I’ve been given the opportunity to test & play with a new Solid State Disk (SSD) from Corsair. The model I’ve got is a CMFSSD-128GBG2D - it’s a 128Gb unit, and one of the newer ones. You can see the full specifications here. It has a 128Mb cache too.... Quick summary:

- Capacity: 128GB

- Read: Up to 220MB/sec

- Write: Up to 200MB/sec

- NAND Flash: Multi-Level Cell (MLC)

- Interface: SATA-II

- Low Power Consumption

- Lightweight (80g)

- Shock Resistant

1. -Warranty: 2 Years
   

The unit itself looks pretty cool - not that that matters that much!

Some of you may remember the initial performance issues I was having with my Macbook Pro late 2008 Unibody - I wrote about it in this article here. I’m generally quite happy with the performance of the Seagate 500Gb 7200RPM unit - I know it won’t be a patch on an SSD but I need space rather than outright performance generally as I use a lot of virtualisation in my day to day work life.

Let’s have a look at the XBench stats of the original Seagate unit.

Not brilliant are they? Have to say though I’m not entirely convinced by these figures - this drive feels fast and consistent compared to most 5400RPM units I’ve used?

Now have a look at the figures for the SSD however.....

Just a lot different then. Like I say though, I’m not that convinced in general by the figures provided by Xbench for hard disk benchmarking - they don’t seem consistent with the user experience.

Let’s try some more subjective testing. Firstly a boot up on the 7200RPM unit, followed by a boot on the SSD. One thing I’ll point out here by the way is that both drives are encrypted using PGP whole disk encryption. I know there’s going to be some impact on the performance however I’ve never really noticed it. Anyways, look at the boot up video on the 7200RPM physical unit.

I make that about 40 seconds from the return on the PGP key. I’m happy with that generally however you can never have too much performance can you? Have a look at the equivalent boot on the SSD.

Again counting from the enter on the PGP key I make that about 20 seconds to boot. That’s quite nice I think. Saying that, I don’t often reboot. I guess the real example comes in when you start to look at the application launching.

This video here shows me kicking off a lot of applications straight after boot on the SSD - some 50 odd apps. I don’t think it’s too shabby.

The performance and the response is astonishing compared to the 7200RPM Seagate unit. If you’re interested, look at a far smaller test on the 7200 physical unit. Tried the 50 odd app test and got bored waiting.

Little bit of a different experience there.

As a final experiment, look at how quickly Office 2008 launches straight after boot on the SSD. I find Office 2008 quite slow - the SSD makes a world of difference. Also, note I haven’t as yet put Service Pack 2 for Office 2008 on which apparently speeds it up even more.

Summary

I’m properly sold on the performance - it makes a massive difference to the outright performance of my laptop. It’s like a new machine with the SSD in place, it really is.

One thing that does surprise me though is that it appears to make little difference to the performance of VMWare Fusion or Parallels?

Downside is of course lack of storage space and the price. The 128Gb unit I have is about GBP230 which makes it about GBP1.94 per GB (118Gb usable). Compare that the 465Gb usable of the physical unit’s cost/GB of GBP0.22. Massively differentiator there.

There’s a 256Gb unit (probably 230Gb usable) for around twice the price too - that’s a lot of money for a hard disk. Well it is now, I guess not so long ago it wasn’t.

I need space generally and while I appreciate I can plug in a 500Gb Firewire portable drive - well it’s just not he same. Copying large 40/50Gb images to/from a firewire drive is tedious. Is it tedious enough for me to want to remove the SSD? Not too sure yet - I’ll let you know.

One thing I am toying with though is replacing the DVD drive with a 500Gb SATA 2.5” drive... Now that would be cool. I’ll report back on that when I’ve assessed the options.

I haven’t really tested battery life as yet as I’ve not had the opportunity. I’ll update you once I have.

Overall I think SSD has to be the future. It’s at a difficult price point at the minute though - the space to cost ratio is a little on the high side. I’m sure that will come down in time though as is always the way with technology.

I’ll be putting the 500Gb unit back in as I need the space I think - I’ve only been using the SSD for a day and I miss the physical room already. Suspect I may miss the performance when I swap though!