Submission + - Are SSDs Snake Oil?
boddhisatva writes: "SSDs are being touted everywhere. Entire systems are being sold that use nothing but SSDs. Their performance varies and their MTTF is shorter than a disk drive. I use an Intel 32 GB X25E as a read cache for my disk array which does seem to improve performance there but my 80 GB X25M boot drive is worthless. Who cares if it boots 15 seconds faster — even 30? I don't boot that often anyway. You have to look carefully at the SSD characteristics and at your intended use: the work load. If you're not doing a lot of large reads, an SSD can be a waste of money. So your laptop boots like lightning — you were probably get some caffeine at the time anyway. As read caches, I see great potential using SSDs, otherwise I remain dubious."
