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TMCNet: Dream-like SSDs

[October 25, 2009]

Dream-like SSDs

(Jordan Times, The Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) By Jean-Claude Elias Though everybody’s talking about the imminent launch of Microsoft Windows 7, I set my sight this week on an innovative hardware product, the kind that may radically improve the overall performance of most computers.

An ultrafast, absolutely silent disk to store my data, my music and my photos, a disk that will load Windows and will start up my machine in seconds instead of minutes, a disk that will not break if my laptop accidentally hits my desk - this has been my tech-head dream for many years. I have reasons to believe that I am not the only one having this dream. Tech-head brothers rejoice, the dream is about to come true. Well, almost.

Solid state drives (SSD) were not exactly introduced yesterday by the industry. M-Systems, the company that was later acquired by SanDisk, made the first commercially available SSD in 1995. Since then acceptance has been relatively low. It is only this year that the trend towards using SSD clearly started to shift.

An SSD is meant as a replacement for the traditional hard disk drive (HDD), the main disk inside the computer where the operating system, all application programmes and all the users’ data and files are stored. HDDs use mechanical elements, rotating parts and an electric motor. Because of this design HDDs are subject to failures, however reliable they have become today, and exhibit what is seen as a “delay” to store data and to retrieve it.

SSDs are like non-volatile, permanent memory units, and do not feature any moving or mechanical parts. Their inherent structure therefore makes them more reliable than HDDs and, as importantly if not more, significantly faster. Intel has just started aggressively promoting its new range of SSD models called X-25. The company says that the performance will be 900 per cent superior to the average HDD found in laptops, a benchmark validated by independent PCMark Vantage. It also claims that loading Windows Vista when the computer is powered on will be 65 per cent faster too.

The three main technical characteristics of hard disks that users usually are concerned about are: storage capacity, reliability and speed. Storage capacity has stopped being an issue since 2007, even for the most demanding. With units on the market starting at 250GB now and reaching up to four or eight times this capacity, everybody seems satisfied.

Reliability has been significantly improved and HDDs do not break or fail as often as they would a few years ago, but the demand for even higher reliability remains unabated, especially with the spectacular increase in the usage of laptop and netbook computers, machines that are always on the move, that are often shaken (but not stirred…) and that truly can benefit from heavy-duty, virtually unbreakable storage devices. SSD are the perfect answer to such needs. The absence of moving parts makes SSDs ideal candidates.

Ultrafast, perfectly silent, heavy-duty… so where’s the catch? There is one or two, unfortunately, at least for the time being. Knowing the industry it won’t take long till any imperfection is ironed out.

Price first. For equal storage capacity SSDs are five times more expensive than HDDs. This is not a minor point, though it is not a technical issue but a financial and marketing one. The device lifetime also is less than that of a traditional HDD; on average it is half of it. As for speed, it is mainly the read speed (i.e. retrieving data, opening files, starting applications) that is outstanding, and not always the write speed (saving data and files).

The latter is variable. Manufacturers explain that saving files that have a small size will be “almost like with HDDs”, whereas saving larger ones will be faster. Ingenious setups are also emerging, with hybrid solutions; just like cars! Having an HDD work in conjunction with an SSD set as its buffer memory dramatically improves the computer’s overall performance. Such solutions, however, are still experimental.

It is worth noting that Microsoft Windows 7 is the company’s first operating system that takes into consideration the usage of SSDs and is optimised for their usage and integration. This alone makes SSD technology one of the most interesting current IT topics, one that is to monitor closely.

(c) 2009 The Jordan Times. All rights reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company

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