Battery Tips, Laptop Battery Care Guide by batteryfast.com: Hard Drives 2 by www.goodlaptopbattery.com.au

2011年2月17日星期四

Hard Drives 2 by www.goodlaptopbattery.com.au

www.goodlaptopbattery.com.au – Hard Drives 2

Some people may warn you that the flash chips used in SSD’s can also wear out, because they have a limited number of write cycles. But manufacturers have found various ways to increase the longevity of these drives. A “wear-leveling” algorithm will monitor how many times a block of data has been written, and when the maximum threshold is near, the data in that block can be swapped with another block of data that has been used in a mostly “read-only” manner.

My rule of thumb for a traditional hard drive is to expect about 5 years of service with 8 hours per day of use. Some makers of solid state drives are claiming life expectancy of over 100 years!

Comparing Solid State to a Traditional Hard Drive

When compared to a traditional hard drive the SSD seems to be a clear winner in terms of speed, reliability and energy efficiency. But even though the SSD has many valuable advantages, there are two factors that will keep it from taking over the market in the near term: price and capacity.

Vendors such as SanDisk, Imation and MTron offer 32 GB Solid State Drives for around US$200. Compare that to the cost of a traditional hard drive, where you can get 1000 GB (one terabyte) for about $100 now. But capacity is still an issue, since solid state drives currently max out at 128GB. (Actually you can buy 256GB SSD’s but they are *very* expensive. A quick price check showed prices range from $4000 to $15000.) As solid state hard drive technology matures and becomes more popular, the price will inevitably come down, and capacity will improve, making it more competitive.