Solid State Drives Move Silently into Laptop Market

A Solid State Drive (SSD), also known as a Sold State Disk, is an electronic device that resembles that of a conventional hard disk drive, but uses either volatile, or non-volatile memory (or even both) to store data. Unlike conventional hard disk drives, these solid state drives do not have mechanical moving parts which result in slower access time.

My interest in sold state drive is aroused by the fact that these drives are much faster, approximately 250 times faster than the fastest hard disk drives (quoted from Wikipedia). This is particularly attractive, since applications, in today's context, are very demanding - of course, one particular software is Microsoft Vista. Despite the increasing interests, but it is still not widely popular in the market; but some vendors are already displaying their desire to dominate the market by making a daring move to introduce solid state drives in their latest laptop models.

(solid state drives... the future of data storage...)

While I may be not be looking to replace my current notebook, but browsing across a few notebook catalogues of some major Personal Computer (PC) companies has led me to speculate that solid state drives is likely to be the future of data storage. Two particular PC makers - DELL and Sony - are found to introduce solid state drives in some limited laptop models. Note that, by replacing these top-notch electronic devices, it always comes as a big price to pay.

DELL
By one of the leading PC manufacturers in the world, DELL has taken the extra step to allow customers to choose the new Solid State HD as an option in one of their range of laptop models; that is, Latitude D430 (note that this product may not be available in every country).

However, the maximum size of the drive is limited at 32GB. Price? Just by only upgrading the hard disk drive to solid state disk, the laptop will costs you around US$2,300 depending on the customised package.

Sony
In terms of electronics, Sony is always leading the cutting edge in terms of technology and design. This will be no surprise when Sony incorporated their a particular model of Sony Vaio laptops - the TZ series. Even in the Sony Vaio TZ series, not all the laptops are equipped with solid state drives, only the Sony VGN-TZ18GN/X model has this exception.

It comes with a 32GB flash memory in place of the conventional hard disk drive. The price is certainly not cheap, albeit affordable by the business class - approximately US$3,000. The laptop itself is extremely lightweight (weighing about 1.2kg), but highly equipped with all the necessary features.

Upgrade or Not?
With the presence of flash memory, it actually enhances personal computing by saving time and improve efficiency through high speed system boot up, faster data access, and perhaps lower power consumption. However, should we have the impulse and simply opt for these latest gadgets to be embedded into our laptops? First and foremost, let us investigate the pros and cons of these solid state drives in comparison with the conventional hard disk drives.

Advantages

1. Faster start up (since no spin-up is required).
2. Faster boot up and quicker application launch.
3. Low read and write latency (seek) time.
4. Lower power consumption.
5. No noise emission (since no mechanical part is involved).
6. Resistant to shock (which is also due to lack of mechanical parts).
7. Lighter (as compared to conventional hard disk drives).

Disadvantages

1. Expensive (about $8 per GB, in contrast to $0.25 per GB for conventional drives).
2. Limited capacity
3. Highly vulnerable to various electromagnetic statics effects.
4. Slower than conventional disks on sequential I/O, particularly perpendicular hard disk.
5. Low recoverability of data (when there is data failure, conventional hard disk has a higher chance of recovering part of the data, but it is almost difficult to do so for a SSD).

In summary, I believe that the main issue here is cost and data storage capacity for those who are considering on opting for solid state drive laptops. At merely 32GB, it is miserably small considering today's average standard. Nonetheless, these are mainly targeted at business users, who are usually mobile travellers. These added lightweight devices is likely to bring comfort as they work on the move.

Unfortunately, solid state drives are not readily available in the market; not even in eBay. It may perhaps take a couple of months before the technology matures, such that solid state drives become more widely affordable and available. Otherwise, there is always DELL and Sony to choose from.