RSS Feeds: Comparing Solid-State Drives (SSD) to Hard Disk Drives (HDD)
A relative newcomer in the computer hardware industry is the solid-state drive (SSD). The latest SSD drives feature state-of-the-art NAND flash chips and an ultra-fast controller. The new solid-state drives have some advantages over the traditional hard disk drives (HDD) and have their fare share of disadvantages as well.
SSD Advantages
The data from solid-state drives is read faster than that of hard disk drives. There is no waiting for the SSD to "spin up". Because no read/write head is involved, the seek time is substantially faster as well.
There is no noise (other than case fans) involved with an SSD, unlike some of the HDD offerings out there. They use far less power and produce far less heat, unless you go after a high-capacity SSD now available on the market. Those two factors are likely to reduce as well as the technology improves.
SSD Disadvantages
Solid-state drives are substantially more expensive than their hard disk drive counterparts, although this is likely to be of less importance as SSDs begin to saturate the market. A large-capacity SSD costs more than USD $100 and can cost more than USD $300, and could end up costing more than a netbook itself. This is the primary reason that netbooks with solid-state drives are limited to 4 and 8 GB capacities.
Judging by what people are saying on the net, the limited capacity of an SSD doesn't seem to bother them much. They use it for the operating system and keep their other files on external drives, like USB flash drives (thumb drives). The largest SSD I've seen for sale is 64 GB, which is far less than the HDD counterparts. There are already USB flash drives in that capacity available, although they appear to be almost as expensive as the SSD.
Unknown Factors
HDD and SSD manufacturers list the MTBF (maximum time before failure) as part of their specifications. Practical experience has shown that some HDDs have mechanical failures long before the MTBF is reached and some HDDs last longer than the MTBF because of they way they're used. The SSDs haven't been around long enough for people to experience the various failures associated with HDDs. The SSD memory itself has no mechanical parts to fail.
Based on the experience that I've had, as well as some friends of mine, the circuit boards controlling the drives cause more failures than the drive mechanisms themselves, regardless of the media. This is especially true of external hard disk drives connected by USB or Firewire. Perhaps with no moving parts to deal with, the typical SSD will last longer than the typical HDD despite having a limited number of write cycles available.
Only time will tell.
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