What are SSD (drives) and how will one help my Mac?
Solid-state drives (SSD) are found in USB flash drives, recent iPods, iPhones, and iPads. These super-small alternatives to traditional hard drives have no moving parts so they don't mechanically fail. Instead of storing data on moving glass platters, they use solid-state memory.
In contrast, traditional hard drives are like a miniaturized record player spinning at 5,400+ rotations a second. They wear out after a few years and are susceptible to bumps and drops. Read more about what causes hard drive failures.
The Top 3 Features of Solid-state Drives:
- Are less likely to ever need service to keep your data safer (but that doesn't mean you can skip backing up)
- Consume less power for longer battery life
- Turn on instantly to drastically decreases the amount of time it takes to boot up your computer
See It For Yourself
You can see the results in this video where our friends from Mac-Fusion upgraded two MacBook Pros to solid-state drives and decreased the time to start-up and launch 9 applications from over 5 minutes to 37 seconds.
Published November 2, 2011 12:48 PM
Last modified on November 2, 2011 1:59 PM
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