Solid State Drive

[mojopixel]

Hello,

What is the benefit of having a Solid State Drive over the larger PATA drive and is a SSD worth the extra £639?????????

cheers,

mp

 

[0007776]

The benifit is less moving parts to break, it is faster, and it will give better battery life.

 

[GoCubsGo]

The benifit is less moving parts to break, it is faster, and it will give better battery life.

+1 and I think saying "solid state drive" in a sentence is mildly sexy. I actually spoke to someone about that today who is shopping for a notebook for her son for college. It was fun saying "solid state drive" she thought it was some amazing theory on a computer!

 

[Bakkalohriat]

On the same subject...

I've dug up conflicting information regarding the durability of the SSD Apple has chosen for the Air. As far as wear leveling, does the Air have any management scheme? Should we expect greater drive life?

 

[mojopixel]

The benifit is less moving parts to break, it is faster, and it will give better battery life.

ok great but is paying extra for a SSD worth it?

 

[asdfTT123]

No movable parts, more durable, blazing fast speeds, no noise, low heat output, less power consumption... Versus the standard PATA drive, the SSD will run circles around it. There's no doubt the standard drive will be the Air's bottleneck. The problem with the SSD is that it comes with sever disadvantages...low capacity and extremely HIGH prices, but expect them to become larger, cheaper, and standard within the next few years.

 

[TimJim]

Faster, more durable, low power consumption.

Don't know if its worth another 1k though.

 

[bigandy]

I've dug up conflicting information regarding the durability of the SSD Apple has chosen for the Air. As far as wear leveling, does the Air have any management scheme? Should we expect greater drive life?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technol...flash_drive_in_a_pricey_macbook_air_last.html

Expected life of disk = 51 years max. That's quite a lot longer than any normal drives.

Apparently it was stable for 2,000,000 writes per sector. That'll last long enough.

Assuming a much smaller endurance rating of 100,000 cycles (typical rating quoted by NAND flash vendors), a bigger volume of writes per day at 3.4TB and no caching nor wear leveling implementations, a 160GB solid state drive is projected to last up to 12.9 years, which is definitely longer than the average replacement cycle of most IT storage devices and equipment.

 

[asdfTT123]

ok great but is paying extra for a SSD worth it?

If you're willing to dish out a few grand on a ultraportable right now I'd say it's worth getting the SSD because the 4200RPM PATA drive will more or less cripple the performance of the MBA in normal tasks. If it's possible, I'd HIGHLY advise you to wait until SSD's become cheaper and hold greater capacities, which won't take too long. I expect that the MBA will receive a revision with new low-voltage Penryn processors in the 2nd half of 2008 to yield better performance, less heat, and better battery performance. By then, I expect Apple will also offer the SSD upgrade at a lower price. Although the MBA is a tempting new product, it will only do you good to wait if you can.

 

[MacsAttack]

Faster, more durable, low power consumption.

Don't know if its worth another 1k though.

Faster reads, slower writes (not too bad though - and the tech is getting better all the time). Also lighter... Depends on how much you value the advantages. Point is that costs are plunging with more and more manufacturers entering the market. Competition - Good!

It is obvious that the MacBook Air was designed for the SSD. Apple tossed in the poxey little 1.8 inch drive (I'll be interested to see what the numbers look like - but I'm not expecting miracles here) to hit the their entry level price point for launch. With the SSD drives plunging in price, Apple will not long be able to justify the cost of their SSD model. I expect the first update will involve moving the 64GB SSD into the 1.6 model and plunk a 128GB drive into the 1.8 - all for the same price points. Then the MacBook Air will be worth having

SSD is the way to go. I'm just waiting for the 64Gb drives drop by 50% and I'll probably stick one in my MacBook...