Technological progress is developing rapidly. All new devices are appearing that make life much easier for a modern person. This is especially true for various computer peripherals. These high-tech devices that have appeared recently are solid-state hard drives. Formally, new storage media, otherwise called SSDs, use two types of memory: NAND or RAM. Drives with memory of the second type are quite rare and are used in cases requiring fast operation of the hard drive. NAND drives are much more common. This type of memory is used both in mobile devices and in ordinary PCs, so this article will focus on NAND drives.
Not everyone knows what SSDs are and how they differ from ordinary hard drives. Meanwhile, their main difference is the speed of reading and writing. In this SSD is very far ahead of all other storage media. By design, a solid-state drive is also fundamentally different from a hard drive. If the latter has moving parts, then the SSD has a monolithic structure, which ensures almost silent operation of a laptop or tablet. The fact that solid-state drives do not have a read head ensures low power consumption and high read speed, as well as small size and high durability of the device. Another indisputable advantage of SSD is the compatibility of the device with all common interfaces.
Another user who finds out what an SSD is will think that the device has practically no shortcomings. However, it is not. The main disadvantage of SSD is a limited "shelf life". Like a flash drive, a solid state drive has a finite number of rewrite cycles. This drawback is especially felt due to the high cost of the device, which directly depends on its volume.
Many are interested not only in what an SSD is, but also how this device differs from a regular flash drive. SSD can be considered the "big brother" of a flash drive. They differ, first of all, in that there is only one flash-memory chip in the USB drive, and there are already several of them in the SSD, and information is written to them one by one. Often, to increase the productivity of a device, a separate flash memory chip is installed on its printed circuit board . Controllers in solid state drives are also more productive than in USB. This provides an SSD with a much longer life.
Surely users are concerned about such a question as the life of the SSD. As with a USB drive, the shelf life of a solid-state drive is measured not over years, but overwrite cycles. Their drive can withstand from five hundred thousand to one and a half million. Accordingly, the more often you use the device, the faster it will become unusable. Increase the operating life of the drive and special controllers with which memory cells are used more or less evenly. As for the time, the leading SSD manufacturers guarantee three years of uninterrupted operation of their products. When the SSD expires, it does not mean that the device breaks. It will not be possible to record new information on it, but the data already recorded on it will always be available.
Between themselves, SSDs differ primarily in size. As a rule, they are either 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch, but sometimes there are non-standard 3.5-inch devices. They are usually connected via the eSATA connector. When connecting an SSD via USB, it is best to use USB 3.0. Now, along with solid state drives, there are SSD expansion cards that are used in laptops and servers. In addition, many manufacturers produce original "hybrids" of a solid-state drive and a conventional hard drive. Such hybrid devices are fast and have enough storage space.
Most users have not yet learned to trust solid state drives. Having received the answer to the question of what an SSD is, everyone will be able to decide whether he needs a new type of drive, or if he can get by with the good old hard drive.