Upgrading to a Solid State Drive (SSD)

Abe Olandres June 5, 2010 · 2 min read

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Intel Philippines lent me an SSD last week after pulling out that gaming rig. So I thought I’d upgrade my laptop’s hard drive with the SSD.

The sample SSD was just the 40GB Intel X25-V SATA SSD and though the capacity was low, I was more curious how it compares to traditional hard disk drives.

The drive is almost the same size as the regular 2.5″ disk drives for notebooks but the SSD is significantly lighter.

My laptop’s current drive is a 250GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue and the drive compartment was readily accessible at the back side with just a couple of screws away.

Switching the drive was quick and easy and I got me installing Window 7 Ultimate to the new drive in 15 minutes. Took several tests and benchmarks for the Intel SSD and compared it with the HDD.

The results above are based on PassMark Performance Test to determine the seek speed, read and write speeds (in MB per second). The SSD scored very high on random seek and sequential read.

I also took the rating from Windows Experience Index with the SSD scored a 7.7 while the HDD got 5.6. Using PassMark again, here are the Disk Mark ratings for both the SSD and the HDD.

ssd hdd

The laptop definitely got some nice performance boost based on the results above (wasn’t able to compare boot time though).

SSDs are still very expensive compared to regular SATA disk drives. I don’t have the price for the 40GB Intel SSD but the 160GB is selling for around Php23,000 in TipidPC and CDR King used to sell a 64GB SSD for about Php5,800.

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

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42 Comments

Ham · 14 years ago

Hi, I’m also using ASUS K42Jc.

I can just buy SSD and change it with HDD without any additional works like changing the socket or cutting something out?

Thanks! Hope for you reply!

jim · 15 years ago

Yes same question here, where can I get it with a reasonable prize? its 6k++ sa Greenhills ang Intel 40gigs SSD..out range of my budget, how about the Samsung PCIe SSD is it available na in the market? Tnx

rio rivera · 16 years ago

where i can buy ssd in manila? tnx…

Kenneth Gabona · 16 years ago

SSDs are far way more better. intel’s ssd doesnt have the best products for this. try using ssds of ocz and corsair. kahit bagong labas lang ang mga ssd. naupgrade na nila agad ang mga ito dahil din sa mga problema na nararanasan sa mga ito. naglabas na ang ocz ng force series pra sa mga ssd. tingnan nyo nalang ang mga videos ng linustechtips sa youtube. idol ko yan:D

Salaryman Ryan · 16 years ago

If you read around the net, they say that most of the top quality SSD like the Intel X25 have a lifespan of 5 year of continuous use (as in placed in a server and accessed constantly every few seconds) so its really not so bad as 5 years is probably beyond the life span of most computers anyway.

squishy · 16 years ago

SSD is better than HDD. The former has no mechanical workings that can wear out. The issues of cost and materials will eventually fizzle out, hopefully. Think of how much a 64mb USB flash drive cost a few years back, and how much an 8gb USB flash drive costs nowadays.

jill · 16 years ago

@lolipown:
They missed the “if” at the start of your post.

osting · 16 years ago

Yes I agree! mabilis talaga ang SSD..try to compare the speed of macbook pro (which is using SATA) and macbook air (which is using SSD)…ang bilis ng air but more fragile than pro.

drew · 16 years ago

digital is better than analog but not always. I think mas reliable yung SSD compare sa HDD dahil wla namng mechanical device inside a SSD na ma wewear-out, everythings digital in SSD. Palagay ko mas fragile ata yung HDD compare sa SSD.

Jeff Joseph Zafra Cuison · 10 years ago

matagal na akong nag SSD user… masisira lang ang SSD sa tingin ko by overvoltage supplied by your wearing PSU pero sa tibay walang binatbat angHDD kahit ibato mo gumagana… kahit wala na patayan hindi nag eerror yung server ko 4 months na walang patayan… dapata 6 months na to eh nag brown out kasi.. SSD yun

Jhay · 16 years ago

I’d still go for the HDD for now as I need lots of storage and reliability.

Adrian · 16 years ago

the price is not that good :(

fr0stbyte · 16 years ago

@manong

Out of context, you are.

lolipown · 16 years ago

@manong
nice try but you gotta learn how to roll

Miguel · 16 years ago

@Jon – I believe those early netbooks were not using SSD flash, but regular thumbdrive type flash.

manong · 16 years ago

“money is not an issue”

– statements usually made by a michael jackson wanna be spender

cornflakes · 16 years ago

I use SSD on my site’s server. It works like a charm :)

manaka_junpei · 16 years ago

maganda sana ang SSD pero hindi ko sure kung mag-shift tayo sa SSD, the only problem is gaano katagal ang SSD compare sa HDD pagdating sa longterm operation. Maganda kung magsimula ka sa maliit na storage kung ok ba ang loading time nang Windows mo

IC DeaDPiPoL · 16 years ago

Most likely those netbooks were using a journaling file system which resulted in frequent writes.

BTW did the test laptop have a longer battery life when running under SSD compared to HDD?

lolipown · 16 years ago

^
If money is not an issue, SSDs are quite worth the premium especially when you’re using it on a system (Windows 7) that properly manages SSDs and HDDs.

Jon · 16 years ago

I’ve read somewhere that SSDs don’t last that long. There were even some netbooks using SSDs that broke down after quite some time. I’d still go for an HDD. Cheaper, more capacity, and more reliable.