Solid-State Drive & Serial ATA Drive

[maxeman]

I am looking to get a new MBP and was wondering the difference in a Solid-State Drive and a Serial ATA Drive and what is the advantage od the SSD. I am not the most computer savvy person but I know relevant things so please don't get too technical. And why would the extra SSD cost $750?!?!

 

[snaky69]

I am looking to get a new MBP and was wondering the difference in a Solid-State Drive and a Serial ATA Drive and what is the advantage od the SSD. I am not the most computer savvy person but I know relevant things so please don't get too technical. And why would the extra SSD cost $750?!?!

An HDD is a traditional hard drive with spinning platters and a head that reads magnetic information off of said platters.

A SSD is a new technology, they are, in simplified terms, the equivalent of a super fast USB thumb drive, used in the place of a hard drive, with no moving parts, lower power consumption, and 3-4 times the speed.

Since it is new technology, the price is through the roof right now, in a few years SSD's will have replaced HDD's and you'll be able to buy them for 50 bucks on ebay, but right now, the technology is very expensive.

I'd skimp on upgrading through the apple store and upgrade yourself, you'll save money and learn how to work on your computer, changing a hard drive and RAM is extremely easy, just follow the directions supplied by apple.

 

[redsxtreme]

advantages would be; no moving parts, faster boot up times/shut down times, faster launching programs, basically anything you do will be faster in some way. The reason they are expensive (without getting too technical) is that they aren't completely mainstream yet. SSD's are still newish(er). Hope this helps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCkSc3MMbbE

there is a video of boot times.

 

[snaky69]

In the end, if you're just browsing the web, e-mailing, doing work processing, light photo retouching and the like, you probably won't see a difference.