The relentless march of time makes itself evident once again with the winter air increasingly getting colder, marking the end of another year. Perhaps you have spent some time in Skyrim slaying dragons, or maybe stuck in a Paris metro being pinned by virtual suppressive machinegun fire. Perhaps you dedicated your time to something more productive instead like trying out the new features in the latest version of Adobe Photoshop or utilizing the Intel Sandy Bridge’s Quick Sync technology to quickly transcode High-Definition videos to your smart phone. Whatever the task may have been, I guarantee a percentage of that was spent on waiting for the program to load.

No matter how fast your processor or video card may be, if you are using a hard disk drive to store programs, the overall performance is bottlenecked. Since mechanical hard drives rely on platter rotation and moving heads, access time can never be instantaneous. Even data transfer rates are hampered because of the vibration and heat caused by faster rotational platter speeds. Thankfully, solutions in the form of Solid State Drives have come to light in recent years which significantly speed up transfer rates but at a considerably higher price point.

Severe flooding in Thailand recently however has affected platter drive production significantly, driving up the cost to double and triple compared to HDD prices in the summer of 2011. Thailand is the 2nd largest producer of hard disk drives and some plants as of December 2011 were still flooded and non-operational with 2 feet of water. While the cost of platter HDD increased, Solid State Drives have become a much attractive upgrade option for users since the cost of a 7200 rpm HDD equaled a 60-80GB Gen3 SATA 6GB/s SSD. With instant and mail-in rebate offers on top, the deals just got even sweeter.

Price is not the only factor holding back most users from upgrading to an SSD. Despite all the benefits, a lot of people are still not thoroughly convinced to switch. Although understandable, most of the myths that endure surrounding SSDs are simply inaccurate. The most popular myth is that the write endurance lifetime of an SSD is significantly shorter than a mechanical HDD. While this was factually true once, this is no longer the case today. Technological advancements have improved SSDs beyond the 100,000 rewrite cycle limit and current generation SSDs have rewrite cycle limits rated in the millions. Most SSDs today are even offered with a much longer warranty than mechanical HDDs.

If performance is still a concern, all you need to do is check out the performance benchmarks from the reviews here in HiTechLegion to see for yourself just how significant a speed bump an SSD provides. While the price of an SSD is still quite a bit more per-GB than a HDD, users looking for a hybrid solution are also in luck for there are various products currently available that fits the bill. Users who have recently upgraded or built a Sandy Bridge LGA1155 system based on the Z68 chipset are well aware of the Intel Smart Response Technology feature which allows an SSD drive to be used as a caching drive for the mechanical HDD. ASUS has also integrated their own solution similar to Intel’s RST in their latest line of X79 motherboards which natively do not have this caching feature.   

The most affordable alternative solution however comes in the form of the MB882HX-1SB 2.5” SSD Xpander from Icy Dock that we have previously reviewed. Users who are not running an Intel Z68 system or ASUS X79 motherboard can still use the Icy Dock SSD Xpander and run a HDD+SSD hybrid setup. This is obviously a huge value option that would not be available otherwise with other solutions. The HDD performance doesn’t magically reach SSD speeds completely because of the mechanical HDD involved but as the benchmarks show, the results are still quite surprising. Using an older generation SATAII SSD is preferable so the performance disparity isn’t too great between the SSD and HDD used in the Icy Dock MB882HX-1SB 2.5” Xpander setup. Also, older Gen2 SSDs are much more affordable know, adding more to the value. It also just happens to be easiest to setup as well and is automatically detected by the motherboard once plugged in. It is even easier than ASUS’ one-click X79 SSD caching as it does not require any software to be installed. 

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Icy Dock is all about convenience and this is evident throughout their product line.  While SSD cuts down the load times, an easy to install setup saves users additional time, eliminating the frustration brought on by hardware installation.  The task becomes even more increasingly taxing if you are a multiple system builder working in an office or corporate setting.  Imagine the amount of time you would spend opening each machine and screwing each SSD in place.  Considering the 2.5 inch form factor commonly used by SSDs is not as readily available as 3.5” and 5.25” drive bays inside an office chassis without the use of an adapter, the task takes even longer.  This is why a total plug-and-play installation mechanism used in Icy Dock converters can be life savers.  Even something as simple as the Icy Dock MB990SP-B EZ-FIT Dual 2.5" to 3.5" SATA & IDE SSD/HDD Bracket is extremely effective in simplifying setup and minimizing work-time.

While the Icy Dock MB990SP-B EZ-FIT Dual 2.5” to 3.5” Bracket is a simple solution, Icy Dock also extends their design philosophy to more complex storage units like the MB982SPR-2S Dual 2.5" -3.5" Raid SATA HDD/SSD Converter which offers hardware RAID functionality for a pair of 2.5” drives inside a standard 3.5” form factor converter. Using a pair of Seagate BarracudaXT drives inside the MB982SPR-2S, we found fantastic bumps in performance and near SSD speeds with over 500GB+ of storage.  The benchmarks speak for themselves:

How easy was it to setup a pair of 2.5" drives in RAID inside the MB982SPR-2S? If you can put a drive inside a box, you can run it in RAID. There really is no guesswork needed and everything is literally plug-and-play.  It is easier and faster than replacing any part of the PC with no software or BIOS settings to fiddle and tweak with. On top of which, the drive inside gets protected from dust, heat and shock prolonging its lifetime further.

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Those who are concerned about migrating all their files and reinstalling their programs to an SSD need not worry either.  Both Seagate and Western Digital offer a FREE version of Acronis which only requires that at least one of their drives is present in the process of cloning.  It even includes options for resizing the partitions automatically so the transition could be totally seamless.  The holidays might be over but it isn’t too late to give yourself the gift of significantly less wait times.  With all the options available out there to make your life as a user extremely convenient like the Icy Dock MB882HX-1SB 2.5” SSD Xpander as well as MB982SPR-2S" RAID Converter combined with lower SSD prices, there is virtually no reason to keep running on just a plain ol' regular HDD.