Always Buy SSDs For Your Client Computers

The worst thing a business will do is decide that innovations are no longer necessary and to continue to use old technology way beyond its usable lifespan. In the last end of the 2010 decade, we are coming to this conclusion with physical hard drives. Physical hard drives are an old and outdated technology used primarily for their low cost until the introduction of solid state drives (SSDs) to general consumers. Due to significant cost reductions and massive improvements in speed and reliability, SSDs need to replace hard drives in every single one of your client computers.

This technology was around when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

In 2008, a 128GB SSD cost around $500. This was for a high end SSD that one would be able to trust wouldn’t burn out within 6 months. Most consumers around that time wouldn’t buy an SSD because of those facts. Today, in 2018, that same high end 128GB SSD costs around $225; that is nearly a 200 percent decrease in price. The significant cost reduction for high end SSDs, which has passed down to the mid-range and low end SSD markets, is a huge part of why SSDs are now offered as a standard configuration option on the consumer side for computers. This has also allowed us in the I.T. world to see how much of a difference SSDs really make in regards to computer performance. In 2008, a 128GB SSD cost around $500. This was for a high end SSD that one would be able to trust wouldn’t burn out within 6 months. Most consumers around that time wouldn’t buy an SSD because of those facts. Today, in 2018, that same high end 128GB SSD costs around $225; that is nearly a 200 percent decrease in price. The significant cost reduction for high end SSDs, which has passed down to the mid-range and low end SSD markets, is a huge part of why SSDs are now offered as a standard configuration option on the consumer side for computers. This has also allowed us in the I.T. world to see how much of a difference SSDs really make in regards to computer performance.

           Prohibitive pricing initially made the performance benefits of SSDs negligible, and as pricing has become more reasonable for consumers to buy into the technology, the performance benefits are so enormous that SSDs outshine HDDs in every single performance category. In 2008, most SSDs approached around 100MB/s sequential read and write, barely outstripping HDD performance while being over 10 times as costly. Now, SSDs frequently have a sequential read and write speed of 600MB\s or more and requiring technology improvements to the connections for SSDs in order to keep up with the massive performance requirements. The most major improvement in SSD technology is related to Random Operations Performance, and this improvement alone makes SSDs the superior choice for everyday applications. Random operations include the hundreds of small files stored in various non-contiguous locations that applications read from and write to while running. SSDs often have ROPS performance that is at least 10 times better than the best HDD is able to provide, allowing you to gain hundreds of hours of productivity from your client computers.

This is how fast your computers will run when using SSDs.

This profound increase in performance used to come at a high price in reliability. Previously, a major reliability issue for SSDs was that the technology requires the SSD to fully erase a memory location before it can copy data to a previously full location. The process physically degrades the media and puts a hard limit on the lifetime of the device. Multi-Layer Celled SSDs (MLC SSDs), while the cheaper and more prolific of the SSD writing technologies, suffered from horrible reliability in 2008. Many SSDs failed after only several thousand write cycles, which equated to an average run time of 6 months or less. Reliability technologies such as TRIM, Advanced Format partitions and wear leveling have increased SSD reliability to titanic proportions, allowing SSDs to outstrip hard drives in reliability. Western Digital and Seagate have manufacturer warranties of 2 years and a MTBF of 1 million hours each. In comparison, the top Intel SSDs have a warranty of 5 years and a MTBF of 1.2 million hours; this is several times longer than the average HDD warranty and much more cost effective. With all of these mentioned factors and with no moving parts, SSDs are superior to HDDs every way. 

The combined time and financial savings from using SSDs lead to big business profits.

You save a ton of time with these high performance storage drives. In addition, SSD drives are much more reliable than HDDs and have had numerous improvements to the technology that allow them to have similar if not longer data longevity compared to HDDs. The lack of moving parts all but eliminates HDDs as a serious option for sensitive client machines and places SSDs squarely in the top category of storage devices. The message is clear: Always Buy SSDs For Your Client Computers.

SSDs give you more time to work on the next big thing for improving your business.

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