Solid State Drives got a big break in 2008, but even though the new drives have become all the more popular they are far from the primary choice for most. Mechanical harddrives still have the advantage from some perspectives, which partly comes from the fact that file and operating systems are poorly optimized for SSDs. Something you rarely see is tests of the SSD technology in alternative operating systems, which makes Phoronix’ latest article extra interesting.
They compare a Solid State Drive from OCZ (Core Series V2) with a regular 2.5″ mechanical drive from Fujitsu (5400 RPM, 8MB cache) in Ubuntu 9.04. Just like in Windows, the SSD performance is noticeably different depending on what kind of load you put on it and OCZ’s cheap SSD moves from offering twice the performance to being just on par with the mechanical drive.
It quite clear though that just like Windows, Linux needs to be better optimized for Solid State Drives. It’s anything but perfect for SSD storage today if you want to enjoy the full advantages of Solid State Drives. The coming btrfs file system will offer a SSD optimized mode and other existing systems are being updated with this in mind, as well as the Linux core itself.
