Once too pricey and too small for the average user, these solid state hard drives, which have no moving parts, are priced and sized for everyday professional users.  After upgrading my Windows 7 64 bit machine to a Solid State Drive (SSD), I had a perceived increase in speed of at least 100% doing my Adobe Photoshop and Premiere operations and launching and using multiple programs at the same time.  The boot time was cut in half!  Some applications such as PT-Gui sped up 5-10 times!

If all you do is check email and browse the web with your computer, then STOP READING! They are still too pricy for mainstream use.  They definitely aren’t for every application, so here are my recommendations.

What is a Solid State Drive?

A solid state drive is simply a “hard drive”, but instead of a spinning platter, it uses memory chips, similar to a Flash card or a USB thumb drive.  Data is permanently stored on these chips, even when the computer is turned off.   Today (Jan 2010), they are more expensive per megabyte than a platter based hard drive, but big enough at this point to handle most people’s needs.

Do I need one?

YES/NO – Do you use your computer for business and the faster you work, the more you get done?

YES/NO – Does your computer’s hard drive chatter like a machine gun, bringing your speed down to a crawl?

YES/NO – Do you have $200-$500 to spend to make your computer faster?

YES/NO – Are you installing a fresh O/S on a new machine?

If You answered YES to most of these, then you may consider going with a Solid State Drive (SSD).

Why is it faster?

Where Solid State Drives really shine are in the ability to fetch random bits of data from the drive.  A traditional hard drive has an arm that has to move and a disk that has to spin, and both those physical operations don’t happen instantly.  A solid state drive can jump from one side of the hard disk to the other in a flash (no pun intended!)

Think of it this way:  A solid state drive is like having a normal kitchen.  A traditional hard drive is like having the knives in the bedroom, the plates in the bathroom, the napkins in the basement and the glasses in the attic.  Now set the table, quickly!!!  You are going to spend a lot of time running around, which is exactly what a regular hard drive does.

OK, lets first clarify.  Its not faster in all cases.  You can have some high end RAID drives that stream data faster than a Solid State Drive.  If all you are doing is streaming data from a drive, such as a media player or source for you video files, then a solid state might not be a big win.  But for the average user’s operating system drive, it is.

You’ll probably need two drives.

The Solid State Drives are still too expensive to be storing 1000’s of pictures and videos on them, so if you are storing lots of data, you’ll need two drives.  Put ALL your data on the typical hard drive and use the Solid State Drive for you operating system.  You’ll need at least a 64 GB drive for your operating system, but if you install a lot of programs, then consider using 128GB drive.

I always recommend to my friends and family that they keep all their documents on one drive and their operating system on another.  If something goes wrong with your operating system drive, then you can simply reformat and reinstall your software and not lose any data.  Backup is also easier as you can just backup the entire data drive.

Pros and Cons.

The drives are not for everyone or every use.  Here is something to help you decide.

Drives I would recommend

(These are desktop versions. Some of these drives come in a laptop version as well).:

Really Fast:

Intel X25M 160GB Solid State Drive

Intel X25M 80GB Solid State Drive

Patriot Torqx 2.5-Inch 128 GB

Patriot Torqx 2.5-Inch 64 GB

Slower but still fast!

Kingston SSDNow V-Series 128 GB

Installing a Solid State Drive

Installing a new hard drive or replacing the one you have is beyond the scope of this article.  Please consult a professional.