Solid-state drives are finally coming into their own -- they're faster, more durable and use less power than traditional mechanical hard drives. However, the strongest indicator that this may be the storage technology of the future is Intel's release of its X18 and X25 SSDs.
In our tests, the X25, released this week , is twice as fast as the next fastest SSD we've tested and beats the fastest hard disk drive in reads and ties it in writes. The 80GB version, which I tested, is priced at $595 for quantities up to 1,000.
Both the X18-M and X25-M SSD models are aimed at the mainstream market of laptop and netbook computers; they come, respectively in 1.8-in. and 2.5-in. form factors (as their names suggest).
SSD vs. HDD
One of the fastest drives I've reviewed recently is Western Digital's Velociraptor hard drive. Its 10,000rpm spindle speed and 16MB buffer had it returning a 250.2MB/sec. burst speed and 105.6MB/sec. average read through HD Tach. In my file transfer tests, with 4,661 files of various types totaling 8.05GB, writing the data to the Velociraptor took a mere 4.4 minutes, and reading the data from it and writing it to another drive took only 4.04 minutes.
To be fair, the Velociraptor is too large for most laptops and netbooks (it's a 2.5-in. drive wrapped in Western Digital's 3.5-in. IcePack heat sink form factor). The next fastest I looked at (in the same article) was another Western Digital drive, the Scorpio Black, with a burst speed and average read result of 238.8MB/sec. and 63.8MB/sec., respectively.
Intel's X25-M has them both beat. The SSD turned in 256.7MB/sec. and 230.2MB/sec. burst and transfer rates, respectively. Actual file transfers ran just 4.4 minutes and 3.7 minutes to and from the SSD. Intel says the X25-M has a MTBF rating of two million hours, which would match that of traditionally longer lasting single-level cell (SLC) NAND memory's 100,000 write cycles. This is achieved through wear-leveling firmware, which evenly distributes writes throughout the drive versus allowing them to be concentrated on one group of cells.
How is its speed in comparison with another SSD? No problem: Ridata's 64GB Ultra-S Plus is almost half the speed of Intel's X25-M when tested under HD Tach, while its real-world file-transfer times are noticeably slower. The X25-M is a fast SSD.
Boot speed and power consumption
Boot speed is dependent on several things, including the speed of the drive and the amount of drivers and software you're loading during the process. There's also the system BIOS.
On the system I used to test the drive, I started timing from the moment I hit the power-on button to when Vista's sidebar appeared. (It took, on average, almost 22 seconds to get out of the BIOS and into the actual Windows Vista boot cycle.)
The X25-M booted under loaded conditions (every piece of software and all drivers needed to run the system) in just 1.32 minutes. When I stripped some of the excess out of the start-up, boot time dropped to 1.18 minutes. In contrast, Ridata's 64GB Ultra-S Plus needed 1.47 minutes to boot with all drives and software included and 1.23 minutes when pared down.
The surprise here is the Scorpio Black hard disk drive, which went through a loaded boot in 1.28 minutes -- faster than either SSD -- although when booting into a stripped environment, it stalled a bit at 1.26 minutes. The mechanicals of the drive imposed more of a burden on the boot process than the depth of the boot environment itself, perhaps bearing out the advantages of an SSD with no moving parts.
Obviously, small boot environments affect actual boot times. That's one of the reasons why initial SSD testing gave them such an advantage. The drives, at that point, had too little capacity to produce a robust environment, and so they booted rather quickly with the little they had.
Power consumption is a lesson in obfuscation. It makes absolute sense that a hard drive with moving parts will use more power than an electronic hard drive with no moving parts. Extrapolating on that idea, it then makes perfect sense that putting an SSD into a laptop will cause it to use less power than if it had a mechanical hard drive. It's also looking at the situation in a vacuum.
All of the electronics in your portable use power. The CPU and the GPU are prime among them. The type of work you're doing -- how processor- or graphics-dependent they are -- are prime culprits in sucking your wattage. Then there's your LCD screen. Its brightness control is a huge factor in determining how much of your battery is being chewed on at any given moment. But here's the kicker: If you are judicious in setting your power levels and sleep times for your screen brightness and mechanical hard drive, sliding an SSD into the notebook is not going to do much for you.
Move forward in technology, however, and things change dramatically. If you're looking at a laptop with an ultralow voltage processor and a (relatively) small LED lighted screen, a mechanical hard drive makes no sense whatsoever. It will become the boat anchor for your operating times. An SSD, on the other hand, complements the low power consumption inherent in such a system. The combination of all power-saving components is how manufacturers have been able to reach high-single-digit operating times and even to touch on double-digit power ratings.
Capacity and enterprise models
Capacity has been a factor in the reluctance of vendors to adapt SSDs, but Intel appears to have hit the bull's eye at 80GB, a comfortable size for laptops. (Unless, perhaps, you're running Vista -- Ridata's 64GB SSD had only 3.97GB available once the operating system, drivers and software were installed. Vista immediately painted it red -- for critically low capacity.)
There are also enterprise models of Intel's drive available for business computing users who require a slightly higher performance level: the X18-E and X25-E Extreme SLC models. What separates these from the X18-M and X25-M is the technology behind them.
Theoretically, the performance potential available from Intel's 80GB X25-M is slower because it uses multilevel cell (MLC) NAND technology; in other words, it stores multiple bits per cell. The X18-E and X25-E drives, on the other hand, use SLC technology, considered the faster of the two strategies by virtue of its 1-bit-per-cell storage rate.
I certainly can't argue with the premise behind that (it makes sense), and until I can get my paws on one of Intel's Extreme SLC models -- expected out within 90 days -- for comparison, it would be arrogant of me to jump to a conclusion one way or the other.
Conclusions
All that being said, I will probably stick with more traditional hard drives, at least for the near future. This is mostly because I don't ever intend on owning a netbook -- I doubt I could press a single key, given the size of my fingers. So if I were going to buy tomorrow, my preference would lie with the Scorpio Black. The performance hit is minor, and the capacity is four times that of the X25-M.
For a potential Netbook owner, however, the way it looks right now is that the X25-M is the king of the hill of mainstream SSDs. It may have taken Intel longer than most to come to the table, but it's brought a better feast.
source: Billy O'Brien
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