With all the hoopla surrounding the improvement that an SSD (Solid State Drive) can deliver to system performance, we decided to take a look at whether the hype really has some substance to it. From an Indian perspective of prices today (year 2010) and how much bang for the buck you can receive, we shall be comparing one normal spinning hard disk, one enthusiast-grade spinning hard disk, and two solid state drives. They are all fairly mainstream in their respective market segments, and use the SATA 2 storage interface like all consumer-grade drives. The drives under test are:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 – 1 TeraByte, 7200rpm
Western Digital VelociRaptor – 300 GB, 10000rpm
Intel X25-M (G1GN) – 80 GB, MLC SSD
Kingston SSDNow V+ Series – 64 GB, MLC SSD

Read on to find out how the drives stack up in terms of performance, price, issues to look out for, where each drive excels, and the answer to the question really on your mind – to pick up an SSD or not?

The testbed comprised of an Intel Core i7 965 processor, X58 motherboard, Radeon 5870, 3GB of Kingston DDR3 2000MHz RAM, and a Tagan BZ-1300W power supply. The OS used was Windows 7 64-bit, with latest drivers and firmware upgrades for all components involved. A range of synthetic benchmarking software and real-world tests were run, to compare all drives on a ground as level as possible.