18 Issue 1404
Psst!Wanta cheap SSD?Let
Leo Maxwellshowyou how B
uying an SSD for £5 may seem far-fetched, but it is possible.
They’re usually in a non-standard form factor, often as
uncased PCBs. Many of these SSDs are intended for use in
printers or other devices. Therefore, they’re designed forreliability
and low latency. In addition to a fastread/write speed, they
offer a small physical footprint, coupled with silent, low-power
operation – useful attributes for many applications. As long as
they have the standard SATA connections, they should work in
a PC without problems. They can also be found to fit PCIe or
mSATA slots.
Of course, they don’t have a massive capacity, and while
there are ways toreduce the size of aWindows installation, the
minimum currentlyrequired is around 60GB, which still costs £
or more at the moment. Linux, however, is a different story.
An SSD can make areal difference to a PC’sresponsiveness, but
most of the speed benefits apply to loading applications or large
data files such as high-resolution images.
I first had the idea when I was building a small PC which was
intended mainly to function as a network TV and media server,
but with occasional local use for web browsing and otherroutineAn SSD
For A Fiver