The state of the mechanical disk is not strong. Solid-state drives might not be advancing at the rate that some people expected, but they continue to become more affordable, capacious, and speedy. That doesn’t mean everyone is using them though — most SSDs at approachable prices are too small to be the main drive on a laptop or the boot drive on a desktop, and they remain a very expensive upgrade from manufacturers if you aren’t building your own computer. Factor in some additional weirdness, like issues with data recovery and security, and it’s understandable why not everyone is rocking one of these spindleless wonders.
Even considering the limited capacities, the high-price-per-gigabyte, and other issues of your choosing, it’s generally recogni ed that an SSD is the single best upgrade you can make for your computer right now. Mechanical drives have their uses, but overall, they are slow and increasingly costly. As we’ve discussed before, SSDs are best when used as boot drives but they can work extremely well as secondary storage volumes too.
Obviously cost is the main reason people haven’t upgraded yet, but with some SSDs dropping below the $100 mark, this is less of an issue than it once was.
Personally I’m running SSDs on all my computers. On my desktop I’m too la y to transfer my data from my WD Velociraptor over to an SSD but I use one as a secondary drive so I can get quick access to my virtual operating systems and my Lightroom catalogs. My notebook has an SSD as the primary (and only) drive, though it’s a lowly first-generation model that is in need of replacement. My future computer builds (hopefully timed along with Ivy Bridge) will have a solid-state boot drive and then rely on connected devices for added space. With some pruning now and then, I’ll be fine with 160GB, possibly less.
ExtremeTalk: Why aren’t you using an SSD yet?
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