HDD vs SSD

[kaddy]

We are looking to purchase new laptops for some of our developers at work. I believe we should be using SSD (Intel X25-M probably 80Gb) instead of HDD 7200 rpm drives.

My boss bought a solid state laptop over a year ago from dell and he said they are horrible. Keep in mind this is the drive dell put in and not one of the intel's drives. The O/S was also XP and not windows 7.

Does anyone have any good newer comparison links that shows why a X25-M G2 (80Gb or 160Gb) is way better than a generic 7200 rpm drive? I searched and looked around, but most comparisons are SSD vs SSD and not HDD vs SDD.

I found one good link here:
http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/intel-x25-m-160gb-ssd-vs-seagate-cheetah-15k-6-scsi-benchmarks/

Thanks!

 

[RetiredChief]

Generation 2 and 3 SSD with Trim Cmd (Win 7 and in AHCI mode) will BLOW any HDD out of the water. (For XP and Vista must use a 3rd party trim emulator, ie for intel its called SSD toolbox.)
(1) Never ever buy a loptop with SSD installed, normally they install a low end one and charge as if it's a high end one.

Most drives a year ago were Generation 1, which DOES not suppoert windows 7 Trim cmd. Old SSD degraded very quickly, many end up performing worst than a HDD. Intel G1 was an exception (However it does not support trim CMD). We are now at 3rd generation (Support Sata 6) Just get a vortex-2

As to performance - Look at 4 K random read/writes and access times (these two areas are the most important. Access time, SSDs 50 -> 100 times faster. 4K random read/writes: low end SSD approx 10 x faster, Good SSD 20->40 x faster than Mechanical. I have 2 installed in Laptops (a patriot Torqx and a Intel 80) and one in desktop (intel 80 Gig G2) - would never trad back to Mechanical.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/SSD-versus-HDD-in-comparison.18750.0.html
Here is one that list the High end WD VelociRaptor In some of the charts. http://www.anandtech.com/show/2808/4

Here is one on the new C300. Look at random 4 K read/writes. A mechanical HDD would = 1!! on these two charts.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries-crucials-realssd-c300/2

 

[xer0]

The simplest thing would be to buy a cheapo laptop and equip it with a good SSD, then compare boot/sleep/hibernation times with the best laptop in the office with a HDD. When the $350 laptop blows the the expensive laptop's times out of the water, your point is made. Charts, just don't compare to pushing the on button and seeing it first hand.