SSDs vs. Hard Drives In Value Comparison

EconolineCrush writes "SSDs hardly offer compelling value on the cost-per-gigabyte basis. But what if one considers performance per dollar? This article takes a closer look at the value proposition offered by today's most common SSDs, mixing raw performance data with each drive's cost, both per gigabyte and as a component of a complete system. A dozen SSD configurations are compared, and results from a collection of mechanical hard drives provide additional context. The data are laid out in detailed scatter plots clearly illustrating the most favorable intersections of price and performance, and you might be surprised to see just how well the SSDs fare versus traditional hard drives. A few of the SSDs offer much better value than their solid-state competitors, too."

Comments

Re:Reliability?

[Anonymous Coward]

IDK, I've got three netbooks with SSDs, one of those died during/after a power-outage (I blame line transients at failure or turn-on, combined with a cheap power-supply and brittle SSD controller design, but I'll never know for sure), none of them have died from old age, and the runcore SSD I replaced that one with is still doing fine as well.

So I've only got a sample size of 4, ranges from 1 to 2.5 years old (all over your "6 month" average), and 3/4 are still good, and the one that failed was not wear-related -- not scientifically conclusive, but enough that I think you're either full of it, or are comparing semi-disposable media (SD/MMC/MS/CF) which do have alarming failure rates in heavy usage against purpose-built SSDs that seem to be built with better wear-leveling and more spare blocks...

Re:Price only

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention that thanks to Readyboost and SuperFetch you can get many of the advantages without the crazy cost. Using an 8Gb flash that I got for a whole $18 over Xmas and the above my boot time is under 45 second (wouldn't be as long if I didn't have multiboot set up) and my wake from sleep less than 4. In addition all my apps that I use most often are nearly instant thanks to superfetch learning which apps I use at certain times and loading them into memory.

The real market I see here at the shop for SSDs is in laptops, where lack of moving heads and lower heat help extend the life of the laptop, but even then the market is shrinking thanks to the increasing popularity of netbooks in the sub $500 range, where it simply doesn't make sense to spend 35% or more of the cost of the device to replace the HDD with a SSD. In those cases I simply sell them a sub $80 USB drive for backups and set Win 7 to back them up a couple of times a week.

I really hope they have a breakthrough with SSDs and we see the price plummet like we have with HDDs, but ATM the price is simply too high and the sizes too small for most of my customers. With cheap HD camcorders and 10MP+ cameras becoming common you'd be surprised how many folks can quickly load up a sub 300Gb drive, and as the chart shows a 500Gb SSD is truly crazy money.

Makes some older laptops better than new

[BagOBones]

We have started to deploy more multimedia intense apps and found most of our 3+ year old laptops where dogs at running them..

We then did some side by side benchmarks between an old laptop with the HD replaced with an SSD vs a new laptop with a new normal HD. Guess what? In MOST tests the old laptop performed BETTER than the new one, despite the new laptop having a faster CPU and main board...

Guess what, although they cost WAY more than a new normal HD per GB, they are WAY cheaper than a new laptop!