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spmiz12

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 17, 2009
180
0
Please bear with my question, just having a hard time grasping this... I understand that a SSD is state of art, and gives a drastic speed over a conventional HDD... But how is it that data is stored, I mean how can a 256GB drive be superior to a 500GB drive for data storage??
 

175170

Cancelled
Mar 28, 2008
964
0
Storage space is not the only factor when talking about storage.

SSD's are made of flash memory. They can be accessed very fast. Mechanical hard drives require the drive to spin up, or around, when locating files. SSDs do not have to. As such, SSDs are faster.
 

spinnerlys

Guest
Sep 7, 2008
14,328
7
forlod bygningen
Storage capacity is not the only factor. I just upgraded from a Momentus 7200.4 500GB HDD to a Vertex 2E 60GB SSD and the speed in crease is unbelievable, applications and larger documents start up to 10 times faster, even after a fresh reboot. Beachbaling is some kind of past issue now, and whenever I have to use my iMac with its HDD, I get flabbergasted about its sluggishness.

Thus even though the Vertex has a much smaller capacity than the Momentus it replaced, I think it is superior.


MRoogle is a good tool to search these fora for already existing threads about questions you have. It might be able to answer you quicker than waiting for an answer.
 

jav6454

macrumors Core
Nov 14, 2007
22,303
6,257
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
Please bear with my question, just having a hard time grasping this... I understand that a SSD is state of art, and gives a drastic speed over a conventional HDD... But how is it that data is stored, I mean how can a 256GB drive be superior to a 500GB drive for data storage??

The difference is that a regular HDD has a platter. That platter spins and is read by a needle. Because HDD technology has been around longer than flash for long term storage and because it is inherently cheaper, we got todays large capacity drives. The tradeoff of HDDs is that they are slow because of having to spin and the needle having to move around to find the data.

Now, SSDs use Flash, or rather true silicon to store your stuff. Because the technology is new, the first NAND (this is how we call the chips) Flash storage chips are low capacity. We usually have a couple of them in a SDD. For example, a 64GB SSD in a MacBook Air is made up of 4 16GB NAND flash chips. NAND flash are non mechanical and thus require less time to access information and can push the data much faster.

Hope this helps.
 

spmiz12

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 17, 2009
180
0
I really appreciate the responses, that all make alot of sense...

But when comparing storage capability to a normal HDD, how does a SSD stack up.... Ex: some are going with a 160GB, but a standard drive might be 500GB capacity.... How does that collerate??
 

spinnerlys

Guest
Sep 7, 2008
14,328
7
forlod bygningen
I really appreciate the responses, that all make alot of sense...

But when comparing storage capability to a normal HDD, how does a SSD stack up.... Ex: some are going with a 160GB, but a standard drive might be 500GB capacity.... How does that collerate??

Not everyone stores hundreds of GBs on their internal HDD, and if one wants the faster SSD and does uses hundreds of GBs as data, one has to use an external HDD.
I got myself a FW800 enclosure for my Momentus HDD and it seems to work okay. I have still 70 capacity left on my SSD.

Otherwise I don't know really what you are getting at.
If one wants faster speed via an SSD, one has to make compromises, and for some that is not agreeable. I made the sacrifice of getting a much smaller internal SSD and can still live with it. Btw, there is always the Optibay solution.

Btw, one can get a 512GB SSD, thus one can replace a 500GB HDD, though it costs a bit. I took the 60GB version as it was available (I don't shop online) and it was a good and fair price.
 

175170

Cancelled
Mar 28, 2008
964
0
Flash storage costs significantly more than a traditional magnetic platter. As such, the costs for a 60 gigabyte SSD is around the cost of a 2 terabyte mechanical drive.
 

spmiz12

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 17, 2009
180
0
Sorry guys, I thought maybe a SSD compressed the data or something, I understand now that size is the same....

So for normal use( surf, email, Quickbooks ), some Photoshop like work, some video editing; how big is a capable SSD size to start with?????
 
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