Does an SSD act like a mechanical hard drive with respect to partitioning, formatting, installing the OS? I am looking at some Dell Latitude 2100s in their "outlet" store - quite cheap - would make a neat toy. But, they have an SSD. So I wonder if I can backup and restore with g4l, try a different distro etc. as I would do with a machine with a spinning hard drive.

TIA,

Ken

Yes, SSDs are a form fit replacement and emulate a mechanical hard drive so basically your computer does not know the difference. Write times are slower then a mechanical drive but again should not be a problem. They have the same limited write capability just like a USB flash drive with basically the same wear leveling technology and so should last as long.

Thanks michaelk. This is reassuring. I seem to recall reading somewhere about an issue with an SSD requiring a driver of some sort which resulted in a "the chicken or the egg" situation re. installing the initial OS.

Slower... I see a lot of adds for SSDs claiming superior speed for the superior $$$. I had not checked out any benchmarks although I always wondered. I have a WR VelociRaptor 10K RPM drive as the primary in my quad code i7-860 desktop. It seems quite quick although I have not done any large database work on it to really put it through its paces. With 8 GB of RAM, most of which is used for disk cache by Linux, I am not sure I will ever really see the benefits of the higher speed drive.

As to the SSD - on a 1.6 GHz Atom processor netbook - speed is obviously not the highest priority.

Ken

The SSD overall performance is going to be much better. With flash memory you can not change a single memory location. Instead you erase/write an entire block and there an associated settling time required for each write. I'm sure someone will pipe in with real world timings. I would say it isn't going to be much of a difference.

SSD has the best latency while regular hard drives have capacity. The difference is how long the data can last for each of these disks. SSD can only last around 10 years while HDD can last a few centuries thanks to magnetic materials. The wear and tear for SSD is poor compared to HDD. The read and write throughput for SDD is great if the SSD electronics provides a transparent way of handling data. If the electronics does not, you have to rely on the operating system and its utilities.

Be careful thinking speed as in throughput because this never relates to speed. It is the latency that matters for storage system. A SSD will be around 1000 times faster compared to HDD. A SSD is around 10 times faster for bandwidth compared to HDD. Though HDD has SSD beaten for capacity.

For reliability SLC Flash type of SSD as better reliability, but the bandwidth will be less.

A system with a fast processor or a slow processor will always see the benefits when using SSD. The price is hard to grasp.

If the SSD complies to SATA or any interface, the device can work in any operating system that supports that interface.

If you are going to use SSD for Linux, it is best to use DRAM based SSD for better wear and tear that will be caused by syslog and temp files being written constantly. Though cost of ECC memory is costly.

The best SSD at this time is either any SSD based on Sandforce SSD controllers or Intel's X25.

Hi,

I wish to augment what you are saying. It really depends on the type of SSD. Most current Flash SSD are based on NAND technology but higher priced Solid State Drive units based on DRAM will provide higher density along with speed. The speed of the Flash based SSD is a lot slower than a DRAM based. With DRAM based SSD, battery backup is provided to prevent volatility when power has been removed. But the speed gain along with the density will certainly out weigh the cost.

Limits of the write for a Flash SSD is dependent on whether the device utilizes NAND technology. Unlike cheaper flash units that will sometimes use wear leveling techniques a true Flash drive will not create problems for emulation. The Flash SSD will sometimes have a small DRAM cache to speed the write/read. Now if the Flash drive has multiple writes periods then latency will decrease because of the multiple NAND gates.

I feel the newer Flash Drives do have a use but at the cost of density, speed and lifespan. Where if a user selects a DRAM SSD a higher density, faster R/W and unlimited lifespan will certainly be a better choice for the $$ spent.

Some are actually slower in real tests. I would investigate the exact model and see.

If the dell came with it I doubt it would need drivers.

Thanks again all for your posts. Sorry to not close this thread before now. I did reinstall Ubuntu on the SSD in my Dell Latitude 2100 no problems. I used a generic 9.04 CD. The Dell CD wanted to partition the disk with a chunk saved for a backup snapshot. Works fine!

Ken