I was talking to a colleague today and the topic of solid state drives came up.  He had been considering using a solid-state hard drive, but had heard too many “horror” stories about performance or data loss.  I was surprised to hear this.  I have been using solid state drives for well over a year now and have had nothing but success.  When I originally investigated using a solid-state drive, I read many poor reviews on certain models of solid-state drives.  So when I selected my first drive, I was careful to read all of the reviews I could, and check all of the specs.  I settled on a drive from Corsair that had excellent reviews and decent specs for the price.

The first system I built with a solid-state drive was a terminal server for demo purposes.  That was the fastest terminal server I ever worked on.  The server would boot in about 30 seconds, logins took 2 seconds, and applications would launch instantaneously.  From that point forward, I was sold. 

I am currently running a Lenovo Thinkpad T500 with a Corsair CMFSSD-128GBG1D solid state hard drive.  I swapped out the standard hard drive that came with the laptop.  It was as simple as unscrewing a couple of screws, pulling out the hard drive, and then installing the Corsair directly in its place.  I then just booted my OS DVD and started the install.  I didn’t even have to change a setting in the BIOS.  After the change, my laptop runs like a scalded dog and my battery lasts even longer because it doesn’t have to spin those platters.  The 1 million hour MTBF rating and 1500G shock resistance is pretty good, also.  I am running Windows 7 RC.

Checking out Corsair’s website at http://www.corsair.com/products/ssd_legacy/default.aspx, it looks like the drive I have is now considered “legacy” and they have two newer series of drives that are even faster now.  Looks like it might be time for an upgrade…..