Hi guys and girls,

I am trying to configure a laptop to from the Sony website and got confused when I was told to choose a Hard drive. Now there is the "128 GB Ultra SATA Flash SSD" which is the most expensive (£320) and there is the "500 GB Serial ATA (7200 rpm)" which is £50. From my little knowledge about drives, 500GB is obviously bigger than 128GB so I could not understand why the astronomical difference in prize. I read up a little about the Solid State Drive and all I could get from it is that it is faster and has no moving parts and hence is less prone to damage and that it is silent.

Now my question is will a 128GB Solid State Drive contain more data than a 128GB Serial ATA drive (Doesn't sound like to me) or is it just for the speed and stability that makes it more than 6 times more expensive? What else is the added advantage of the Solid State Drive apart from what I mentioned above?

Please I would like someone to enlighten me.

Cheers

Anybody there?

Solid state drives are much faster.  They are up to 100 times faster than regular hard disk drives when doing random reads, which is the case when your Windows PC is booting up, swapping, or loading an application.  If you have the money, spend it on the SSD and get an external hard disk drive to store videos and other large files.  You won't regret it.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) make for a pretty great upgrade, but they aren't without their downsides (most notably, their high cost and low amounts of space). While the answer to "are they worth it?" is fairly subjective, there are a number of factors that can influence the usefulness of a solid-state drive.

HDDs spins up but ur SSD are much like USB flash drives, uses less power thus extending ur battery life

Because they can access and read data very quickly, you'll find that the biggest visible advantages of an SSD are fast boot-ups and application starts. Thus, they are the most useful if you're the type of person that likes to launch a lot of applications, or launch certain slow-loading applications such as Adobe Photoshop.

I would recommend u get a hybrid drive or a better set-up is to get two drives and put your OS and applications on the SSD, while having a second, regular hard drive for all your data. This is easy in a desktop computer and some laptops computers.

For more info, check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

Thanks guys for your reply. It seems like the answer to my question is "a bit of both". Now I may have to go for the SSD but the only problem I have is that the memory is small (Max I have seen is 256GB and the cost is "WIKID". I can get 3 or 4 640GB to 1 TB with it.
The only thing is that if I buy it I will have to constantly use an external Hard drive which is a bit cumbersome and kind of defeats the purpose of buying a laptop in the first place. Hmmm, am I not confused?

I have a ~220gb root partition on my primary system and in the absence of videos it'll only be about 20-25% full.  My last laptop had only 80gb of space and I used it to run Nairaland for years. 

You won't really need the 1tb external drive unless you download lots of videos and large files, and don't delete them after watching them.  Even if you download a lot of videos you can just copy them to the external drive maybe once a week to free up space.  You don't need to use the extra drive "constantly" unless you're a very busy video editor. The performance boost offered by a good solid state drive is worth this minor inconvenience.

Thanks a lot Seun for your thoughts. I went into a PC store and spoke to an IT technician about this confusion. He kind of agreed with you about using the SSD as your main drive and the external for heavy downloads. But he pointed out that the SSD will "expire" quicker if you leave the system on for a long time.

But he pointed out that the SSD will "expire" quicker if you leave the system on for a long time.

I disagree. Leaving your system idle for a long time won't degrade your SSD at all.

Seun:

Solid state drives are much faster.  They are up to 100 times faster than regular hard disk drives when doing random reads, which is the case when your Windows PC is booting up, swapping, or loading an application.  If you have the money, spend it on the SSD and get an external hard disk drive to store videos and other large files.  You won't regret it.

What is your boot speed like?
Do you run any heavy applications? Name and Speed?
What does your Windows Experience Index score your SSD?

This might be a major performance booster for my games.

@Mobinga: The actual difference is more like a 50% reduction in booting time:
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/2759/is_it_worth_upgrading_your_notebook_to_an_ssd_drive/index4.html

Thanks guys for your help,

I have finally bought the stuff from the US HP website but I went for the SATA 1 TB drive (two 500GB 7200rpm drives) just because I have an enormous music library and I don't like attachments to my system. Click the link below to see the configuration of the system.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/load_configuration.do?destination=review&email_id=1959150&jumpid=in_r329_emailconfig

I am yet to receive it but I hope to enjoy it. I opted for the fastest processor I could find just to compensate for the SATA drive speed.

Thanks guys once again.

Quite a nice config out there, the price tag is however on the high side.
For now the SATA HDD is a better bargain, but note that the processor speed cannot compensate for the HDD.

You had the option of combining the 160gb SSD with the 640gb HDD.  That would have provided 800gb of storage space with all the advantages of the SSD, and no attachments to your system.

@kidonig
is HP shipping it to naija for u or u have other means of getting it down here?

Seun:

Dude, the reason you gave ("I don't like attachments" makes no sense at all.

You had the option of combining the 160gb SSD with the 640gb HDD.  That would have provided 800gb of storage space with all the advantages of the SSD, and no attachments to your system.

Thanks Seun. Luckily for me, my card bounced as HP does not deal with the credit card company I use so I had to re-order it and it was then I saw your suggestion above and that was what I bought i.e. (800GB 7200RPM Dual Hard Drive (SSD 160GB + 640GB 7200RPM) and I feel I got the best deal in the end. Thanks again. The final configuration is:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/load_configuration.do?destination=review&email_id=1968586&jumpid=in_r329_emailconfig

lynxnoon:

@kidonig
is HP shipping it to naija for u or u have other means of getting it down here?

No, I am in the UK and buying it from the US as things are generally cheaper there,

Cheers