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Camps23

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 4, 2011
60
0
Why is everyone moving away from optical drives and going with SSD drives ? What are the pros and cons ?
 
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+ Faster read/write speeds
+ Silent operation
+ Runs cooler
+ Requires less power

- Expensive
 
one word SPEED.:D
there blinding fast!
it only takes 12 seconds to boot up with a ssd as your boot drive,
your apps open instantly.
and my standard 500gb hd can have my movies and music etc on.
for me it was a worthwhile upgrade as i never seemed to use my super drive.
and if i need to do a reinstall i can just plug a usb dvd drive in and install from that.
 
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+ Faster read/write speeds
+ Silent operation
+ Runs cooler
+ Requires less power

- Expensive

Most SSDs use the same amount of power as a HDD.

Many people are removing the optical drive because it is the least needed item and an SSD of good size...256+ are $500+ so another HDD is needed for large files, music collections, documents...
 
Pro`s: Speed (Much faster than HDD) e.g. Neo-office starts in 2 bounces now
Durability (Much less susceptible to impact damage etc.)
Cooler/quieter than HDD
Slightly lower power consumption (usually)

Con`s: Expensive (price per GB is MUCH higher than HDD)
Performance can degrade over time, especially on early models.
Currently too expensive to use for "storage" better as a boot drive.

The newer SSD`s are far better with garbage collection and wear-levelling than the first generation were.

I`ve just fitted a Kingston SSDNow V100+ and it`s made a huge difference to the overall speed of the machine. (Boots in around 12-15 seconds from cold.
 
Most SSDs use the same amount of power as a HDD.

Many people are removing the optical drive because it is the least needed item and an SSD of good size...256+ are $500+ so another HDD is needed for large files, music collections, documents...

They do use less. Mechanical HDDs have to spin a piece of metal at 1000s of RPM, SSDs don't. There's been tons of benchmarks showing that.

Also, you mean Hard disk drives. Optical is a CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive.
 
They do use less. Mechanical HDDs have to spin a piece of metal at 1000s of RPM, SSDs don't. There's been tons of benchmarks showing that.

Also, you mean Hard disk drives. Optical is a CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive.

No...I mean OPTICAL, you put two drives in the computer by putting one of them in place of the OPTICAL drive.

Also learn what you are talking about before you come in here trying to "help" people...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955-2.html

An SSD uses just as much power as a HDD because the SSD is either on or off, the HDD has variable speeds it can go through from idle to max which are different power requirements/use.
 
No...I mean OPTICAL, you put two drives in the computer by putting one of them in place of the OPTICAL drive.

Also learn what you are talking about before you come in here trying to "help" people...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955-2.html

An SSD uses just as much power as a HDD because the SSD is either on or off, the HDD has variable speeds it can go through from idle to max which are different power requirements/use.

Interesting article. Something I hadn't seen. Also, I thought that the OP wanted to discuss replacing a hard drive with an SSD (Seems hard to compare Optical to SSD). Apologies.
 
Interesting article. Something I hadn't seen. Also, I thought that the OP wanted to discuss replacing a hard drive with an SSD (Seems hard to compare Optical to SSD). Apologies.

Very few...very few people here are running SSD only. They are too expensive for a decent size.
 
No...I mean OPTICAL, you put two drives in the computer by putting one of them in place of the OPTICAL drive.

Also learn what you are talking about before you come in here trying to "help" people...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955-2.html

An SSD uses just as much power as a HDD because the SSD is either on or off, the HDD has variable speeds it can go through from idle to max which are different power requirements/use.

Little more digging yielded these. Interesting.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/07/16/ssds-do-increase-battery-life/1

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hard-drive,1968.html

I believe the newer generation SSDs handle power more efficiently than the earlier generations and overall a little better than a traditional hard drive in real world use.
 
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