Solid State Hard Drive for Laptops?
When I upgraded my current desktop computer, now some three years ago (due again
, the one area I flagged as needing improvement over earlier computers was the hard disc drive speed.
Running a few experiments to try to determine where the bottle necks were for ordinary computing I kept finding that wait periods corresponded to HDD reads and writes, and bootup time was almost all down to the HDD speed, especially for the larger XP platform.
Thus I opted for a 15,000RPM SCSI boot drive, just 18 gig but all it does is boot and store system files and utilities. It is unlikely that we will ever see the heavy, power hungry and very hot running SCSI in a laptop anytime soon. But I have always thought that one day, in the not too distant future, we’ll be kissing the old technology goodbye in favour of solid state.
That day may have come, but I have not heard anything much about it thus far, though I am not continuously scanning the media for the latest thing. So I may already be out of date…
What I noticed recently is that there are very cheap 8 and 16 gig USB drives. The question is, could such a drive be used as a boot drive for a Laptop and would it be any quicker? Would it really be advantageous? One exciting thing that immediately springs to mind is that if it were possible, then Laptops could be retrofitted with solid state, perhaps cutting boot time by more than 90%.
The first parameter that can be checked is the read speed. I’ll use the lightening fast Corsair Voyager GT 8gig (which I don’t currently own) and the Apacer Handy Steno HT202 1gig, which I do own. The Apacer was the fastest around when I bought it a few years ago.
Here is the read speed as tested in a couple of my computers, each running 3.2gig Pentiums, the test tool was ‘HD Tune 2.51 – Hard Disk Utility’. All the below figures are for average speed.
19.1 MB/sec Apacer Steno 1 gig (specified 20mb/s)
22 MB/sec Corsair Voyager 16gig (as specified)
34 MB/sec Corsair Voyager GT 8gig (as specified)
40.5 MB/sec LaCie 500 gig external HDD via Firewire 800 (G467)
49.5 MB/s 7,200RPM IDE 200gig Seagate Barracuda – non-boot drive
63.2 MB/sec 15,000RPM SCSI (Seagate)
65.5 MB/sec LaCie 1TB external HDD via Firewire 800 (BigDisk Extreme)
71.2 MB/sec four 7,200 SATA drives in striped RAID set
You may have noticed that boot drives carry squillians of tiny little system files. The trick is to find them fast. Laptop HDDs go to sleep and have to be woken!!! That can take seconds!! And then they have to seek. Note that the 5,400 RPM drives are FAR slower than 7,200RPM, and the 4,000RPM drives are even slower than the 5,400!!
Here is the access time for my list of drives above, again, slowest to fastest. I don’t have any data on the Corsair, but can’t see how it would be any slower than the Apacer which I did test.
15.4ms 7,200RPM IDE 200gig Seagate Barracuda – non-boot drive
14.2ms LaCie 500 gig external HDD via Firewire 800 (G467)
12.9ms four 7,200 SATA drives in striped RAID set
12.4ms LaCie 1TB external HDD via Firewire 800 (BigDisk Extreme)
5.8ms 15,000RPM SCSI (Seagate)
0.7ms Apacer Steno 1 gig
Don’t be fooled by 100MB/s ‘Interface transfer rate’ figures given for some slow HDDs. That figure only gives you the electronic headroom and not the actual transfer rate which is closer to 30MB/s if you’re lucky.
The advantage of solid state, then, is as follows:-
1) does not heat up at all;
2) no power consumption;
3) always online and ready;
4) no fan when it is running (much quieter);
5) unbelievably fast seek time, more than 20 times faster than a 7,200RPM IDE;
6) compatible transfer rate to 5,400RPM drive when that drive is up to speed;
7) impervious to percussive insult and vibration.
Possible Installation:
Most motherboards allow one to boot from a USB port. Windows XP will allow you to format, defrag, and assign a drive letter to a USB flash drive. It may be possible using a package like Norton Ghost (I prefer the 2003 version over all others – it works reliably) to ghost a current C drive to the flash drive.
Once done one should be able to boot up from the flash drive, with the internal HDD disconnected one can then permanently assign the flash drive as drive C and make it the active partition.
One could then connect the internal drive and reformat it and assign it a drive letter, say ‘D:’.
If all that works one could then do a bit of rerouting of cables and install the flash drive permanently inside the computer.
Let’s be clear on this, I have not tested my idea at all. Motherboards and BIOS vary in what they will allow as far as drive switching and booting from a flash drive.
Experiment at you own risk – backup everything!!
I’d be interested to know if anyone else has been thinking along these lines or has actually experimented with solid state drives.
Robert
PS one could also remove the permanent HDD and replace it with a striped set of flash drives, say 5*16 +1 parity – capacity, speed, security and convenience – sounds good.
But at the moment, you would have to invent the whole thing yourself
When I upgraded my current desktop computer, now some three years ago (due again
, the one area I flagged as needing improvement over earlier computers was the hard disc drive speed. Running a few experiments to try to determine where the bottle necks were for ordinary computing I kept finding that wait periods corresponded to HDD reads and writes, and bootup time was almost all down to the HDD speed, especially for the larger XP platform.
Thus I opted for a 15,000RPM SCSI boot drive, just 18 gig but all it does is boot and store system files and utilities. It is unlikely that we will ever see the heavy, power hungry and very hot running SCSI in a laptop anytime soon. But I have always thought that one day, in the not too distant future, we’ll be kissing the old technology goodbye in favour of solid state.
That day may have come, but I have not heard anything much about it thus far, though I am not continuously scanning the media for the latest thing. So I may already be out of date…
What I noticed recently is that there are very cheap 8 and 16 gig USB drives. The question is, could such a drive be used as a boot drive for a Laptop and would it be any quicker? Would it really be advantageous? One exciting thing that immediately springs to mind is that if it were possible, then Laptops could be retrofitted with solid state, perhaps cutting boot time by more than 90%.
The first parameter that can be checked is the read speed. I’ll use the lightening fast Corsair Voyager GT 8gig (which I don’t currently own) and the Apacer Handy Steno HT202 1gig, which I do own. The Apacer was the fastest around when I bought it a few years ago.
Here is the read speed as tested in a couple of my computers, each running 3.2gig Pentiums, the test tool was ‘HD Tune 2.51 – Hard Disk Utility’. All the below figures are for average speed.
19.1 MB/sec Apacer Steno 1 gig (specified 20mb/s)
22 MB/sec Corsair Voyager 16gig (as specified)
34 MB/sec Corsair Voyager GT 8gig (as specified)
40.5 MB/sec LaCie 500 gig external HDD via Firewire 800 (G467)
49.5 MB/s 7,200RPM IDE 200gig Seagate Barracuda – non-boot drive
63.2 MB/sec 15,000RPM SCSI (Seagate)
65.5 MB/sec LaCie 1TB external HDD via Firewire 800 (BigDisk Extreme)
71.2 MB/sec four 7,200 SATA drives in striped RAID set
You may have noticed that boot drives carry squillians of tiny little system files. The trick is to find them fast. Laptop HDDs go to sleep and have to be woken!!! That can take seconds!! And then they have to seek. Note that the 5,400 RPM drives are FAR slower than 7,200RPM, and the 4,000RPM drives are even slower than the 5,400!!
Here is the access time for my list of drives above, again, slowest to fastest. I don’t have any data on the Corsair, but can’t see how it would be any slower than the Apacer which I did test.
15.4ms 7,200RPM IDE 200gig Seagate Barracuda – non-boot drive
14.2ms LaCie 500 gig external HDD via Firewire 800 (G467)
12.9ms four 7,200 SATA drives in striped RAID set
12.4ms LaCie 1TB external HDD via Firewire 800 (BigDisk Extreme)
5.8ms 15,000RPM SCSI (Seagate)
0.7ms Apacer Steno 1 gig
Don’t be fooled by 100MB/s ‘Interface transfer rate’ figures given for some slow HDDs. That figure only gives you the electronic headroom and not the actual transfer rate which is closer to 30MB/s if you’re lucky.
The advantage of solid state, then, is as follows:-
1) does not heat up at all;
2) no power consumption;
3) always online and ready;
4) no fan when it is running (much quieter);
5) unbelievably fast seek time, more than 20 times faster than a 7,200RPM IDE;
6) compatible transfer rate to 5,400RPM drive when that drive is up to speed;
7) impervious to percussive insult and vibration.
Possible Installation:
Most motherboards allow one to boot from a USB port. Windows XP will allow you to format, defrag, and assign a drive letter to a USB flash drive. It may be possible using a package like Norton Ghost (I prefer the 2003 version over all others – it works reliably) to ghost a current C drive to the flash drive.
Once done one should be able to boot up from the flash drive, with the internal HDD disconnected one can then permanently assign the flash drive as drive C and make it the active partition.
One could then connect the internal drive and reformat it and assign it a drive letter, say ‘D:’.
If all that works one could then do a bit of rerouting of cables and install the flash drive permanently inside the computer.
Let’s be clear on this, I have not tested my idea at all. Motherboards and BIOS vary in what they will allow as far as drive switching and booting from a flash drive.
Experiment at you own risk – backup everything!!
I’d be interested to know if anyone else has been thinking along these lines or has actually experimented with solid state drives.
Robert
PS one could also remove the permanent HDD and replace it with a striped set of flash drives, say 5*16 +1 parity – capacity, speed, security and convenience – sounds good.
But at the moment, you would have to invent the whole thing yourself
