Solid State Drives – Time to Make the Jump?

I love gear, Top Quality Gear.  It don’t care what it is, as long as it solid.  A 1970 Oldsmobile 442 W-30, an 18-volt cordless Impact Driver, The White Album, the iPad, Japanese cutlery, Band of Brothers Blu-ray edition and LOST.  I don’t just like quality, I’m addicted to it.  If it’s not quality, I don’t want it.

This brings me to today’s point: Solid State Drives, or SSD. What is SSD?  Is SSD ready?  How good is it?  Is it worth the money?  All very important questions, so let’s see if we can answer them.

What is SSD?

According to the Wikipedia, “A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data… With no moving parts, solid-state drives are less fragile than hard disks and are also silent (unless a cooling fan is used); as there are no mechanical delays, they usually enjoy low access time and latency.”

Is SSD ready?

You’re already using SSD.  Your phone, your MP3 player, your USB keychain, almost everything else is already using the technology.  Now that technology has come to your PC.  Both Windows 7 and OS X are optimized to support SSD.

How good is it?

It’s THAT good! SSD is the single biggest performance increase you will see in a Desktop or Laptop.  The major advantage is the Read/Write speed of the drives.  Systems start 4x faster from a cold boot.  Applications open twice as fast.  Laptops use less power.

Is it worth the money?

While SSD has a reasonable price of entry, it is not cheap.  A 160GB Hard Drive is about $60, while a 160GB SSD is about $450. There is a big performance increase, but there is a big cost increase.

So what should I do now?

SSD is coming to your PC, just like the DVD Player, Flat Screen Monitors and Twitter.  The question is when do you want an SSD? Only you can answer that, but I’ve had my SSD for 6 months and it’s worth every penny.

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