First The Advantages:
1)Faster startup – Since no spin-up is required.
2)Far faster than conventional disks on random I/O.
3)Extremely low read and write latency (seek) times, roughly 5 orders of magnitude faster than the best current mechanical disks.
4)Faster boot and application launch time when hard disk seeks are the limiting factor.
5)In some cases, somewhat longer lifetime – Flash storage typically has a data lifetime on the order of 10 years before degradation. If data is periodically refreshed, it can store data indefinitely.
6)Security – allowing a very quick "wipe" of all data stored.
7)Relatively deterministic performance – unlike mechanical hard drives, performance of SSDs is almost constant and deterministic across the entire storage. This is because "Seek time" can be constant, so fragmentation has less impact on performance than on physical drives.
8)For very low-capacity drives, lower weight and size. Size and weight per unit storage are still better for traditional hard drives, and microdrives allow up to 20 GB storage in a CompactFlash 42.8×36.4×5 mm (1.7×1.4×.2 in) form factor.
9)Without moving parts, the data is essentially waterproof.

Now The Disadvantages.
1)Price –Flash memory prices are still considerably higher per gigabyte than those of comparable conventional hard drives – around US$8 per GB compared to about US$0.25 for mechanical drives.
2)Vulnerability to certain types of effects, including abrupt power loss (especially DRAM based SSDs), magnetic fields and electric/static charges compared to normal HDDs (which store the data inside a Faraday cage).
3)Limited write cycles. Typical Flash storage will typically wear out after 100,000-300,000 write cycles, while high endurance Flash storage is often marketed with endurance of 1–5 million write cycles (many log files, file allocation tables, and other commonly used parts of the file system exceed this over the lifetime of a computer). Special file systems or firmware designs can mitigate this problem by spreading writes over the entire device, rather than rewriting files in place.
4)Slow random write speeds – as erase blocks on SSDs generally are quite large, they're far slower than conventional disks for random writes.
5)Speed advantage of SSDs can be overcome by RAID setups of conventional HDD, which may have more storage and speed for a much lower cost.
6)In some cases, SSDs have substantially lower throughput than conventional hard disks. In spite of the decreased latency, this can lead to dramatically lower performance than conventional drives. More expensive SSDs can have much greater bandwidth than conventional hard disks, so this isn't universally a problem.

Mate, are you certain about the life span / read-write cycles of SSD??
I heard it was much much lower than that! Limited life time was the bigest disadvantage of SSD for me (second to high price ofcource...).
I mean, I love my Raptor but that thing is LOUD!!!
Maybe when the market is flooded and mem price drops, I'll get a 64GB.

1 - Wrong forum
2 - it should be "Disk Drive" (with a K, not a C) and "Solid State Drive" (solid state drives do not have disks)

But other than that, you've done a very good comparison, thanks for sharing.

Actually that is not set in stone.

In British English there is a common tendancy to use the alternate spelling of the word to differenciate between optical "discs" and mechanical "disks". However, some latter-day storage device manufacturers still prefer the c-spelling.
The Oxford Dictionary still allows for both uses.
At the end of the day I believe it's still a matter of preference to the individual.

and i also thought the read-write limit was lower more in the region of 24k but it could of been 240k its been awhile since i looked into it

One note to add: Flash drives regularly out live the standard platter based disk drive.

Wow, I thought it was the other way. Most of my USB flash drives die after a couple years, but those probably are of a different quality.

Yes... the limited write cycle "issue" is a VERY common misconception. Not to mention that I never hear people kicking and screaming about their HDD having a bad sector.

Sure, but which one will outlive the other after a couple rounds in the clothes washer?

Perhaps the question of how the HDD got in the washer should go unanswered.

I've put mine through 3 times with the cap off and it's still good as new. It got angry though, so I had to do a BIOS flash from it to prove that it still had my trust...

Not really:

American English: Disk
English English: Disc

So either is correct.

Thanks for the correction, I didn't know there was a difference between the two sets of English.


In American English disc always refers to an optical disc (CD\DVD). Disk always refers to a floppy or hard disk.

Yer there is lots of different ones. For instance Jam is called Jelly in america (i think) but over here Jelly means something different. Its so anoying, why cant they jsut be the same????????

Disc/Disk over here always means a circular object, ie a floppy disc actualy has a circular magnetic disc/disk inside, even though its in a square case, so technically it is still correct.

LOL. Yeah, my buddy married a Canadian and we've found a few differences:


American: I'm going on vacation
Canadian: I'm going on holiday

American: I'm going out to play when I am done WITH MY homework
Canadian: I'm going out to play when I am done homework

American: Color
Canadian: Colour

American: My friend is in THE hospital
Canadian: My friend is in hospital


There's tons of other differences too! I would imagine some of the Canadian stuff is similiar to UK English.

Yerp, English English is more similar to the canadian pronounciation, bar the last on. There are probably millions of differences.

Maybe your buddy's Canadian spouse talks that way, but nobody around here (Alberta, Canada) does. The only one I can relate to is the colour/flavour spelling fiasco.

Clint

the 2nd one is actually wrong though....