Personal Computer Advice with Peter Greene

Featured in this Show

• Is Newer Always Better? Assessing Solid State Drives

  There is always something new in the world of computer technology. But are the latest products always worth the additional price to upgrade?

  The hard disk drive (HDD) as the main drive in computers has been around since the 1950s. They are the spinning disks that we are used to providing storage on our machine. Until recently, they were the only option for an internal drive.

  Solid State Drives (SSDs) have been in use for quite a while as jump drives or thumb drives. Those were used mainly for back-up, or to transport files easily from one computer to another. The SSDs have also been used on specialty cards for high-performance controllers.

  But more recently, they have been installed as replacements to those primary HHDs. The promise of this development was to be faster speeds and reliability. The verdict? Peter Greene is an independent computer consultant with InfoStar.com. He says that it’s important to keep in mind that there are many different producers of these SSDs that are being used as primary hard drives, and that means that performance can vary. But overall, he has not been impressed.

  As a consultant, he turned to the SSDs for clients that really needed a bump in speed and a reliable system. But Greene says that in the two years that he has been using them, “those systems have actually caused me grief.” Issues include not booting up consistently and reporting errors.

  In addition, SSDs need firmware, or software, updates, which many users are not used to. So unless you know what you’re doing and stay current with those updates, you may lag behind on crucial technology.

  Greene says that people are frustrated, and understandably so. “People want Internet, people want their computers to work, people want their applications to work, and they want to use their system. If you don’t have reliability, you don’t have any of that.”

  As a result, Greene has replaced some of those internal SSDs with the older, but more reliable, spin drives. But he reiterates that the older, external SSDs are fine and very reliable. About those used in addition to the internal hard drive, he says “I’ve had very good success with those.”

  For a point-by-point comparison of hard disk drives and solid state drives, this July 2013 article in PC Magazine may be helpful. And for reviews of specific makes and models of SSDs and a variety of other hardware, visit the CNET web site.