SSD vs HDD: A Beginner's Guide to SSD Upgrades Discussion

by Philip Bloem

Are you looking for a way to increase the performance of your notebook? Then upgrading the storage is often an easy and worthwhile way to boost the speed of your laptop without buying a new computer. We took an in-depth look at some of the top choices for notebook storage. Should you get an SSD or normal hard drive? Read on to find out.

Read the full content of this Article: SSD vs HDD: A Beginner's Guide to SSD Upgrades

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Good review.
I like how it's geared towards real world usage.

Kind of weird choices for the SSD's though. (The Agility 2 and Vertex LE). The LE is quite old now. It would have been nice to see the Vertex 2 in there.
I guess you were trying to line up prices as much as possible though.

It's also pretty unlikely anyone is going to be looking at 60GB drives as their only notebook storage. Prices and reviews of the 120GB drives might have been more realistic.

 

Thanks for the review. Judging by the battery life, the review laptop is probably the intel-powered dm3t, right?
Is there any chance you might expand this by adding more SSDs to the mix? So far you have one with a marvell controller (C300) and two Sandforce drives. It'd be great to see some data on the Vertex/Agility 1 based on the Indilinx barefoot controller, the Intel G2 and maybe a budget SSD from Kingston.

meboy > The Vertex 2 is pretty much the same thing as the Agility 2.

 

Actually the Vertex 2 is closer to the Vertex LE in terms of benchmarking and performance but I get what you're trying to say.
They are both from the same revision family and using the same controller.
The Vertex 2 is faster than the LE in any benchmark I've seen.

 

I agree it would have been nice to have the Vertex 2 and Intel G2 too. I didn't have free choice in picking drives though. I had to go with what was available. I was quite happy to have these six drives available.

Vertex 2 should be a slightly faster than Vertex LE, but in real world performance I expect the difference to be minimal.

PS. the Agility 2 tested was a 120GB.

 

Great review, thanks! It sometimes bothered me in reviews from your competitors that no (or just one) mechanical drive was included. So it's good to see that you include as many as three; it makes comparisons so much easier...

 

I will say that having near instant availability of programs is nice. SSDs are a nice upgrade, and if you have money to burn it's probably one of the best upgrades you can make. However, the rest of us that don't have money to burn should probably wait until SSD prices come down quite a bit.

 

The Vertex LE actually uses the faster controller chip (SandForce SF-1500) than the Vertex 2 (SandForce SF-1200). If the Vertex 2 is faster, then it is because of firmware updates that the Vertex LE never got. They only made 5,000 of the Vertex LE's, so it makes sense that they wouldn't bother investing the time and resources on Vertex LE firmware.

 

I am aware that SF-1500 is rated as the faster controller. Yet most reviews rated the Vertex 2 as faster. And I think you could be right that it can be caused by firmware.

Most reviews that rated the Vertex 2 faster were early reviews. In the mean time OCZ has updated the firmware that fixes some bugs at the account of performance. It's quite likely that the Vertex 2 now performs on almost exactly the same level as the Vertex LE.

Here's a comparison between the Vertex LE and Vertex 2 with early firmware:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/152?vs=138

The story about the slower Vertex 2 firmware (1.1) can be found here:
http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_vertex_2_review_120gb

 

Definitely agree with this. Have been considering a HD upgrade for my Dell for a little while now, but I can't justify forking out $300+ for 128GB of space when 500GB/7200 RPM drives are going for as little as $75.

Here's to hoping those prices will drop......

 

What about the life of SSDs? Supposedly they have a longer life time than HDDs but isnt that reduced dramatically if they are over used? Such risks make me think that perhaps SSDs are not worth it yet (ignoring the price) or that reliability (intel?) over performance might the way to go

 

Technically, SSD's do have a limited number of writes. I believe that the current lifetime of the cells on MLC-based SSD's are in the neighborhood of 100,000 writes. SSD manufacturers estimate that if you wrote 20GB per day, every day, then their SSD's would still last at least 5 years. When an SSD cell hits its lifespan of writes, then it becomes a read-only cell... it still holds its data, but you just do not have the ability to write to that cell any more.

In essence, I wouldn't worry about the lifespan of SSD's. I very rarely see mechanical drives lasting 5+ years before getting replaced (either because of some kind of failure on the drive, or because I replace it for performance / size reasons). In short, I don't see SSD's being any LESS reliable than mechanical hard drives. In fact, I see them as more reliable, because they aren't at any risk of damage from drops, jolts, etc that mechanical platter drives are.

 

do ssds seriously add to the battery life of a laptop to the range of one hour? My current laptop (asus n53jn) uses a 5400 rpm drive and i was hoping that if i switch to an ssd it'll improve the battery life?

 

No. There is no noticeable difference between mechanical hard drives and SSD's in terms of battery life or heat. Both drive technologies consume about the same power under load.

The only reasons to go with an SSD is for speed, silence, and durability against shock.

 

hmm so even if in a ssd vs hdd using battery saver settings and and light internet browsing/ typing there'll be no difference in battery life?

 

Under load, your mostly right, but otherwise, ssds use much less power.

 

so as per the review, if i used an ocz vertex 2 drive over a 5400rpm hdd i will see a noticeable difference in battery life if im doing light work on my laptop?

 

Going from a 500GB Scorpio Blue (a 5400rpm drive) to a Vertex 2 got me around 45 more minutes of battery in my T400.

 

hmmm that makes things verrryyyyy interesting then... its a shame ssds are just so damn expensive right now...thanks for the help.

 

This is not true. First of all, remember that you can't group all HDDs and SSDs in one category for power consumption, ie. some 7200RPM drives might consume less power than 5400RPM drives. Similarly, some SSDs consume significantly lower and some higher than your "average" HDD. For example, Samsung, Indilinx, and Toshiba generally have SSDs that will give you a noticeable boost in battery life. While Intel, Sandforce, and Marvell SSDs have been noted to decreased battery life. The reason is simply performance - the more performance, the more power consumed. While the latter three controllers do perform better than the former three, all of these will give markedly noticeable performance benefit over any HDD.

 

Well im not looking to spend too much on changing my hdd so basically my options right now is the momentus xt or this Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTX40G 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Im very tempted by the ssd having looked at this thread. My main reason for buying a new drive is becos i would like the performance upgrade but only if it also can guarantee me a battery life upgrade as well.

Will that ocz benefit my overall battery life? Im taking that it will improve my performance for sure.

 

For $129 you can get the Force 40
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...CODE=GOOGLEBASE&cm_mmc_o=VRqCjC7BBTkwCjCECjCE

For $150 you can get C300 64GB or Agility 2 60GB.

What's your current battery life?
During what usage?

Browsing the web is good for SSD because it can spend a lot of time in idle. During more heavy usage the differences between 5400rpm and SSD become smaller, but the SSD will get more work done.

Both C300 and Vertex LE gave more battery life than any traditional HDD in my notebook.

See also here: Today's solid-state drives: The value perspective - The Tech Report - Page 10

 

As you stated it, Phil, it depends on your usage. But some users in this forum have noted a decrease in their Intel SSD, which is why I wrote things the way I did.

 

Maybe it would be more accurate to add "while other users noted more".

Both me and Les got very good battery life with Intel 40GB and 160GB.

For some reason my Intel 80GB got less battery life than a 5400.6 Seagate.

 

would combining the intel 40gb with my base 5400rpm on my laptop defy the purpose of having the ssd for better battery life?

When i ask about battery life im meaning running my laptop (see sig specs) on lowest brightness, wifi on, web browsing/ typing.

 

Yes adding a drive (SSD or HDD) will generally decrease battery life.

A Momentus XT would be a better idea, but don't do it for battery life do it for performance.

PS. in your laptop with 15" screen, I5 520M and GT 335m a change in HDD will not have that much effect. Why? because the power consumption of other components is relatively higher than the HDD (or SSD).

 

yeh i figured as much. Im just seeing what the best way of getting the most juice out of my laptop is both performance and battery life wise. Ill be undervolting my cpu and my laptop is always on integrated graphics when i use it on battery.

 

My battery life increased significantly on the Acer 1810T-6188 whereas the advertised life was just over 8 hours but I could stretch it to over 10 with an ssd but could not with a HDD.

 

Edit: My personal experience is that the difference in power draw that an SSD uses can only be measured in benchmarks. My experience is that the real-world difference in battery life is going to be as insignificant as a rounding error, because real-world usage patterns vary whenever you use your laptop.

If you watch more or fewer flash videos, your battery life will vary. If you sleep vs. hibernate your machine, your battery life will vary. If you download a 50MB driver one time when you use your machine, your battery life will vary from when you don't download anything. If you use a USB mouse vs. trackpad, your battery life will vary.

I have never found power consumption to be a primary motivating factor in buying an SSD. Your mileage may vary.

 

Quick Q: Is the Hitachi 2.5' 7k500 faster than the conventional drives in this article in everyday use?

Thanks a lot.

 

The Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 7200RPM is a touch faster than the 7K500, actually, though the real-life difference between the two would be unnoticeable. The 7K500 is pretty much unmatched in sequential reads/writes however.

 

The Hitachi 2.5" 7k500 *IS* a conventional drive. It is a mechanical hard disk drive, which uses spinning metal platters to store / retrieve data.

So the answer to your question is no.

 

HI, every1

i read the review, but there is no comparison for intel x25-m 80g, what do you think of intel x25-m 80g?

 

It's a pretty good drive with very good read performance.

Write performance is significantly slower than the Sandforce drives.

Also during heavy multi tasking the Sandforce drives will be faster. For more details see the reviews on Storagereview.com

 

That was a great review and I found it very interesting, particularly because it has real life tests as opposed to synthetic benchmarks which are not as useful. My XT should be arriving tomorrow and I am sure I will appreciate the performance boost. I think SSD's will be too expensive for many more years to come, I saw a OCZ Colossus SSD 500GB for £1,166.46 on Amazon.co.uk!

Edit: Seagate Momentus® XT arrived today, in the process of cloning my old drive onto it

Edit: The performance boost is already noticeable with faster boot times, quicker loading up of software. I used to have to wait for all of my icons to appear but now even that is quicker too. I will test more to see if anything else is faster.