{"id":6009,"date":"2014-04-18T00:01:28","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T07:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6009"},"modified":"2014-04-12T19:04:40","modified_gmt":"2014-04-13T02:04:40","slug":"the-ssd-transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6009","title":{"rendered":"The SSD Transition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The main storage device in your next computer will not be a hard drive. Oh, yeah: You’ll call it a “hard drive,” but in fact it will be a digital hard drive. The proper term is SSD.
\n
\nSSD stands for Solid State Drive<\/em>. It’s what was once called a memory drive<\/em> or RAM drive<\/em>. The memory, however, isn’t RAM but rather flash RAM, which retains information even when the power is off. It’s the same storage you find in a media card.<\/p>\n

An SSD is essentially a raft of media cards, tied together with technology that makes the computer believe it to be one large storage device.<\/p>\n

One large fast<\/em> storage device.<\/p>\n

I played with a RAM drive many moons ago, back when I wrote a book called The Microsoft Guide to Optimizing Windows<\/em>. (That was the book I elected to do instead of writing Windows For Dummies<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

In that book, I devoted an entire chapter to speeding up Windows.<\/p>\n

Yes, an entire chapter.<\/p>\n

In the end, the fastest way to speed up Windows was to load it onto a RAM drive: On my computer (back in the day) I had a 4MB RAM drive configured. My PC’s startup sequence copied the three essential Windows files to the RAM drive, then started Windows from that drive. Total time to start Windows: 1.7 seconds.<\/p>\n

Of course, that was Windows version 3.1. Still, 1.7 seconds was a vast improvement, which justified the speed of the RAM drive.<\/p>\n

Today’s SSDs are just as fast. In fact, they’re so smoking fast I don’t know of anyone who has an SSD who would dream of returning to a spinning hard drive.<\/p>\n

The two big obstacles for SSDs are the same two obstacles that have always hindered mass storage: capacity and price. One should be high, the other low.<\/p>\n

For the SSD, the price is currently high and the capacity low. A typical 250GB SSD retails for about twice the cost of a 500GB hard drive. That price, of course, will come down over time. That’s the good news!<\/p>\n

Right now, just about every computer manufacturer offers SSD as an option. Most users are opting to be cheap and instead choose the lower-priced hard drives. Those who opt to spend a bit more for an SSD aren’t disappointed: The speed is definitely worth it. In fact, the speed spoils you: Once you go SSD, you won’t think about ever returning to a traditional, spinning hard drive.<\/p>\n

Thus begins the SSD transition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The SSD revolution is here. Adios, spinning disks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-6009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6009"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6013,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6009\/revisions\/6013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}