What are the pros and cons of a solid-state hard drive?

Question

I know SSD's cost more than regular hard drives on a per-GB basis, but what other differences are there?  Specifically, what about read & write speeds, and projected lifetime?  I've heard that memory cards like SD or compact flash can only be written to a couple thousand times (each bit) before wearing out.  Does this apply to SSD's too?  And how are SSD's in terms of heat?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Pros: Faster read/write, faster access times, potential for much larger storage than spinning disk drives, safety (even if an SSD fails, you can still read everything on the disk to copy it off. If a HDD fails, you can't get to its contents).

Cons: Currently, price, but give it two years and you won't have any reason to buy an HDD anymore.

Anonymous · Answer

Hard Drives are more reliable than Solid State Drives. If the information corrupts on the SSD, it is often lost for good where as the hard drive is often more recoverable. Back up data should be done on high quality DVDs not os SSDs or Hard Drives.

Anonymous · Answer

That "wearing out" thing does apply to SSDs, since SSDs are based on flash memory.  SSDs aren't damaged easily from being dropped like magnetic disk drives.  However, magnetic disk drives come in much larger sizes and are cheaper.

phil8656 · Answer

Right now the advantage is for laptops only because of energy conservation. And that only if you run on your battery a lot. I will be getting it with my next laptop for school use. They don't get so hot because of using less energy, which could be seen as an advantage for your "lap".

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What are the pros and cons of a solid-state hard drive?

4 Answers