Storage forum: Is there a solid-state drive (SSD) in your future computer?

Hello - Thanks For Contributing!

Thanks to everyone who responded. Your views are greatly appreciated and I believe will help fellow members make an informed decision. In reading your responses I think its safe to say that the majority approve the use of Solid State Drives (SSD) in lieu of the conventional HD when deployed in the right environment and application.

Consumer HD's will be around for a longtime. They are still superior when it comes to capacity and overall ease of use regarding erasure and data recovery. However, their use in laptops I believe will decrease as manufacturers continue their design trend of less is more, longer battery life and less vulnerability to shock by everyday use.

The sweet spot for the SSD laptop will most likely be 256GB as large capacity pocket size external and cloud storage markets continue to grow. Some manufacturers offer 512GB laptops such as Sony and now Apple with the new MBP 15" Retina display. Apple will even configure a MBP 15" with a 750GB SSD. WOW!

I question the wisdom of a 750GB SSD and larger given the delicate balance of speed vs. reliability vs. capacity. All of which have to be in sync without sacrificing the former two for the latter. But who am I to question the wisdom of Apple????

Contributors did express their Pros and Cons regarding SSD''s here's what I gathered from your comments:

Pros - Faster, Less Weight, Generate less heat, Consume less energy, Less likely to suffer damage if dropped (when installed in a laptop)

Cons - Limited life span versus HD's in terms of read/write cycles, SSD Secure File/Data Deletion, Data Recovery from a Failed SSD

The Pros don't require any discussion as they speak for themselves and are easily verified by the user. The Cons on the other hand while not false are not entirely true and therefore deserve discussion.

Limited life span versus HD's in terms of read/write cycles refers to SSD Endurance. TRIM and Garbage Collection technologies built into the SSD controller are designed to compensate and extend the life of the SSD under repeated write/re-write scenarios. Expert opinions suggest that consumers (below the enterprise level) should not be concerned. Click the link: http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

SSD Secure File/Data Deletion would appear to be more applicable to business applications vesus the consumer. At present the best consumer solution is Data Encryption. There is talk of standardizing a Data Erasure Scheme for SSD's. It has yet to be agreed upon because manufacturers want to keep their processes proprietary. Click the link: http://arstechnica.com/security/2011/03/ask-ars-how-can-i-safely-erase-the-data-from-my-ssd-drive/

Data Recovery from a Failed SSD is difficult. Researchers quote... "SSD failures are in fact unrecoverable. The advice is to look at data recovery information on your SSD vendor's site and disregard data recovery sites in operation for less than 5 years." Click the link: http://www.STORAGEsearch.com/ssd-recovery.html

The key is not to let the Cons discourage you. There are several things one can do to avoid or at least minimize the unfortunates that MAY come with owning an SSD:

• Deploy an SSD mainly for the OS and Applications Folders for fast boots/shutdowns and program launch/close
• Perform a "clean" install whenever possible versus cloning to an SSD
• Check the manufacturers website for firmware updates on a regular basis
• Know if a firmware update is Destructive, which erases all data during the update process. Typically deployed as the second update for a new controller design - not the norm
• Store your important files and those that require constant editing on a secondary drive
• Turn off Windows Indexing/Search to eliminate constant write/re-writes. Services not needed given the speed of SSD's versus a conventional HD.
• Never Defrag a SSD either by automatic or manual setting
• Turn off Windows and Security software logging
• Don't buy an off-brand SSD (if the price is too good to be true...it probably is)
• Know your system and buy the correct SSD either SATA I, II, or III
• Choose the right size - 2.5 " for laptops - 3.5" for towers or 2.5" for towers using a 3.5" adapter
• Always BACK-UP your data on a regular basis
• If a DiY upgrade - Don't erase your old HD until you are satisfied with the SSD install...90 days at least

There is a lot of good information submitted by members such as cacarson, High Desert Charlie, Flatworm, gvnmcknz and bobbyrae to mention a few. So, take a read of as many posts as you can. Then do your own research and decide for yourself if an SSD is in your next PC purchase or as a DiY upgrade. Happy computing and thanks again to everyone!

Aaron J

Most ultrabooks come with SSDs, and I figure my next computer will be one. Very few use HDs, incl. hybrids, and they're not really upgradeable. That's a real shame.

Far too positive, 'don't let the cons deter you'. As a firm believer that electro-mechanical spinning devices were the past, in my current desktop I specified SSD which the builders (custom made) assured me were now reliable, about 18 months ago. The OCZ SATII failed and had to be replaced- twice.

My data was all safe as it was on conventional HD and backed up pretty consistently. But you can't back up all your program installations and settings (under Windows anyway).

Each failure cost me a couple of weeks of computer usage while I sent off failed unit and awaited delivery of replacement and a lot of stress while I reinstalled it (Not really my scene). But much worse was trying to reinstall all the programs (starting with Windows 7, then Office, then literally dozens of other purchased or downloaded programs), get all the settings right, rebuild all the indexes etc. Weeks of effort and months of problems each time. And a new 'c' drive is somehow seen as a new computer by cloud backup etc. the impact on every aspect of my life was major, including not havng time to take the vacations I would have liked.

I now have OCZ SAT III, OK so far, but who knows.

"But you can't back up all your program installations and settings (under Windows anyway)."

Sure you can:

Control Panel->Back and Restore->Create a system image.

Create the bootable system repair disc so that you can reinstall from this image backup at a later date without first reinstalling Windows.

Already have one installed. Samsung Series 830 SATA III 256 Gb. : ). Best thing I have bought. Well the GTX 680 was nice too. Took a while to get accustomed to the fast boot and load times of games and such 1) I didn't originally
2) DIY Upgrade
3) 5 Hands down
4) Samsung Series 830 SATA III 256 Gb I Like Samsung products have a monitor, camera, & TV.
5) Yes, I think it is ready. I am loving the one in here and don't know why I was not all that enthusiastic about them. Probably because of the initial pricing and limited capacity.

When I got my MacBook Air I figured I would supplement the drive with a full time 32 GB SD Card in the slot. But when I filled that up it was a problem to carry extra SD's around loose until I found an adhesive vinyl SD card sleeve that holds 4 cards and sticks to the lid. I stuck two on the Air and now I've got a 32 in the slot and 8 more assorted and labeled SD's on the lid.

And the SD prices keep coming down so I figure soon I'll be able to have a slew of 64 GB cards attached to my Air at all time. I occasionally run Time Machine onto an external drive as a home backup, then copy files to the SD cards and erase from the SSD. I travel only with the SD cards and the SSD makes it fast and super light. I don't think I'll ever go back to a traditional HD laptop.

I must first admit that I am behind on this also. It seems that a solid state drive would be very fast and "rugged", as its relatives, the sd card and thumb drive, are.
So how can the mtbf be the same as a spinning mechanical device with incredibly close tolerences, which run hot and are sensitive to shock and magnetic fields?
I guess I find the author's evaluation of the mtbf as un believable. I could understand how a failure would not be recoverable, but how often does it fail?
I have thought about trying an ssd in one of my servers, as the os drive. I am now reluctant, if the mtbf is the same, then it still makes sense to just use cheap jbod schemes, with automated backup.

1. Do you see an SSD in your future or do you have one already?

Using OCZ 128GB Agility 3 as my OS drive

2. Was your SSD part of a new PC purchase or DIY upgrade?

This was a DIY upgrade to my primary HDD which died.

3. If you made the switch, what's your satisfaction level on a scale of
1 to 5 (5 being the highest)?

Most definitely a 5. Load times have gone down significantly!

4. If the switch was a DIY upgrade, what brand and size (GB) did you
choose and why?

I desperately needed a replacement primary drive. OCZ Agility's price point was just right, however I would not have minded paying extra for the Vertex- I didn't have time to research which was the better drive since I needed a primary drive. That said I'm extremely satisfied.

5. Do you feel the SSD technology is ready for "primetime?" Why it is
or why not?

If $1/1gb then sure! I'd love to have a terabyte of SSD storage.

I sure hope so. I am just waiting for size to go up a bit more and price to go down so i can have one for my OS drive. I will probably stick to a standard sata drive for storage and most programs. I just want to be able to put some of the slower proggies and games on an SSD to increase performance, so I need one that is a bit bigger to do that and fit the OS. I guess I could go with 2, but it is still a bit price prohibitive. That will change. I remember the first hard drive I ever bought...a 300 MB drive...it cost me 300.00 when I bought it.

1. Do you see an SSD in your future or do you have one already?

I have one already.

2. Was your SSD part of a new PC purchase or DIY upgrade?

I installed it myself.

3. If you made the switch, what's your satisfaction level on a scale of
1 to 5 (5 being the highest)?

5.

4. If the switch was a DIY upgrade, what brand and size (GB) did you
choose and why?

OCZ Vertex 3, 128 GB. Blistering fast everything.

5. Do you feel the SSD technology is ready for "primetime?" Why it is
or why not?

I firmly believe that SSD technology is ready for primetime, and is here to stay.

The main vendors (intel, Corsair, Kingston, Samsung, OCZ) have ironed out all the TRIM & GC issues, and yes, SSD drives *WILL* fail, but that's only if you write 20 GBs worth of data every hour to the drive, around the clock, for 10 years straight. I got my OCZ Vertex 3 back in December 2011, and it STILL writes at 512 MB/s and reads at 552 MB/s (ATTO 32). Like brand new, in other words. I idle it/logout overnight every 2 weeks.

Back in the late 80s, long before Flash Memory there was already talk of SSDs based on Static RAM which, like the BIOS of the motherboard, would have a battery to keep the drive intact while the PC was turned off. The issue was cost. Static RAM is all transistor based and it actually takes more than one transistor to represent a 1 or a 0 whereas Dynamic RAM uses a printed capacitor to store 1 or 0. For their ridiculously tiny size these capacitors are obviously also ridiculously leaky which is why there is extra circuitry to do a "Refresh Cycle" which reads and rewrites the memory before it has leaked too far.

DRAM is cheaper to manufacture than SRAM, but consumes more power in use. It becomes clear that attaching a small lithium cell to the side of SSD based on DRAM would be pretty pointless as the cell would go flat in hours and the cost of manufacturing SRAM in useful amounts (even MB quantities at the time) meant that this product never materialized. Most PDAs used SRAM which is why the space was comparatively small, but they survived on one or two Lithium cells.

I remain very unsure about using Flash RAM in a Windows environment, because even with all that extra read/write stuff turned off, Windows still loves to thrash drives.

My first step into the SSD arena will be on the Trailing Edge of Technology, by replacing a 4GB hard drive in a laptop with a 32GB Compact Flash card and loading it with 98SE.

There have been reports that macbooks with Mountain Lion installed on a SSD (as far back as the 2010 macbook pros) boot in 4-8 seconds.

Let me repeat that: FOUR to EIGHT -second BOOT time~!!!! That's a heck lot more than the previously "only ten seconds off" reports.

That's insane! From over forty seconds to just that?? Granted, I hardly need to boot my macbook but I just purchased 16GB of RAM (yes, you can) for my macbook pro and thought hey -- now I can keep EVERYTHING open right??

Yes and No.

I can -- however -- with everything open, my battery also seems to drain MUCH quicker!! But hey... maybe that's because the discrete graphics was always running. Perhaps forcing integrated graphics with GfxCardStatus will do the trick.

Still... I can definitely see an SSD improving everything. As I don't use my optical drive much, I'll be happy to move my internal spinning drive to there and put in an SSD (taking care to note that the optical drive bay doesn't support sudden motion protection).

this is a must upgrade. night & day difference, a no-brainer cost/benifit

Im a financial business analyst by trade and have always taxed my work machine creating dynamic models using popular MS apps and light developing (SQL Server, SharePoint Foundation).

work machine = HP ElliteBook Workstation laptop: i7 processor and ATA drive

personal machine = tiny Fujitsu LifeBook 520 quasi-netbook; AMD dual core with SSD.

the fujitsu with the same 8GB ram with the SSD is a monster; unbelievable read, swifter performance all around, especially startup. I literally run the same app on it as work machine.

anyway, my layman's 10 cents

Page from my web site.

The rumor that solid state hard drives can't be repaired or
you can't recover data is false.

Here is a page from my web site showing 200 bad sectors and 200 bad sectors RECOVERED.

It shows pictures of before and after.

http://www.computers-itpro.com/Solid-State-HHD.html

Can A Solid State Hard Drive Be Repaired?

When They Tell You It Can't Be Done

We Can Repair Solid State Hard Drives
We Can Save Your Data Off Solid State Hard Drive
We Can Make It Like New Again

I have been repairing them for over two years and only published
this page on my web site because the IT tech at Staples
told my daughter in law NOT to use solid state hard drives
because they can't be repaired or data recovered.

Jimmy

One application the SSD is ideal for is the "media pc" or "home theater" computer. At the moment I'm actively using three streaming appliances (Squeezebox, Roku and TVIX) but for some content, particularly on the Internet, you need a full blown computer. Ideally, I need it permanently attached to my a/v system. I built one once that was basically a disaster: noisy and unreliable.

An SSD coupled with a fanless or nearly silent cooling system would be ideal. The OS could live on the SSD, the content on an SSD (at the moment not very economical), a network server or the Internet. Taking no more time to boot up than an old all-tube TV set to warm up helps too. At the moment there aren't any fanless systems I am aware of with the processing horsepower to handle high definition video, though. So this SSD is still in the future. I bought a fanless mini-itx mobo with a PCI bus and a 64GB SSD to play with, but it's not equal to web video content.