SSDs and Asinine Arguments

I tend to get annoyed most of the time people talk about SSDs. There are two main arguments against them:

  • They don’t last long*, and
  • They’re expensive.

On the first point, this is more or less wrong. Everyone sees that they have a finite life and flips out, not realizing that the MBTF is usually several times a conventional hard drive. Someone else argues that this may be so, but that an individual sector can only be written to so often. (Which is the exact same argument that was just refuted?) Except that I’ve never seen an SSD that didn’t have wear-leveling. Furthermore, conventional hard drive get bad sectors, too. I’ve never heard anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about indicate a problem with the reliability of SSDs.

The second point drives me even more crazy. Of course they’re expensive. It’s asinine to even discuss. I can get a 128GB SSD for $300. I have two 2TB disks being shipped to me that, collectively, cost less. But can the 2TB disks do 200MB/sec. reads and have basically-instant seek times? Nope. It’s like trying to compare tractor trailers to Ferraris. It’s asinine to do.

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