Should you consider a Solid State Computer Drive?
One “Next Big Thing” that’s been slow to arrive is the Solid State Drive for personal computers.
Only high prices have kept these super-rugged drives from replacing the fragile old spinning platters mechanical hard drives.
For years now it’s been a “chicken-and-egg” thing. Not enough people were buying SSDs because the price was too high. Therefore the price couldn’t come down because there wasn’t a high production volume. Now, thanks to gamers and other high-end computer enthusiasts, SSD prices have dropped considerably.
Will this be your “Year of the SSD”? If so, you have a lot to gain and some nasty computing threats to lose.
Why You Should Get a Solid State Drive
What’s the most unreliable part of a personal computer? No, it’s not really the user – it’s that spinning 7,200 RPM, high precision mechanical disk drive. Your hard drive is guaranteed to fail eventually. The only questions are when and how expensive it’ll be to restore your precious data afterwards – if that’s possible.
Hard drive manufacturers rate expected failures as MTBF hours of operation (“Mean Time Between Failures” or “Mean Time Before Failure”). But few people pay attention to MTBF numbers, because they’re heavily dependent on statistics and are derived under ideal conditions, making them extremely optimistic. Real world conditions for spinning platters hard drives are anything but ideal. And many of them run 24/7/365 – meaning lots of MTBF hours are logged.
Standard hard drives are:
- Sensitive to mechanical shock and vibration
- High precision mechanical devices with tight tolerances, several coordinated moving parts and many failure modes. Yet these fragile devices must be mass produced at very low cost to achieve their commodity pricing.
- Known to have a limited lifetime, typically a few years
- Must be kept cool to prevent early failure
- Are comparatively slow at loading your data
- Can be a bit noisy
Solid State Drives:
- Have no moving parts
- Are not mechanical devices, but interconnected memory chips
- Make no noise
- Are more heat tolerant
|
Parameter
|
Drive 1
|
Drive 2
|
Notes
|
| Brand (typical) | Seagate Barracuda ST310005N1A1AS-RK |
Crucial M4 SSD | |
| Operating Principle | Precision 7,200 RPM spinning platters and moving read/write heads | High capacity solid state memory chips No moving parts | SSDs are much more robust and reliable – also faster |
| Capacity | 1.0 TB | 0.256 TB | |
| Price | $140 | $340 | SSD is $200 more |
| MTBF Reliability | 750,000 Hrs. (85.6 years) |
1,200,000 Hrs. (136.9 years) |
Mean Time Before Failure (avg.) |
| Estimated Reliability (my experience) |
4 to 8 Years 70% failure chance |
More than 20 years 70% failure chance |
My rough guesses |
| Mechanical | 7,200 RPM Precision motor, spinning platters | No moving parts. All Solid State chips | SSD MUCH more reliable |
| Power Consumption | 11.6 Watts | Under 0.085 Watts | Longer battery life |
| Speed (avg. access) |
8.5 to 9.5 mSec | Less than 0.1 mSec | Faster data fetch |
| Data Transfer Rate | 150 to 300 MB/Sec | 500 MB/Sec | Faster data transfer |
| Temperature Limits | 5 to 55 C° 41 to 131 F° |
0 to 70 C° 32 to 158 F° |
SSD more reliable |
| Shock Before Damage | 63 Gs | 1,500 Gs | SSD 24x More rugged |
| Noise | 2.9 dB Sound Power | 0 dB Sound Power | SSD quieter |
| Warrantee Parts and Labor | 2 Years | 3 Years | SSD more reliable |
| Monitoring Built-In | S.M.A.R.T. | S.M.A.R.T. | Same software |
Is a Solid State Drive large enough?
That depends on what you do with your computer. 128 GB is large enough for many people and 256 GB should fit most users. Don’t forget your existing spinning platters hard drive will still be available for storing large file collections (like music, photo albums or videos).
“SSDs are reliable. I won’t make those pesky backups”
Well, as a pro computer consultant I can’t advise people not to make backups, if your stored information is critical. But it’s true that the probability that you’ll have a disastrous data loss on your SSD is very, very much lower than on your old spinning platters mechanical drive.
Should you take action?
Please consider the age of your current spinning platters hard drive, how critical your particular data is and the value of installing a Solid State Drive during my special offer (think of it as a data disaster insurance policy).
Where to buy?
www.NewEgg.com has excellent prices on the Crucial M4 SSD. I’ve found newegg to be an excellent online source for computer products. Have been getting most of my Windows computer products there for over 4 years and my computer consulting clients whom I’ve recommended NewEgg.com to have also been quite happy with them.
Installation
Buying the SSD version with the installation kit makes installing your SSD and transfering your old drive’s data very easy. You leave the new SSD outside your computer, connected via a special USB cable to your computer. Then your run the supplied software and all your data is soon transferred to the SSD. When you then detach the USB cable and install the SSD into your computer on a normal SATA connector, it becomes the boot drive and your old drive becomes extra secondary storage.
These SSDs are 2.5″ drives – the size used in laptops. If you’re going to install one in a desktop PC, be sure to also buy a 2.5″ to 3.25″ mechanical adapter bracket (about $5). That’s just a kind of shelf that fits into your 3.25″ drive bay, to properly fit a 2.5″ drive.
Please feel free to comment below. Are you planning to install a SSD?
Disclosure (you should know):
I’m a paid sales affiliate of NewEgg.com. If you purchase products there after evaluating their prices by using this page to visit NewEgg, I may receive a sales commission. I only recommend products and services which I believe are best-of-breed and which I own and use extensively myself. My opinions are my own. I also recommend many free products and many where I receive no compensation. You can review my policies here.
Cheers!
_jim coe
