Is It Worth To Switch To A Solid State Drive?
We all know the sound, when the computer reads the hard drive every morning on startup and we have to wait several minutes until it’s ready for our input. It’s not only the annoying sound of the magnetic head reading data which stresses our nerves. It’s simply the couple of minutes we are forced to wait until we can start working which is frustrating. But there’s a new technology which becomes more and more attractive and which promises a good solution to this daily situation: Solid State Drives (SSDs).
SSDs are not much faster than regular hard drives in general. Compared to a 7200rpm hard drive their faster when reading data but slower while writing – even compared with a 5400 rpm drive. So when you have lot of read operations a SSD is a good choice. For instance: the boot process at startup is a read process and with a SSD your computer will be ready for work much faster. When your job requires a lot of writing data, you should stay with your hard drive. But what should you keep in mind when you want to switch?
First take a look on your hard drive interface. Older computers use IDE or parallel interfaces. When your computer has this type of interface a change is not worth to switch, as this will still be your system’s bottleneck. When you have a Serial ATA interface you’re fine.
The next thing is to get the drive size. Desktop computer usually have a 3.5″ drive, notebooks a 2.5″ or 1.8″ drive build in. The change itself is simple. Just connect the new SSD as you would connect a regular hard drive. After installation you may need to go into your BIOS and run the hardware identification.
Regular hard drives are still much cheaper than SSDs. You get bigger ones for less money. So sit down and think a minute if the benefits of fast reading and lower battery usage overcome the cons of a high initial price and lower write rates.
Dominik Sapinski is lead tech developer at soft-evolution, an innovative provider of a free and business PIM software Pimero which adresses the needs of individuals and small companies.