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Notebook Storage SSDs and HDs Compared

Posted by kdawson on from the now-what-would-you-pay dept.

The Raindog sends us a particularly timely showdown article comparing seven 2.5" mobile hard drives, four of them HDs and three SSDs, across a wide range of application, file-copy, power-consumption, and noise-level tests. Tom's Hardware was recently forced to issue a correction to a claim, which we discussed here, that SSDs aren't actually much more power-thrifty than HDs. The Tech Report's in-depth comparison provides some data points on the question of whether solid-state storage is ready to supplant traditional mechanical hard drives, but notes that the price disparity is still substantial.

6 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. How about a link? by digitac · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think someone forgot a critical link... try this for the Tech Report article:

    http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079

    1. Re:How about a link? by MBCook · · Score: 5, Informative

      How about the link to the just published (today) update on Tom's that not only has useful methodologies, but shows a new OCZ drive that wipes the floor with the rest of the drives in both power draw and performance?

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  2. What about recovery? by allaunjsilverfox2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've read that the algorithms used in SSD's are usually proprietary. The problem with SSD's is that they DIDN'T fix the wear leveling problem. It exists, just a lot slower now due to the algorithms referenced above. If my drive dies, I'll have to find a service that can recover my files, but they will have to be certified in samsung, seagate, white label, etc. I really feel uncomfortable with that idea.

    --
    Restore the madness of youth's lechery
    1. Re:What about recovery? by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 4, Informative

      TFA says for a 60G disk, with 50G written daily, the drive will last for 33 years in respect to wear.

      --
      It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
      Be yourself no matter what they say
  3. Re:How can a 32gb Thumb Drive by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're missing SLC vs. MLC and high-performance controllers.

  4. Re:How can a 32gb Thumb Drive by billcopc · · Score: 4, Informative

    The thumb drive will die young if you use it as a hard drive, they're typically only designed for 10-15k write cycles (per cell). They also use MLC cells, which store two bits each - that doubles the capacity, but quadruples the error rate. Errors are usually corrected via parity/ECC, but obviously if you have more errors, you're more likely to exceed the ECC threshold.

    There's also the issue with performance. A thumb drive might get 10-15mb/sec on a good day, 20 if you pay way too much money for a "dual channel" unit. Hard drives are expected to deliver 40mb/sec minimum these days, else your apps will take forever to load.

    If you really want to be a wacko, you could try RAID-0 across a bunch of thumb drives. You'll get the performance back, but good god you're playing with fire.

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    -Billco, Fnarg.com