I have been reading alot online about the development of SSD drives, about how much better they are for the computer. They are faster and more reliable. But it seems to me that they are only developing these new types of drives for laptops, which is great, but why aren't they developing them for desktops? Wouldn't it be better to have a hard state drive, one that won't fail on you than a disk drive?? I know the price per GB would be higher than the avg disk drive, but wouldn't the performance of one of these suckers ok the price??
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SSD Drive For Desktops
- Thread starter gist901
- Start date
desktop market is much more price sensitive than server and laptop markets. The primary benefits (heat, rough handling, raw speed, access times, compactness) can be obtained much easier in a 3.5" drive (for speed, access times, compactness), or matter less (access times [read, raptors]) or not at all (heat, rough handling).
There will come a time when the price is accessible and the capacity is acceptable, but that day is not today for most users.
There will come a time when the price is accessible and the capacity is acceptable, but that day is not today for most users.
vsboxerboy
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It isn't that they aren't made for desktops exactly. They are (in general) in the 2.5 or 1.8" form factor which is what you would find laptops because the target market is the laptop market - the moving HDD can be quite fragile in a laptop and thus replacing it with an SSD seems attractive. With an adapter (which can be ghetto-rigged if you want to go that route) you can easily mount the drive in your case and it will connect with using regular SATA connectors just like any modern HDD.
There are currently, however, major problems with write speeds for the current batch of SSDs to the point that unless you specifically require non volatile storage for a particular reason, you are much, much better off waiting until these problems clear up. Additionally, there are problems with compatibility with current motherboards and operating systems as well as some reports of nasty data corruption. There has even been articles explaining that the supposed power savings of an SSD vs mechanical drive is not as great as thought (b/c sequential read/writes of long files do not require relatively power hungry head seeking - once the head is where it needs to be, only minimal power is required).
Long story short, while SSD's currently have an edge in read speed, noise, and heat - their benefit is massively outweighed by the write speed problems, incompatibilities, and most importantly, cost. With 1TB HDDs approaching the $100 mark and the $85 WD640AAKS beating last gen raptors in speed, it is extremely difficult to justify the purchase of a SSD for a desktop.
The future will undoubtedly change this, but for the time be, traditional HDDs are still king.
There are currently, however, major problems with write speeds for the current batch of SSDs to the point that unless you specifically require non volatile storage for a particular reason, you are much, much better off waiting until these problems clear up. Additionally, there are problems with compatibility with current motherboards and operating systems as well as some reports of nasty data corruption. There has even been articles explaining that the supposed power savings of an SSD vs mechanical drive is not as great as thought (b/c sequential read/writes of long files do not require relatively power hungry head seeking - once the head is where it needs to be, only minimal power is required).
Long story short, while SSD's currently have an edge in read speed, noise, and heat - their benefit is massively outweighed by the write speed problems, incompatibilities, and most importantly, cost. With 1TB HDDs approaching the $100 mark and the $85 WD640AAKS beating last gen raptors in speed, it is extremely difficult to justify the purchase of a SSD for a desktop.
The future will undoubtedly change this, but for the time be, traditional HDDs are still king.
dandragonrage
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The Intel SSDs will change this when they are available to be bought. Even their MLC drive from Anand's review looks amazing.
The Hunter
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SSDs will indeed be a strong contender on the desktop in the future. How long that takes really depends on how the pricing goes. We've seen some cheap (but flawed) MLC SSDs from OCZ and the like, and some very high quality MLC ones from Intel coming to market now, so it's only a matter of time before we have (relatively) cheap, high quality ones. If OCZ/Samsung/whomever could produce a Core type SSD but with a better controller than the JMicron that seems to be causing the problems, there would be a huge contender very soon. I don't know how close we are to making that technically/economically feasible.
The main advantage of SSDs in a desktop isn't going to be high transfer speeds, they're very strong, but a VelociRaptor is as good or better for the most part, and high density 7200RPM drives keep up as well (WD6400AAKS, etc). SSDs serious advantage is latency time. The latencies we're talking about with SSDs means that the overall system responsiveness, particularly when launching programs and opening files is going to feel way faster, which is what most people need when we talk about drive speed anyways. It's a huge improvement for user experience, more than anything else. Add that to the lack of hard drive noise and it's a winner on the desktop, particularly if you pair it with something like a 1TB WD GreenPower drive, or a home server for storing all your media.
Same thing for laptop users, plus the additional benefits of having desktop level sustained transfer levels, no moving parts or heat to dissipate.
The main advantage of SSDs in a desktop isn't going to be high transfer speeds, they're very strong, but a VelociRaptor is as good or better for the most part, and high density 7200RPM drives keep up as well (WD6400AAKS, etc). SSDs serious advantage is latency time. The latencies we're talking about with SSDs means that the overall system responsiveness, particularly when launching programs and opening files is going to feel way faster, which is what most people need when we talk about drive speed anyways. It's a huge improvement for user experience, more than anything else. Add that to the lack of hard drive noise and it's a winner on the desktop, particularly if you pair it with something like a 1TB WD GreenPower drive, or a home server for storing all your media.
Same thing for laptop users, plus the additional benefits of having desktop level sustained transfer levels, no moving parts or heat to dissipate.
Urban Core
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Thought you might want to hear from some one who has a SSD.
I recently built a new system and I picked a main system drive of a 32 gig SSD (OCZ Model) and I could not be happier. The choice is really one of price vrs storage. SSD's can't come close to competing with traditional platter based Hard drives at the moment. That might change some time down the road
How I choose to use my SSD is simple. I use it for my main OS and Swap File. That is all. And I find the load times and speed of the drive very impressive. I think that if you consider it for temp space for your programs <DVD, video work, photoshop> then you'll see a nice increase in your speed. I would never use one for storage since platter HDD's are just fine and plenty fast enough for that.
I pair the 32 gig which is used only for swap space and the OS with a 300 gig velociraptor for main progs and games. I find it works nicely. Sure, I had money to burn on it and I wanted to see them in action and I've worked enough with them to know the advantages vrs disadvantage. They are not going to replace traditional HDD's by a long shot any time soon but they do make a nice main system disk for speed and lack of heat.
Just my 0.02 Euros.
I recently built a new system and I picked a main system drive of a 32 gig SSD (OCZ Model) and I could not be happier. The choice is really one of price vrs storage. SSD's can't come close to competing with traditional platter based Hard drives at the moment. That might change some time down the road
How I choose to use my SSD is simple. I use it for my main OS and Swap File. That is all. And I find the load times and speed of the drive very impressive. I think that if you consider it for temp space for your programs <DVD, video work, photoshop> then you'll see a nice increase in your speed. I would never use one for storage since platter HDD's are just fine and plenty fast enough for that.
I pair the 32 gig which is used only for swap space and the OS with a 300 gig velociraptor for main progs and games. I find it works nicely. Sure, I had money to burn on it and I wanted to see them in action and I've worked enough with them to know the advantages vrs disadvantage. They are not going to replace traditional HDD's by a long shot any time soon but they do make a nice main system disk for speed and lack of heat.
Just my 0.02 Euros.