Solid State Drives : Hybrid Or Classic?

Solid state drives (SSDs) are the perfect storage solution for compact and ultra-portable devices.

They contain no moving parts - which means they don’t need the same cooling, and they don’t consume as much power as conventional hard disks. Until recently, though, they were a relatively expensive investment.

Over the past two years, though, the price of SSDs has fallen significantly - so much so that you can now get a decent model for under £100.

The OCZ Technology Onyx is an excellent example, cramming 64GB into a 2.5-inch form factor, which makes it ideal for rugged storage devices and laptops.

Earlier this year, Seagate introduced an innovative storage solution under its Momentus XT brand, which combines solid-state storage with a traditional spinning hard disk drive (you’ll find a review of the device here).

Both the OCZT Onyx and the Seagate Momentus XT are available from Dabs for £84.98 and £89.99 respectively, including free delivery. Which of the two suits you best will depend on how you plan to use it.

The Onyx SSD-only drive was released at the beginning of the year, and comes with a SATA II interface and the promise of a 135MBps read/write performance thanks partly to the onboard Indilinx controller.

OCZ says that moving to SSD will mean faster application loading, snappier data access, shorter boot-up times and longer battery life.

The drive supports TRIM, a system that automatically clears out data that’s no longer used. It also boasts a seek time of a mere 0.1ms. With a capacity of just 64GB, though, it’s unlikely you’ll be using the Onyx as your main storage drive.

Ultimately, the Onyx is perfect for those looking for speed rather than capacity, and will work well as a boot or system drive on which to install your OS.

And with two or more Onyx drives arranged in a RAID array, you can boost performance still further - though that’s not an option that’s likely to be available if you’re planning to install the storage into a laptop, as most only have a single drive bay.The Onyx comes with a two-year warranty as well.