Enterprise SSD might be a worthwhile investment

Sometimes optimizing your computer can seem like a herculean endeavor. You want to install the best hardware available, but you don’t know where to look and what to buy. Hard drives in particular can be difficult to shop for. Sure, you can base your purchases strictly on the amount of storage space a hard drive offers. However, purchasing any hard drive based only on its most basic function does not bode well for optimization.

Your best bet for getting the most out of your PC is to purchase a solid state drive. Unlike hard disk drives, which store data on spinning disks, SSDs use static flash memory. As a result, SSDs are significantly faster than HDDs.

One significant perceived downside to SSDs has long been that they lack the storage capacity of HDDs. “Should you buy a high-capacity HDD for little cash or plunk down hundreds of dollars more for a fast, but lower-capacity, SSD? Or, should you wait?” wrote Lucas Mearian of ComputerWorld in a comparison of the two drive formats.

However, SSDs don’t really lack the capacities of HDDs. If you’re looking for SSDs with all the storage capabilities of high-end HDDs, look no further than enterprise-level SSD.

While high-capacity, enterprise SSDs do cost slightly more than the alternative, they are also the best way to optimize your computer’s storage. SSDs are a great long-term investment for helping your computer last longer and perform better.

“The growth in solid state drive adoption has been impressive, but it's probably not even close to finished,” wrote Ray Willington for Hothardware.com. “There are still loads of HDDs that need to be switched over to SSDs (in a perfect, performance-oriented world) [sic].”

One hard drive manufacturer recently launched a line of enterprise SSDs with capacities ranging from 100 GB to 400 GB. The advantages of these SSDs over HDDs are numerous. For starters, the drives feature reduced power consumption. “[The manufacturer] ... stated that its new SSD family has low power requirements and uses only 6.5 watts during read/write operations,” the company said in a statement.

The drives are also fast. “Maximum random sustained read rates of 90,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and 17,000 write IOPS ... maximum sequential sustained read rate of up to 510MB/sec. and 230MB/sec. for write,” according to the drive’s manufacturer.

Because SSDs are static and, unlike HDDs, contain no moving parts, they tend to have a longer lifespan. This line of SSDs is no exception. “The 200GB and 400GB have a guaranteed lifespan of five years with no limit on write operations. The 100GB drive ... has a limit on the total number of writes during that time - eight petabytes,” wrote Jack Clark for ZDNet.

Another SSD manufacturer recently launched a line of enterprise-class SSDs that clock in with 400 GB of space and read speeds of 510 MB per second.

The biggest hurdle you will have to jump to adopt SSD is probably the price. However, according to Gregory Wong, a SSD analyst for research firm Forward Insights, the performance boosts that come from a switch to SSD might be worth it, especially if you demand a lot from your computer. “If you're downloading video and using multiple applications at the same time, an SSD will give you a very noticeable performance boost,” said Wong to ComputerWorld.

So there you have it. Optimizing your computer’s storage is simple - just invest in some SSD and reap the benefits of a faster, more reliable hard drive. It will cost you extra, but if optimizing your system is your goal, then SSDs are the way to go.

For more information on enterprise SSDs, visit our RAM and SSD news and information page. If you have additional questions on RAM or SSDs, visit our product information section or contact our support center. If you’re ready to take the plunge, you can use our Crucial Memory Advisor™ tool or Crucial System Scanner tool.