Affordable SSD storage drives for netbooks

I’ve been planning to write an article on using SSD storage drives on netbooks for a couple of weeks now and i’m going to make time for it in these next days, especially since more and more affordable such drives enter the market lately.

But fist, here’s a couple of words on SSD storage units. When compared to the standard drives, these offer some advantages:

• use no mobile parts, thus are more reliable and less noisy (in fact, they are perfectly quiet); also, there are zero vibrations
• info stored on them is read a lot faster
• also, info is written faster, but this type of storage has a limitation on writing cycles
• they don’t get as hot as standard drives and they consume less power

All these strong-points come with a major flaw: SSD storage units are very expensive. For instance, with the same amount of money you’ll pay for a good 1TB HDD you’ll barely be able to get a 32GB SSD.

However, having such a drive in netbook is a smart choice, because it will help improving performance; and every boost is welcomed for the little fellows, especially since we know the Atom’s are not power-horses. Plus you get less noise, less heat, etc. And i for one could deal with smaller storage space on my netbook, for me it’s my secondary computer i take away when traveling or at work. Thus, i don’t need the big storage.

Like I’ve said, SSD storage is expensive. For a netbook i would recommend picking something in the 32-64 GB range. That should be enough, although the 32 GB ones might be a little bit too small if you plan to get Windows 7 installed (and most of you will).

There are a couple of good options available on the market right now, for instance:

• the 30 GB Kingston V-Series - $105  (100 MB/s read speed, 80 MB/s write speed)
• the 30 GB OCZ Vertex Series – $109 (125 MB/s read speed, 70 MB/s write speed)
• the 40 GB Intel X25V value - $124 (170 MB/s read speed, 35 MB/s write speed)
• the 64 GB Kingston V-Series - $155 (100 MB/s read speed, 80 MB/s write speed)
• the 80 GB Intel X25M Value - $233 (170 MB/s read speed, 35 MB/s write speed)

The Intel solutions are right now the most popular and the most appreciated of all, but that OCZ ain’t bad either.

However, the question is: are these drives really worth this kind of money? In a couple of words: they surely do. I’m going to tell you why in a more detailed article on SSD vs HDD storage solutions that should be up pretty soon.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tags: netbook upgrades, SSD storage

Last updated: September 30, 2011 | Published: March 16th, 2010 | See the comments or add yours!