Flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) are considered to be the future of performance hard drives, and everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon. We are no exception, as we have been publishing many articles on flash-based SSDs during the last few months, emphasizing the performance gains and the potential power savings brought by flash memory. And there is nothing wrong with this, since SLC flash SSDs easily outperform conventional hard drives today (SLC = single level cell). However, we have discovered that the power savings aren’t there: in fact, battery runtimes actually decrease if you use a flash SSD.
Could Tom’s Hardware be Wrong?
No, our results are definitely correct. We’ve looked at almost a dozen different flash SSDs from seven vendors over the last few months, and measured acceptable or sometimes even disappointing power requirements with most flash SSDs. In an effort to determine the actual impact on notebook systems, we took four SSDs that we had available in our test lab, and ran a series of Mobilemark benchmark runs on a Dell Latitude D630 notebook. We found runtime differences of up to one hour (!) when using a flash SSD compared to a high-performance 7,200 RPM 2.5” notebook hard drive.
Will this slow down the hype? Not a chance.
Will this slow down the hype? Not a chance.
Well it threw a cold bucket of water on my technolust.
I don’t care a bit about the power consumption – I want the speed.
So let me get this staight
Price: HDD>SSD
Reliablity in stable enviroment: HDD>SSD (SSD has wear issues)
Reliablity in unstable “: HDD<SSD (Can’t shake a spinning HDD)
Speed: HDDSSD (Unless you like to leave the drive on idle for hours on end)
Why do people want SSD after only being on the market for 2 years?
No way it will slow down the hype. Has the weakness of electric cars, CFL light bulbs or wind and solar power slowed down the hype?
I thought the power consumption was a plus, while the real reason to get a SSD is speed and durability.So I see no problem here. But could this be just a driver problem. Why would Apple be using Flash Memory instead of HDD in iPods and iPhones. Reports on the Apple Air show that the SSD drive give no battery gain to longer battery life. Could Apple just have better drivers than Dell?
Read the comments to the article: their testing methodology may be flawed. They’re running the same disk-intensive process continuously, and comparing the power usage, but the processes are not running at the same speed (cycles per minute).
It appears that the SSD uses roughly 10% more power while working, but each cycle completes in about 50% of the time. So they get a little less battery life for a lot more actual work.
This is saddening. I suppose more time may be required. Right now the SSD makers are butting heads trying to make for more and more drive space (as their primary concern) and trying to bring down the price (secondary), energy consumption is tertiary at best.
So many more companies are working on HDDs that they have to compete on all fronts. Hopefully such competition down the road could advance the other aspects of SSD… the future seems further away at the moment.
#4 No it hasn’t. Mostly due to the majority of the population having very little education in science & engineering.
Rotating Magnetic Memory isn’t going away any time soon !!! Areal Density just keeps on going up and up and solid state memory can’t catch up !!! What does a 1 Tb SSD cost ??? THEY DON’T EXIST !!! So, don’t hold your breath waiting for SSD to become affordable !!!
Ouch!!!
I thought it was a no-brainer in favor for the SSD… I guess we are the no-brainers for believing the hype.
On a lighter note, Apple fanatics can’t be blamed for all his hype!
So if I get a mini computer the only advantage kicks in if I drop it but the drive is going to start going bad because I use it? I like the HD capacity. Of course a thumb drive is different. No hd is that small. Okay the chips are faster but I’ll still take capacity.
#10 – Your worship is noted.
Personally, I’m glad to see Tom’s is getting some attention, albeit over a false controversy.
By the way, flat screen TVs are also one of the biggest contributors to global warming, contributing 136 megatons carbon equivalent, or about half of Australia’s total output.
In the end I guess it shows that “nothing is for nothing” and the power of marketing if told often enough
I guess Apple read the post. They just knocked $500 from the price of the SSD MacBook Air.
The wear issue is over blown, these things will easily last as long as any HDD, which I find is about 5 years
Its weird that people think SSD are New. They been around for years in server market. I have experience with SSD SCSI driver of various type. Cost about 35K for 3.2GB back then (biggest hdd was 80GB). They were not flash based thought. Banks of Ram chips with battery backup and a HDD for retention.
NASA use it on shuttles and space station.
Wow! I feel like a total idiot for believing in this so called “future”….this hype really bogs down the advancement of tech.
Once a harddrive is spun up, it doesn’t take much power to keep it spinning or move its read heads. But I suspect that SSD takes nearly as much power as CD burners take. Changing the logic state of non-volatile junctions, must consume more power than flipping a few iron particles’ magnetic polarity. SSD can’t respond to so little a charge
that electric noise could effect it. And HDs can spin down when idle to save power. Can SSDs hibernate to save power?
Wouldn’t 10k RPM use more power than 7200 like 7200 uses more than 5400?
SSD seems to be an even trade for performance.
Do you guys really believe TOM’s is smarter than EMC corp that that qualified the Zeus SSD for over a year in their products before they committed to use them Or Apple do really think their engineers have not done their homework. I read someone say SSD’s aren’t new they’ve been around for ever. Cars have been around for 100 years are they the same or improved?