November 13, 2009 1:27 AM
I would advise against using an ssd as the dedicated drive in a single drive computer. Not only is it expensive for the capacity, but you really should be paying double that for the premium ssd models that implement "slc" design and possibly better i/o controller. The more common "mlc" design gives 2x capacity for the price, but due to the additional complexity of interleaving data into single cells to give that capacity advantage, it likewise complicates performance issues when it comes to heavy random read/write operations. You will pay dearly in performance when it comes to overall lifespan and vulnerability to lengthy i/o stalls as the disk controller clears cells for reuse. That is where the slc design is more suited to handle typical Windows OS disk behavior, but you will pay through the nose for it, and then pay through the nose on top of that to get a decent amount of capacity.
As a secondary drive to store your media, documents, apps for lightning speed access, ssd works really nice, though. That's the real zinger about ssd. You can't just throw it into a computer as a general purpose drive because for some kinds of things it will be really, really good, but on other things, it will horrendously bad. If you use it in conjunction with a classic hdd and willing to skillfully arrange the workloads to end up on the most appropriate drive, things could work out great.
There is talk that Win 7 may implement some sort of "trim" command that makes the ssd process of reconciling empty cells more friendly, however said optimizes will be in an infant state at best at this point.
Probably the most plug'n'play friendly way to take advantage of ssd like functionality is to just take advantage of the ReadyBoost function with a high-speed usb thumbdrive. Those are really not that far removed in performance to what you would get with a typical mlc-flavor ssd. Such an ssd is just the grand-daddy size configuration of a usb drive.
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