A Solid Lie on Solid State (Hard) Drives

Hello Everyone,

Happy July 4th. Quick multiple question test. A Solid State Drive includes which features?

A) Flash-based storage
B) Rugged and reliable
C) Low power consumption
D) High performance
E) Silent operation
F) Lightweight
G) All of the Above

If you answered "G", you're wrong! It turns out that low power consumption is not correct (only mistake above). SSDs actually use MORE power and so they reduce battery life on laptops compared to traditional hard drives. Many of the SSD vendors claim battery life is improved, but this is not the case. Crucial as of 7/4/08 listed the above features as benefits of SSDs. Sadly marketing cannot be trusted without independent tests. The folks at Tom's Hardware uncovered this little "lie" in an article called "The SSD Power Consumption Hoax: Flash SSDs Don't Improve Your Notebook Battery Runtime - they Reduce It". That title alone illuminates the issue, but dig into the article and testing and you see performance gains of about 10% for SSDs but battery life differences of an hour (15-20% difference)! How can that be possible? Turns out SSDs don't have an idle power mode like traditional hard drives do. So, they you're traditional hard drive is not working, it's using very little power, but not SSDs. They are always on. Whoops.

Also, the tests would have been a lot worse for SSDs if Tom's hardware had picked a 4200 or 5400 rpm drive. They used a power hungry 7200 rpm drive, and the difference was still as clear as night and day. Don't select SSDs for power savings, but for durability and speed. I was considering a Mtron SSD back in Feb 08 for performance and power reasons on my ultra-portable semi-rugged Panasonic Toughbook W5, luckily I decided against it since I wanted a 64GB SSD, and they were still too costly. Mtron does make excellent SSDs, so I would recommend folks look into them if battery life isn't an issue.

Summary of SSDs
- overall, for improved laptop performance and keeping battery life acceptable, I would stick with 7200 rpm HDs (10% performance difference)
- battery is a serious issue for SSDs (15-20% loss), right now. I suspect due to the Tom's Hardware article, this will draw attention to the issue and the next versions (6-12 months) will improve dramatically
- be aware there are 2 types of SSDs, SLC and MLC. SLC is faster and more durable. So, stick with SLC for the moment if you want to consider SSDs.

Comments and feedback is welcome...
-Ben