solid state disks

Solid state drives (SSDs), as compared to their spinning counterparts, have no moving parts, require less power, have a smaller footprint, produce a fraction of the heat, enjoy a longer life span and perform better in some systems. They currently range in price from two or three times for smaller drives (about 30GB) to more than 10 times that for drives in the 120GB to 250GB rangeSATA vs. SSD (Watts)

The table shows the average power consumption from a variety of different SATA and SCSI drives. The SSDs are Intel High Performance SSDs.

Performance
                       If you’ve heard of SSDs, you’ve also heard about their increased performance over conventional disk technology. Since SSDs don’t have moving parts, their seek times return numbers in the range of 75 microseconds to 1 millisecond. Standard disk technology runs in the 4 to 5 millisecond range.


SSD PRO's &CON's::
PRO's:::
             Energy efficient
             Low Latency
             Durability    
             Control of Unstructured files
             Compatability with operating systems
             commoditized components
CON's::::
         LifeExpectancy ofSSD
         Not Ideal for all
         More Expensive..