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SSD Won't Make Sense In Laptops For Two Years

Posted by timothy on from the no-not-that-avi-cohen dept.

kgagne writes "While solid state disk drives can vastly improve random read performance and are perfectly suited to most mobile devices, many operations are sequential in laptops and desktops and involve writes where SSDs most often lose to magnetic hard disk drives in performance. While introducing multi-channel flash memory controllers and interleaving the NAND flash chips increases performance, it will still be about two years before the cost versus benefit ratio will make sense to install SSD in your laptop or desktop PC, according to a Computerworld story. '"I think you need to get to 128GB for around $200, and that's going to happen around 2010. Also, the industry needs to effectively communicate why consumers or enterprise users should pay more for less storage," says Joseph Unsworth, an analyst at Gartner Inc.'"

7 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. 120GB is too much. by symbolset · · Score: 4, Informative

    Try 16GB SDHC, available now for $50, delivered.

    One for the OS and apps, one for the data. Need more? Put the other ones in your pocket.

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    Help stamp out iliturcy.
    1. Re:120GB is too much. by karnal · · Score: 4, Informative

      I guarantee that the SDHC card you mention will not push any really reasonable speed.

      I bought this:

      http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208418

      Then I went to Addonics web site and ordered a CF to IDE adapter. Well, at first I ordered one on ebay. Turned out it didn't fully support DMA...??? Like they didn't complete all the traces properly... anyways, for 70$ or so total, I have a diskless machine in my garage that boots Ubuntu and plays music; no more whiney 80gb hard drive there.

      I think Linux reported hdparm stats of 25 to 30MB per second. Not too shabby; since the PC is only a 900 mhz athlon, I really can't tell if the CF is a limiting factor in speed. It feels just as snappy as when I had the original hard disk in; it probably boots a bit faster but I generally just turn it on and don't watch over it...

      --
      Karnal
    2. Re:120GB is too much. by symbolset · · Score: 5, Informative

      That was just the cheapest one today. There are dozens there and one will suit. I didn't have time to construct the capacity/price/performance grid and still get a first post. Sorry.

      If you need more than 16GB of OS and apps, you don't need a laptop really. Or if you do you're a power user with unusual needs - you're not in the "most people" zone where the price/performance sweet spot is. About 4GB is an XP install with Office, for 8GB you can have Ubuntu and a few hundred of your favorite free apps. If your system image is >12GB, you have other issues and you should expect to pay more. 16GB for OS & apps, 16GB for data is plenty for almost anybody.

      Not all SDHC->IDE or SDHC->PCMCIA or SDHC->SATA converters support booting, but most do and most SDHC adapters installed in laptops do support it. You can always try it. The ones that do are quite proud of the fact and so it won't be hard to tell which is which. The performance on these things can be quite fine. I don't know why they don't just put a socket for these things on a desktop motherboard. You have to buy the embedded motherboard for that.

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      Help stamp out iliturcy.
  2. I disagree by statemachine · · Score: 5, Informative

    Complexity, power, heat, and failure from kinetic shock. These are either reduced or zero with a flash device.

    If you're looking for non-mobile, or a large storage application, then the disk makes sense.

    1. Re:I disagree by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's not as cut and dried as you think; from the article you link to:

      Update: We apologize for a procedural mistake in testing battery runtime for this article. As the benchmark looped, the total workload processed by the fast Flash SSDs was higher, causing other components, such as the chipset and the CPU, to be more active as well. We followed up with the article

      Check out the graphs on the retest

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  3. Re:I completely agree by magarity · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's a reason those new Dells which boast 19h of battery life have SSD's
     
    No, the new Dells that are boasting that have a battery pack option that is the same size as the bottom of the laptop. Think of one of those laptop cooler pads except 15 pounds of battery instead of a couple of fans inside.

  4. Re:Ah...No. by eggnoglatte · · Score: 4, Informative

    How many write cycles are your SSDs good for?

    With wear leveling? More than a hard drive. Time to put that myth to rest. And no, I am not trolling.