How to equip your PC with SSD for about $200
A lot of solid-state disk (SSD) drive reviews and features have been circulating around the Internet lately, and I've noticed that the speeds of those products are increasing remarkably, even as manufacturers use more multilevel cell (MLC) NAND flash memory in their products, which is innately slower than single-level cell (SLC) NAND.
The I/O boost in a few of those MLC-based SSD drives, which can be attributed to better firmware and the use of multiple NAND chips with a parallel multichannel architecture, now rivals or beats traditional hard disk drives. But one problem remains a barrier in mass adoption of SSD in desktops and laptops: price.
Today, most consumer-grade SSDs from leading vendors cost from $2 to $3.45 per gigabyte, while traditional hard disk drives cost about 38 cents per gigabyte, according to iSuppli Corp. and research firm Gartner Inc. So you'll be paying a high premium to get a little advantage in random reads and power consumption. For example, Samsung Electronics Co. , offers a 64GB SSD with a SATA II interface for a cool $750. Intel Corp. just released its screaming fast, 80GB, X25 SSD drive priced at $595.
But the average user -- myself included -- just isn't going to bite at those high-priced drives. So I spent some time calling various vendors and cruising the Web for SSD drives that retail for around $200 and that offer what I consider the minimum capacity required to run applications on a laptop or PC: 64GB. In order to keep this simple, I chose to only look at 2.5-in. SATA interface drives that can be used in laptops or PCs.
Patriot Memory's drive
First up is Patriot Memory's 64GB Warp v.2 drive (Model PE64GS25SSDR), which is priced at $230 retail. I quickly found the drive for $169 after a $50 rebate on Newegg.com. The drive has a zippy 170MB/sec. random read and a 100MB/sec. sequential write speed.
By comparison, Seagate Technology LLC 's Momentus 7200.2 2.5-in. hard disk drive has an average read speed of 69.5MB/sec. and a burst read rate of 214MB/sec.
Unfortunately, Seagate does not release the sustained write rate on this drive. In another comparison, Computerworld tested Lexar Media Inc.'s Crucial 2.5-in. 64GB SSD drive (Model CT64GBFAA0US). That drive has an average random read rate of 100MB/sec. and a sustained sequential write rate of 35MB/sec. The drive retails for $699.99 -- so it's out of the running.
According to Meng Jay Choo, marketing manager at Patriot Memory, his company's low SSD drive prices can be attributed to 25 years in the flash memory business with plenty of high-volume suppliers. Choo's comments were echoed by other vendor's managers, including one at Transcend Information Inc.
Transcend's drive
Transcend sells its 64GB SATA drive (Model TS64GSSD25S-M) for $194 retail . The
Build your tech library with our book giveaways.
Windows PowerShell 2.0 Unleashed
By Tyson Kopczynski, Pete Handley, Marco Shaw; Published by Sams
Windows PowerShell Unleashed will not only give you deep mastery over PowerShell but also a greater understanding of the features being introduced in PowerShell 2.0–and show you how to use it to solve your challenges in your production environment. Enter now!
Ubuntu Server Administration
By Michael Jang; Published by McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Realize a dynamic, stable, and secure Ubuntu Server environment with expert guidance, tips, and techniques from a Linux professional. Ubuntu Server Administration covers every facet of system management -- from users and file systems to performance tuning and troubleshooting. Enter now!
