If you’re interested in the latest technology, then solid state drives have probably been on your radar for awhile now. Also, known as an SSD, these drives are being hyped as the next wave of greatness for laptops and for computers in general. The big question, however, is do they deliver on all of these promises or, like so many grand advancements promoted in the past, just overhyped.

Most of us have at least a basic understanding of how our hard drives work. Inside them are spinning magnetic platters where everything we do on our computers is saved. To work though, they rely on drive motors to move them. If anything happens to those motors or to the drive heads, then our hard drive ceases to function correctly and we’ll end up shopping for a new laptop or desktop.

These alternative drives don’t have all of those extra parts. Everything is done through Flash memory chips and most of us know that the portable Flash memory we use in our cameras and other storage devices does a pretty good job of saving quickly and of working when we need it to.

As you can imagine, having a drive that uses less power, is less vulnerable to damage, and is able to retrieve data faster would be a dream for most laptop owners. That’s why it’s important to look at whether or not these drives really deliver on these promises.

Many laptop manufacturers have already released products contains solid state drives so there are some on the market which allow us to get an idea of how they are stacking up to these promises.

Unfortunately, there have been some problems with customer satisfaction in this area because of the hype. People are promised the moon and are disappointed when the drive can’t live up to their elevated expectations.

Evidence has shown that these drives do wonderful when you’re reading average size files. You’ll be able to access them quickly. However, if you’re working with large files or trying to save large files, you won’t see those fast speeds. Now remember these drives are still in their infancy in terms of this type of use so that doesn’t mean these problems won’t be corrected down the line.

Another huge promise is improved battery life for laptops because of the reduced power requirements. For one, this promise could never really deliver because the hard drive isn’t what uses up most of your laptop’s battery in the first place. The screen, the RAM, and your CPU are doing most of that for you. Generally, you’re only talking about a 5% improvement in battery life and that’s not much of a bargain considering how much these drives add to the price of a laptop.

To find out more about solid state drives on the computer repair Uk blog or our main laptop repair website

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