Apart from speed, how do SSDs compare to HDDs?

I've heard that apart from straight-up speed, SSDs greatly outperform HDDs in power consumption and heat generation. How much greater, on average, is an SSD than an HDD in:

  1. Power consumption.
  2. Heat generation.

Is there a very significant difference?


Solution 1:

There is a considerable difference in power consumption, I've seen different data on that, but its ~0.6W as opposed to ~2.2W.

One thing to keep in mind- because there is no queuing delay, the processor utilization will go up, and that will create a lot more heat. A buddy of mine says that there are times where his laptop actually gets hotter after doing that upgrade for that reason. I'm sure that only happens when he's really reading/writing a ton of data!

Solution 2:

Intel 520 SSD power consumption: Read/Write: 0.8w Idle: 0.6w

WD Scorpio power consumption: Read/Write: 1.4w Idle: 0.6w

There is not so much difference in the heat generation. They both produce heat in a same level.