Solid State Drive Buyer's Guide

[Guest]

Should you consider upgrading to a solid state drive? Weigh all the pros and cons and evaluate the cost and value of doing so by reading this guide.

Solid State Drive Buyer's Guide : Read more

 

[Shadow703793]

Imo, I'd keep away with any SSD drive using a JMicron. Dosen't matter if the stutering,etc issues were fixed. Indylinx and Intel controllers are the best right now.

Anyways, I got an X25-M G2 (OEM) for $220 @Newegg during Black Friday.

 

[grimjester]

The point about getting a small SSD for software and a larger disk for data can't be stressed enough. The price per GB looks completely different if you only need 64G. There's little difference in price between the cheapest hard drive you can get and the cheapest 500G one.

An SSD is just an extra cost of $150-300. It has no practical effect on the storage space your computer has.

 

[nonxcarbonx]

This is an even better ssd article than anandtech's ssd anthology. Nice work.

 

[Eggrenade]

I wouldn't say it's better than Anandtech's; there's no mention of random reads or writes, which is why performance just after startup is so good. It's also a lot less technical, which is probably better for most Tom's Guide readers.

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]Eggrenade[/nom]I wouldn't say it's better than Anandtech's; there's no mention of random reads or writes, which is why performance just after startup is so good. It's also a lot less technical, which is probably better for most Tom's Guide readers.[/citation]
Exactly

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]nonxcarbonx[/nom]This is an even better ssd article than anandtech's ssd anthology. Nice work.[/citation]
Thank you. I hope it was a good fit for Tom's Guide readers' needs.

 

[Guest]

Next page broken http/www.tomsguide.com/us/ssd-value-performance,review-1455-11.html, sorry couldnt find anywhere to submit feedback. Page not working on firefox 3.5.5 (does not scroll).

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]none007[/nom]Next page broken http/www.tomsguide.com/us/ssd-va [...] 55-11.html, sorry couldnt find anywhere to submit feedback. Page not working on firefox 3.5.5 (does not scroll).[/citation]
I'm using the same browser and that page works for me. I will report the bug, thanks.

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]Tomsguiderachel[/nom]I'm using the same browser and that page works for me. I will report the bug, thanks.[/citation]
Oh--I see that you mean the final page of the article not the penultimate page. FYI There is no content on that last page so you didn't miss part of the article.

 

[tommysch]

I think Ill stick to my 4x1TB RAID 0 array for now. BTW they are ghosted each week. o_0

 

[nebun]

love my 4x ssd raid 0 500MB+ read and 300MB+ write

 

[Luscious]

Another wonderful Swiss-cheese article from TG!

Your author fails to mention in his "pros-and-cons" anything about the importance of the file system when choosing an SSD. It is a known issue with Windows XP that formatting a solid state drive as NTFS can cause the hard drive to randomly lock up. Netbook owners looking to replace their drives need to keep this in mind, especially on systems running XP.

This is the same guy who wrote an article about ergonomics yet failed to mention anything about trackballs in his work.

Thumbs down for you Tom's!

 

[extremepcs]

"For comparison, we might look at a middle-of-the-roach HDD"

 

[Shadow703793]

[citation][nom]Luscious[/nom]Another wonderful Swiss-cheese article from TG!Your author fails to mention in his "pros-and-cons" anything about the importance of the file system when choosing an SSD. It is a known issue with Windows XP that formatting a solid state drive as NTFS can cause the hard drive to randomly lock up. Netbook owners looking to replace their drives need to keep this in mind, especially on systems running XP.This is the same guy who wrote an article about ergonomics yet failed to mention anything about trackballs in his work.Thumbs down for you Tom's![/citation]
You do bring up a good point. What I would like to see are benchmarks for the different file systems available (ie FAT,NTFS, ext3,etc)

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]Shadow703793[/nom]You do bring up a good point. What I would like to see are benchmarks for the different file systems available (ie FAT,NTFS, ext3,etc)[/citation]
That sounds like a great article idea for Tom's Hardware!

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Nothing to say against SSD performance but the exaggerated yearly time savings just don't take into account a little thing called reality. For example, how does Joe office worker get thru his day ?

1.a Arrives at desk, hits PC on button and times how long it takes to boot into Windoze ?

1.b Arrives at desk, hits PC on button grabs coffee cup and heads over to coffee machine ?

2.a Needing to edit a Word proc document, opens word processor and stares at screen waiting for program to load ?

2.2 Needing to edit a Word proc document, opens word processor and while program loads, scans over the boss's red pencil marks edits to get a handle on what he's gotta correct ?

SSD technology is great and increased adoption will continue to drive down costs but these ROI arguments about increased productivity are not reflective of how humans (not robots) work.

 

[pps]

I don't get it. This article first discribes how SLC is superior in every technical category, then it says that they are making improvements to MLC and concludes that MLC is the future.
???

 

[williamvw]

[citation][nom]nonxcarbonx[/nom]This is an even better ssd article than anandtech's ssd anthology. Nice work.[/citation]
Thanks! However, even I'll second Eggrendade's comment. I wrote this piece specifically as an introduction to SSDs for those still getting their feet wet -- not the type wanting an in-depth analysis of file system performance. Anand's series is excellent but obviously far more technical. Different strokes.

 

[williamvw]

[citation][nom]pps[/nom]I don't get it. This article first discribes how SLC is superior in every technical category, then it says that they are making improvements to MLC and concludes that MLC is the future. ???[/citation]
It's a price vs. performance issue. Yes, SLC rules on performance, but its progress has stayed fairly flat while MLC continues to improve while driving down cost per gig. Thus while SLC remains the technical champion on benchmarks, MLC has caught up enough to make it more attractive on a price/performance basis in an increasing number of environments.