Solid state hard drive: the true potential of your computer unlocked at Tobias Buckell Online

Journal Entry

Solid state hard drive: the true potential of your computer unlocked

Last night, after taking apart the bottom of my computer, slapping in a new hard drive, and putting it back together, I leaned back with satisfaction after reinstalling my operating system and hit restart.

The next words out of my mouth were something along the lines of ‘holy shit, really?’

Ever since reading Anandtech’s Anthology article on understanding solid state hard drives and which ones were the real thing and worth buying, I’ve lusted after a solid state hard drive.

No, I take that back. Since I first saw a MacBook Air I’ve wanted one, but $1,000 extra for a hard drive is a bit much for me.

Every tech guru who’s been sent review drives says good things about flash hard drives. They’re fast, is the basic appeal. Most people don’t realize that processor speed isn’t the only bottleneck in their system: most people need more RAM and a faster hard drive, their processor is often not very taxed. I have a utility that shows me, live, how much processor power I’m using, I rarely use more than half.

The Anandtech article convinced me the SSD to get was the Intel X25-M, generation 2 due to major issues with the non-Intel ones. At the time I bookmarked the above article, the 80 gig ones were selling for right around $400 and things were way too tight.

But I promised myself one with my next subrights check. And that arrived this weekend, a translation check for Crystal Rain. All but $250 of it went into savings. The $250 I pulled out into my business account went into an Intel X25-M.

Wake from sleep: even more instantaneous than before. Shut down: instant (both sleep and off). Reboot: damn quick (other geeks have times, I’m just talking impressions).

But the winner: application start times: near instant. Most programs are usable by the time mouse moves up to the center of the screen to use them.

Even better, I haven’t heard the fan of my laptop run since last night. It’s eerily quiet.

This is the way a computer is *supposed* to run.

I suppose I’ll get used to it. And there is a slight performance drop off over time on SSDs (though less with the gen 2 Intel). Still, it’s another one of those ‘I’m not going back’ sort of tech moments.

And these things aren’t susceptible to failing due to g-forces.

Dudes, I can’t speak highly enough about the zip this gives your system. It’s awesome.

Filed under the topic Journal on November 4th 2009 at 3:50 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.

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17 Responses so far

1. Rajan on Nov 4th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Hi Toby,
I haven’t been keeping up – what system did you put the SSD into?
I’ve actually been thinking about this myself. I recently got myself a MacbookPro and was thinking about the SSD, but it was a bit too pricey for me.
2. Tobias Buckell on Nov 4th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Rajan: I have a MacBook Pro 13″
3. D. Robert Pease on Nov 4th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Ditto here. I got a MacBook Pro, but the extra $1,200 was a bit hard to swallow. Now after reading this, I’m second guessing my decision. So what did you put it in?
4. Tobias Buckell on Nov 4th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
For $234 from clubmac.com you can get an 80GB ssd, takes about 10 minutes to install, if that.
5. Ben Parzybok on Nov 4th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Awesome, I just looked through some Xbench results and they’re impressive. I didn’t realize they made these in a normal hard-drive shaped box for install on legacy systems.
So I’m guessing you went from around 250GB storage to 80GB – has that not been a problem?
6. Tobias Buckell on Nov 4th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I went from 160 to 80. Not a problem since I only used about 50 of the 160, I slimmed than down to 32 gigs during the install.
7. Longwing on Nov 4th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
I had to track an SSD down when building my Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh. I’ve never missed the extra space of a conventional drive, and I’ve loved silence and safety of the SSDs. However, I didn’t see much of a speed boost (probably because it was an off brand drive). Your review makes me wish I’d spent the extra cash to get one for my desktop as well.
8. Tobias Buckell on Nov 4th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Longwing, according to the article I linked, your best bet for a major speed boost is either OCZ Vertex or the Intel one.
9. Celia on Nov 4th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
My tiny laptop (dell mini 9) came with a tiny SSD drive (16 gig–it’s last year’s machine so it’s not as fancy as it could be). I ADORE IT. Before this one, I killed two full-sized laptops in less than 18 months each (multiple hard drive failures because of heat/bumping around in the course of their lifespans). So the SSD was a big part of my decision to get it. The only moving part in my laptop is the screen hinge.
And I love how cavalier we’ve all gotten about hard drive size. When I’d tell people the specs of the Tiny Laptop they’d be like “ooh, only a 16 gig hard drive?” as if this was the strangest thing they’d ever heard of. So small! How do you do anything on it?? My first desktop with a 20 hard drive was only 5 years ago. This is a perfectly respectable amount of space for a secondary machine!
10. Tobias Buckell on Nov 4th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Yeah, someone on facebook was like ‘$250 for 80gb, you can buy a terabyte for that.’ I had to explain that size isn’t everything…
11. Marian on Nov 4th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
The current price diff between the MacBook Air with 120G SATA and the MacBook Air with 128 G SSD is $300. Just saying.
12. Anton P. Nym on Nov 4th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I’m glad to hear that you’re enjoying the upgrade, but my inner-CFO is cursing you… having just installed Windows 7 on my desktop and discovering that my hard drive is the biggest speed limitation on it now, I’m particularly vulnerable to the wiles of SSDs. That the computer is only 2 months old, however, makes me grit my teeth and vow to resist “the shiny”. (For now.)
I am considering replacing my ultraportable notebook next fall, and if I do I’ll go with an all-SSD unit to keep things speedy and help extend battery life.
— Steve
13. Suzan H. on Nov 4th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
My husband’s been drooling over the SSDs. If/when we move back to Findlay from Houston, I’ll have introduce you two. LOL
14. rosyatrandom on Nov 4th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Seems to me we need more stratification in hardware: I’ve seen combos of SSD and HDD, which would be good for OS/apps and media, and of course we have CPUs, GPUs, dedicated RAM and cache memories… I say more of all of this!
15. Rachel Heslin on Nov 6th, 2009 at 2:20 am
I’m behind the times: my first awareness of SSDs was a recent article about MySpace swapping out all their servers w/SSDs. Sounds absolutely divine.
16. Wyman Cooke on Nov 15th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Me likey. I’ll have to see about getting one when I go about getting a new PC. Hey, I have an apartment to put it in.
17. MikeB on Nov 17th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Also something high on my want list. Even higher then that big flat-screen TV that would end up as a PC monitor.

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