Technology for Mortals

The last time Tomshardware posted an article on SSD Flash drives versus HDD Hard Drive power consumption, I gave them a well deserved “F”.  They had botched the analysis badly and drew incorrect hypothesis because they didn’t test their theories and it turned out that their theories were wrong.  But to be fair to Tomshardware, they took the criticism and came back with a much better piece of work and tested some of the suggestions I made such as fixed storage workloads across the different test beds.  This time I’ll give them an “A-” for effort and thoroughness so I recommend that you check out the interesting results.

However, it’s clear that their new conclusion conflicts with their old conclusion.  Their old conclusion claimed that flash drives resulted in lower battery life.  As it turns out, the hard drive they tested last time was one of the most efficient hard drives on the market and it wasn’t representative of the average hard drive.  This time they tested a newer SSD flash drive which resulted in remarkable performance and energy efficiency that completely dominated hard drives on all tests.  It’s kind of like saying that we scored the game 55 to 45 instead of 45 to 55.  Just imagine if they had scored a boxing match or basketball game this way and declared the wrong winner and then said ”oh, but we were close on the actual score!”  So while I applaud Tomshardware for owning up to the mistake, I have to take some issue with the latest conclusion.

The correct conclusion – which I stated in my review of the first article – is that the average SSD flash drive does consume less energy than average Hard Drive though there are exceptions to this rule.  Furthermore, SSDs almost always achieve higher work per unit energy.

So does this mean that SSD flash drives are a better technology?  With the latest SSD drives like the OCZ SATA II 2.5″ product, the answer is a resounding yes.  Does that make it worth the money?  If high performance, complete silence, and the highest energy efficiency matters to you, then by all means it is worth the price premium.  If what you’re looking for is reasonable power consumption, low cost, and high capacity, then mechanical hard drives remain the best solution today.  The price of SSD flash drives were outrageous but the price has recently dropped dramatically and now you can soon pick up a 64 GB OCZ SATA II 2.5″ SSD for $280.

While that’s still about 5 times more expensive, it’s a very affordable price for a mid- to high-end laptop.  Prices will continue to drop and it’s possible that flash drives will eventually become mainstream in the laptop market if the price drops continue at the rate they’re falling today.  We will also see smaller 1.8″ SSD models or simply a “chip” that gets plugged in to an ultra portable laptop so the size and durability is where flash technology shines.

Now if I can just get Tomshardware to fix their badly botched Intel Atom power consumption analysis.