I Love My SSD

One June 20th–after my third hard drive failure in as many months–I finally broke down and bought myself a Solid State Drive: a 240gb OCZ Vertex 2.

The two primary criticisms of SSDs are with regards to storage space and reliability, but my luck with spinning disks, a brand new Apple Time Capsule, and the collection 2.5″ HDDs I now have (I can’t be without a computer, so I replace the HDD before RMA) those complaints are pretty well resolved.

Now I’m sure some of you are wondering why I went with last-generation technology when the Vertex 3 (on the newer Sandforce controller) has been out for months. In spite of my love of Portal, I don’t really feel like being a test subject. I know the drive works in my machine and there are tons of users who’ve blazed the trail ahead of me.

And now, the list of things I love, in no particular order:

  • Stupidly fast boot times.
  • All of my launch applications open in less than 1 second.
  • iTunes doesn’t drag down my system when reading album artwork into the library.
  • Everything on my computer just feels so much more responsive.
  • Battery life (over the 7200 rpm drive I put in my laptop) is tremendously improved, up to an hour.
  • 90% of the time the loudest part of my computer is electrical noise.

I’ll never go back to spinning disks.