Template by:
Free Blog Templates

Minggu, 19 Juni 2011

Understanding SSDs


The chances are high that the next time you go to buy a laptop computer; you'll have the choice of either a standard mechanical hard drive or an SSD. On the surface, the numbers would appear to favor mechanical drives; even the lowest priced notebooks tend to pack in at least 320GB in to a drive, whereas the SSD option is usually under 256GB, & often small. That is what you'll see on the in-store sticker, but understanding what an SSD is, & why they are becoming more prevalent in the consumer laptop computer market can help you make an informed purchasing decision, than taking a glance at the straight storage numbers.


SSD stands for Solid State Drive, & unlike traditional mechanical hard disk drives, they are not a bunch of spinning platters & an LP-style read head, in lieu reducing all that moving clutter in to a is fundamentally a bunch of microchips. Why would that be a lovely thing? Well, for a start, because that makes them substantially more resistant to shock & bumps. Drop or bump a working laptop computer while the read head is spinning & you may lose knowledge or crash the machine; with no moving parts this is no actual issue for an SSD. The shortage of moving parts also makes most modern SSD drives notably rapid, leading to faster startup times in particular, but also improved application performance in cases where the application can benefit from the SSDs write structure; not every application can.

No moving parts also means no whirring noises & a reduced heat footprint, which ends up in fewer spinning fans & even less working noise in operation. An SSD-based laptop computer at the time of writing still won't be silent, but it will often be a lot quieter than a mechanical hard drive based laptop computer. All that can also make SSDs more energy efficient, which for a laptop computer ought to equate to longer battery life. Finally, the shortage of moving parts & reliance on chips than platters makes it feasible to design SSDs that are smaller than traditional hard drives, although to date most manufacturers of installable SSDs have opted for traditional hard drive sizes in order to make them simpler to fit. So what is the downside? As mentioned, the cost per gigabyte for an SSD is still a lot higher than for mechanical drives, which is why SSD options usually either invite a cost bump or storage drop, & usually both. There is some concern about the life cycles of SSD drives compared to their mechanical counterparts, although you'd be wise to be backing up all of your knowledge in any case; any drive can fail, & it is a matter of when.

There is been a large drop in the prices of SSDs in the past couple of years, as the storage capacities of those selfsame drives has gone up, & that is much exactly why they are becoming a more commonplace option within notebooks. It is worth thinking about the SSD option if the laptop computer you are after needs to be narrow, light & rapid, but for the moment those who require large media libraries or primarily use a laptop computer as a desktop replacement are probably still a small better served with the traditional mechanical type.

0 komentar:

Posting Komentar