The current "Solid State" of hard drives

[halokid]

I have been wondering whether or not i should pick one of these
solid state hard drives up. The benefit that i can see is less moving parts=longer lasting... are there any other benefits you can add to my list?
are there any cons?

[Buffalo2102]

SSD's typically consume far less power than a conventional HDD and so run cooler.  They are lighter too and so are ideal for use in laptops.

If you do decide to get one, you might want to avoid any that are based on the jMicron controller, which is pretty much every SSD out there except the Intel.  The link below is a fantastic read and I recommend that you read it before going any further.

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=1

Buff

[halokid]

Great article buff ;)

Its exciting to see finally a bit more action in the hard drive department since, for many/most,  the hard drive is still quite a bottleneck even in raid configuration.

It seems to be improving so many more categories, that until recently , have revolved around 1 or 2 things (cache and size)

Quiet
less heat
less wattage.
faster loading of apps
smaller
aesthetically more pleasing
the list goes on.

ah but the kicker is the price, but that will fall enough soon as the demand increases along with the 6 month cycle

[tanked]

I can not wait for SSD drives to hit the 300 gig 100$ mark. I have a hosted server with Server Intellect and I know this would be awesome for higher server loads and such because they can respond faster than normal drives. Anyone know thought how long until the drives lose read/write abilities? 3 years?

[Bill]

It depends on usage.  The article reference above said there is a finite number of writes but estimates on 'normal' use were up to 10 years.

And welcome to Poasters.

Bill

[Buffalo2102]

Another one of the benefits is that a SSD doesn't need defragmenting - in fact, defragmenting a SSD is not only unnecessary but is damaging as all those read-writes would decrease the lifespan of the unit.

Buff