Solid State HDs - worth the cost?

[Madison Kelly]

William O'Higgins Witteman wrote:
> My reading suggests that using a solid-state drive for the OS would
> result in a noticeable (perhaps significant) speed increase to a
> system.
> 
> I have one user who has a SSD in his laptop, and it is not noticeably
> faster than a regular HD, but it is a laptop, and it is running Windows.
> So, I have one data point which suggests it's not worth doing.  Anyone
> have any experience to share?

If you go for SSD, try to find an SLC drive. They tend to be a bit more 
expensive than MLC drives, but they have a significantly higher number 
of write cycles (ie: 10,000 -> 100,000 writes per cell).

As for "will it be faster"; It depends on what you are doing with it. If 
you're frequently seeking across the disk (ie: a lot of random DB reads, 
etc), then yes, it will make a big difference. Applications will load 
quicker and files will save faster, but if you don't do that a lot or 
are not using huge files then it's kind of hard to justify.

SLC = Single Layer Cell
MLC = Multi Layer Cell

Madi
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