Solid State Drives (SSD) are becoming increasingly popular and recently when I built a new computer I wanted to gain some first hand experience with SSD’s. A SSD is similar to the popular USB flashdrive except it is designed to use the SATA interface used by standard Hard Drives (HD). A SSD has several advantages over conventional HDs:

-Uses less power because there are no moving parts.
-Faster access time.
-More shock/temperature resistant.

The main disadvantage of SSD’s is cost per megabyte. They also have a limited number of read/write cycles but given normal usage they should still last several years. Small SSD’s (~16gb) are becoming popular in netbooks because of their low power consumption. Because SSD’s are much more expensive than conventional hard drives many system builders that are seeking to maximize performance are using a medium sized SSD to store the OS and common applications with a conventional HD for general purpose storage. This is the setup I decided to use.

I purchased an 80gb Intel G2 X25M SSD. I choose the 80gb model so I could comfortably install Windows 7 and frequently used applications with room to grow. Applications or games which require a lot of space, I install to the conventional HD. The first thing I did was upgrade to Intel’s latest firmware. Then I proceeded to install Windows 7. Windows 7 is currently the OS of choice for SSD’s because it supports the TRIM instruction. I won’t attempt to explain how TRIM works checkout this WIKI link, if you would like to know more. But basically what TRIM does is keep your SSD operating at peak performance in real-time. Early SSD’s or operating systems which do not support TRIM must be periodically maintained much like conventional HD’s require periodic defragmentation.

I have found the SSD performance to be excellent. I used a stopwatch to time Win7 boot-up, and I get 26 seconds from the time my computer exits bios until the desktop is completely loaded. Applications open in the blink of an eye. Out of curiosity used a benchmark program called HDTune to compare results one of the fastest HD’s – The Velociraptor. The SLOWEST transfer speeds of the SSD were the same as the FASTEST transfer speeds of the Velociraptor. Average transfer speeds for the SSD were over 2x better.

My Results:

Near 0 access time is a beautiful thing. Hybrid HD’s might bridge the price/performance gap between SSD and conventional HD’s in coming years, but if you want fast I/O right now I highly recommend an Intel G2 SSD.

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