What's the deal with solid state drives?

[KJamesJR]

I was doing some research on the difference between HDD's and SSD's (because I'm hardware illiterate atm)... Sure they're instantaneously fast, light weight, longer lasting, less power consumption etc etc... However, they're being priced around $1.50+ per gig, whereas HDD's are around $0.15 per gig. Also HDD's are apt to have a higher storage capacity (1TB+), and can still be found with relatively fast operation speeds.

I guess where I'm getting at is... Why pay so much for so little. Why not just grab a USB flash drive or external drive to store extras on? External drives are portable and you can still find 1TB external drives under $100.00, and it seems as though they're using the same tech as a SSD.

Wth is the point really?

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Why pay so much for so little

The short answer is because they are worth it.

After using a SSD in my desktop I can't stand using systems without them, there is a night and day difference in the responsiveness of a system with a SSD and one stuck with a mechanical drive. I even picked up a SSD for my Atom powered netbook and was extremely impressed with that upgrade as well, you wouldn't belie that a two year old netbook could be so fast.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that while hard drives do hold more they aren't even remotely competitive from a performance standpoint. It's a bit like comparing a Dodge Caravan to a Bugatti Veyron, sure the Caravan costs less and can seat more people but that doesn't mean that it's a suitable replacement for the Veyron if you need a race car.

Flash drives aren't viable alternatives to SSDs because they can't deliver the same performance. They both use MLC flash but the flash used in SSDs is much higher quality and SSDs have extremely sophisticated controllers that among other things distribute data across many cells of flash in order to achieve better performance.

At this point most people buy 60-120gb SSDs for their operating system and a few key apps and then have 500+gb mechanical drives for storing their games and other files which allows them to take advantage of a SSDs performance without breaking the bank trying to get one big enough for all their data.

 

[KJamesJR]

Okay well I noticed a lot of them were SATA II... Do you need the most up to date mobos to run these? Is there a big difference between SATA and SATA II SSD's? This is really starting to look like a nice idea, Though costly. And how much space would Win7 ultimate, Photoshop suite CS4, Office, and just a small hand full of others take up on an SSD?

One other question, how long do they last? I've had HDD's last me years... What would be a good budget SSD (if there is a thing) to look into for an AMD system?