Can SSDs Compete With HDDs High Capacity and Falling Prices?

[Danny Simmons]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20041259-64.html' target='_blank'>http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20041259-64.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Two-figure pricing like that for laptop hard drives makes solid-state drives look like a luxury purchase by comparison. "HDD and NAND (flash memory) cost per gigabyte are destined to remain an order of magnitude apart for the foreseeable future. SSDs will remain from 10 to 20 times as expensive as HDDs of the same capacity," said Jim Handy, principal analyst at Objective Analysis, a firm that does semiconductor-related market research."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1299867912.usr51221.jpg" style="border: #d2d2bb 1px solid;" /></p><p>Solid state drives can give you great performance, if that is a high priority for you.&nbsp; But it won't come cheap, and you won't enjoy the larger capacity that hard drives can give you.&nbsp; Hard drive prices are expected to continue to drop.&nbsp; Let's hope that solid state drives can follow this trend as well.&nbsp; But for now, which is most important to you, the speed of solid state drives or the capacity and affordability of hard drives?</p>

[dirtboy]

I really wish I could have both, but I prefer having the space. The hard drive is only a place to store things for the long term while waiting to be loaded into memory when run. Yes, it is a pain to suffer through those loading screens, but when it is loaded up I never complain about the speed of my hard drive.

The main issue I have with an SSD is the way Windows handles drive volumes. Windows expects to run from C:\. Most programs also expect to be run from C:\ and installed into C:\Program Files(x86). Steam expects that your games will be installed on C:\. I can add another drive as D:\, but actually getting windows to make use of it is a pain in the butt and not one I want to suffer through constantly. Perhaps one day Windows will get a more robust mount system like Linux has.

I DO want SSD speeds, but if the SSD drive can hold more than just windows, I want to put as much of what I work with (or play with) on it as I can. I just can't give up a terrabyte for one tenth the space at twice the price.

Maybe I don't have to, though. I have always looked at SSD drives as cache pretending to be a hard drive. At CES this year Marvell announced an interesting controller chip that lets you use an SSD drive as a massive cache for your HD. They claim to get 80% of the speed increase that a single SSD would get over a standard HD. The best part is that it is supposed to be invisible to the OS, so the SSD and HD combination would be transparent. The whole thing shows up as c:\ with the full capacity of the HD and a sizable chunk of the speed of the SSD. I have been scouring the sites looking for reviews, but there don't seem to be any yet.

If you are interested, it is the Marvell 88SE9130 and the tech is called HyperDuo. Highpoint sells it on an add-on controller as the RocketHybrid. Asus offers it on some motherboards (haven't found out which yet) as Asus HyperDuo.

Hey, ThoughtsMedia, need someone for a review?

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Pain in the butt? How hard is it to change the drive and folder when installing new programs?

[dirtboy]

That might work for most programs, but for some, they expect to be in C:\Program Files. Especially things like Office, Visio, Internet Exlorer, iTunes, Java, "Common Files", etc. That's going to eat up a chunk of your SSD that you will not be able to use for your other programs.

Besides, if I am playing Civilization today, and get on a Dragon Age kick tomorrow, I don't feel that I should have to uninstall the former in order to make room for installing the latter. I don't see options in Steam to move or install games to a drive other than the drive where steam is installed.

That's just me. You probably feel differently in your situation.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I install Steam to my game drive, and from there Steam games go there. Don't install Steam itself to the OS partition.

Generally SSDs are in a bit of a bind for gaming. They offer the great speeds for loading games, but tiny sizes limit the number of games installed. Personally I'm happy to stick to HDDs for now. :D

[Jason Dunn]

I've tip-toed into the world of SSDs...I have two 128 GB SSDs in use now; both are in laptop computers. I need 220+ GB SSDs for use in my desktop machines in order to be comfortable with the space limits. I don't want to have to put some stuff on a hard drive, some on an SSD, etc. I grew tired of that sort of data juggling/partitioning years ago and don't want to go back down that road.

SSDs need to come down in price even more before I'll go "all in". And given that I've had an OCZ SSD die after five days of use, and a buddy of mine had his OCZ drive die after a little over a month, I'm extremely suspicious of the true reliability of SSDs. :mad: