting up fast and having blazing fast access to smaller files or being able to really push the data when you have large numbers of huge files to move back and forth.

Perhaps just looking at it this way can help you come up with your own personal answer.  Are you a light user who rarely pushes the envelope as far as files size or amount of files goes? Do you surf, a little light word processing, you know just our average computer user. If so then the SSD can change your life. On the other hand would that type of user be the one who would want to pay 33 times more for the same size HDD. That's right, the guy that benefits the most, the light average users the one who would not really need an expensive laptop, is the one who would have to pay 33 times more for a 32GB SSD than 32GB HDD. You see why we are in a quandary here. It is our experience that the computer users who can justify that expense and who is also likely to afford that expense needs something that can also handle a large quantity of large files. Instead the guy least likely to want to spend next weeks pay check on a SSD alone would likely say, "what? why would I want to do that?

So in a nutshell the average Joe user who stands the most to benefit is also the guy who would appreciate the gains the least. After all, he is no power user and may not even appreciate the speed he just picked up.

However the power user, the guy moving large amounts of big files non stop with robust programs, needs that speed but it isn't quite there for him. He thinks it is nice to access a file fast, buy what he really needs is a drive that can transfer that file fast once he reaches it.

There is another problem, lets say you are using the D900C and you plan to RAID 0 the two SSD drives to get adequate file transfer speed. Now you have to buy two SSD's (keep in mind two 32GB SSD's cost more than some laptops)  and even with two SSD drives you still only have 64GB of file space. You see the problem here? If you are a guy moving super large files in a robust program, you sure as heck need more than 128GB of space. Most of these users go for three 200GB drives not two 64MB drives. If they were happy with the 128GB limit then they were not the heavy users we are talking about here.

It is a catch 22 to be sure, if you need it, then it is not quit adequate for your needs. If you can benefit from it then likely you would never spend that kind of money just to get fast speeds. So should you get a SSD with your next laptop? Definitely, perhaps maybe.

Below are some statistics of SSD vs. HDD. You will see that SSD is impressive. Keep in mind that in the first graphic, were it shows the read and write speeds beating the HDD, this is a small file and most of the speed you see is when transferring a small file is because some of that transfer comes from its buffer not the actual storage capacity. The buffer is always faster. When you try to transfer a large file you will quickly leave the buffer area and then go to the capacity area of the drive itself. This is were the SSD begins to fall short. In transfer speed and large file capacity. On the other hand the SSD has such a small capacity it cant really be tried that thoroughly on large file transfers because they just don't have the space. Another way to know if the SSD is right for you is to ask your self, can I be satisfied with a 32 or 64GB drive? If so and the price does not make you grab your chest and shout at the heavens, then by all means get a SSD. It has better battery life, more shock resistant, faster initial file access and for smaller file decent transfer rates.

For 70% of the normal users we would like to recommend the SSD because it is perfect for them, but we cant recommend it yet because even with all the huge advantages of the SSD, the price to size ratio still gives the HDD a big advantage. We here at M-Tech long for the day when the price on SSD's drop enough that the normal user can justify it. Right now though, unless you are the favorite nephew of Bill Gates, and cost is no concern, we still think that HDD is the right choice for  most people. Let us all count the days until the sizes of SSD come up and the cost comes down. When that happens you can bet we will start pushing SSD like crazy. Until if you buy a laptop with a HDD we wont feel bad for you and if you can afford a laptop with the SSD then we wont feel bad for you but we will feel bad for those of us who cant afford it

Summed up, we love SDD and wish they were larger and cheaper. They are so small and expensive it makes their enormous benefit hard to justify.

Click for  a larger image

Here is for SATA and SATA II drives for performance comparison.

So SSD is 120MBs Raw and Real Speed is 20MBS vs.

SATA II 3000MBs(3GBs) raw and 300MBs real speed

Battery time with SSD vs. HDD

The battery starts the test at a complete 100% charge and is run uninterrupted until the screen goes black. The time is recorded in minutes.

several tests were run using the settings for Performance, Balanced, and Power Saver. They scaled, as you would expect, included are only the representative results here. To be a valid comparison the settings for the hardware and Operating system on the two drives had to be identical. To guarantee that the drives were exactly the same Acronis True Image Home was used to clone the OS setup to the drives. This removes any chance of settings variations affecting the outcome. *Please note: the comparison being made is between drives on a given system and not between systems or settings

These results show that SSDs do not dramatically increase battery life. Certainly not enough when considering the costs.

Solid State Drive Temperature comparisons.

Drive Temps

The 7 degree difference between 5400 rpm laptop drives and SSD drives during load is nice, but the hard drive is not the component causing the majority of heat coming from your laptop. Most of the heat is coming from the processor and memory. The switch to SSD made no measurable difference in the peak temperatures coming from under the laptop.

Article written by G. Michrina  (Some charts were borrowed from http://techtalk.pcpitstop.com/2008/08/05/to-ssd-or-not-to-ssd/

P.S. Since this article and references were written M-Tech has been contacted by a preeminent chipset manufacturer who has produced its own SSD. Our initial tests show a lot of promise. Instead of the pathetic 20MB per second transfer rate these new drives come in close to 100MBper second. Not as good as a SATA II drive but coupled with the other benefits of a SSD we don't have a problem if a customer can afford one and wants to buy it. In the past we made SSD available but did a lot to talk you out of actually buying one. That is starting to change. Make no mistake, if you want the best drive for the money, then a SATA II is your best option. However if money is not a factor then the New M-Tech 80GB drives are very interesting.