SSDs and the future

Let’s talk about SSD hard drives, the next generation of hard drive for both laptops and desktops. Are they better then a Western Digital Raptor or the new Velociraptor? I will spend some time discussing all the information I know to help you decide how the future looks for the SSD market.

First let’s take a look at the SSD and find out why these drives are a worthwhile replacement to the HDD. The SSD has no moving parts which make it less prone to mechanical failure. It is more durable because there are no moving parts, I installed Windows Vista on a SSD and then placed it into a paint shaker then connected it to the laptop so the system booted to the drive. I then turned on the paint shaker and allowed Windows to load while the drive was being was rattling around and I played a movie all the way through. The paint shaker got too hot and I had to shut it down but the drive was still working fine. I then dropped the SSD from five feet, installed it into the same system and the drive worked fine. We can determine from this test that the SSD can sustain a considerable amount of agitation will no ill effect. I took a standard laptop hard drive, the one out of the same laptop, and allowed Windows Vista to load then I turned on the shaker and within 30 seconds the drive locked up. Now at this point I thought the standard laptop hard drive was toast. I have seen other hard drives die from just picking them up while they were running. Well low and behold when I started the system up with the same hard drive that locked up, it booted and loaded Windows Vista. So the SSD is able to continue working while getting the stuffing shook out of it, the laptop HDD locked up but still worked after being shaken. I did not try to drop the laptop HDD from 5 feet so I was unable to complete that part of the test.

Let’s talk about speed; this is where we find out if the SSD is a quality replacement. The Western Digital Raptor has a read seek time of 4.6 ms and write seek time of 5.2 ms, the Velociraptor has a read seek time of 4.2 ms and a write seek time of 4.6 ms. The seek times for the average SSD is 1-2 ms. Since there are no moving parts the SSDs seek with incredible speed. The Raptor has a read speed averaging 78 MBps and a write speed averaging 97 MBps. The Velociraptor has a read speed averaging 108.4 MBps and a write speed averaging 100 MBps, so the Velociraptor is the faster of the two. How about the SSD, the Samsung SSD, we will use this one since it is one of the faster ones, has a read speed averaging 120 MBps and a write speed averaging 100 MBps. I use the word averaging because if I tested each drive 3-5 times with the same test it will report 3-5 different scores. We can see the Velociraptor and the SSD are running neck and neck here with the regular raptor not far behind.

So where is the bigger benefit long term? SSDs will eventually become the norm and the older HDD will still have a place in this technological world, it may only be in desktops. SSDs are being touted right now as a laptop replacement because of their durability and size. In the future as the storage space of SSDs increase to 150GB to 300GB and beyond, they will become a threat to the HDD market. The tech industry is always in a state of flux and the sooner HDD manufacturers begin to embrace SSDs as the future the better for them. Right now the SSD is still rough around the edges; it may take until the end of the year before they get all the kinks ironed out. The positive benefits SSDs bring to the table are; durability, faster boot times, emits less heat, draws less power, and has about the same read/write speeds as the Velociraptor. It is the future, now if we can just get the price down to $120.00 for a 128GB drive or $1 a GB I will be very very happy.

 Until next time,

Kineo