Now it’s fashionable to talk about what an SSD is and what amazing prospects lie in this technology for manufacturing storage media. On almost any topic forum, you can find admiring reviews of the lucky owners of these devices. Why did you need an SSD based on solid-state memory?
Bottleneck
As you know, the performance of any computer is determined by the speed with which the
central processor performs mathematical operations. Actually, the English word "compute" itself means "calculate, calculate." However, this is obvious. But what does the SSD have to do with it? In fact, the connection is direct. After all, any computing system is not limited to only one processor, but represents a complex of various components, each of which performs its own range of tasks. Thus, a situation arises when the data already processed by the computing unit is locked in other areas, being limited by the performance of any composite component. Speaking about this phenomenon, a bottleneck is often mentioned, when the rate of fluid leakage from a container is limited by the diameter of the tapering neck.
One of these slow sections is the disk subsystem. Since the classic hard drive is based on rotating magnetic disks, the laws of mechanics impose restrictions on performance. For example, the cost of models with ten thousand revolutions per minute significantly exceeds similar solutions, but from 7200. In total, some additional 2800 revolutions - and the price of the device increases significantly. The reason for this is the need for more precise balancing, the use of improved bearings, etc. But more recently, a solution has been found. It turned out to be an SSD drive.
New with fantastic features
The computer industry has long felt the need for a fundamentally new device
for storing information in which there would be no
limiting factor in mechanics. With the advent of floating-gate transistors, it has become possible to create flash memory chips. And on their basis - data storage devices. Such carriers do not have any moving parts in their design, which means that their speed depends only on the characteristics of the transistors themselves (how quickly the electronic key can change its state) and the capabilities of the controller that controls the array of memory cells.
At the same time, this technology has a number of features that do not yet allow SSD devices to completely drive HDD out of the “oldies” market. We will indicate some of them later, considering the choice of SSD-drive.
Nuances
Compared with traditional, solid-state media have several advantages: they operate silently, the data transfer speed of modern models exceeds this parameter for HDD, energy efficiency is higher. The latter makes the
SSD-drive for a laptop very popular, allowing you to save battery power.
Since all such devices are characterized by an acceptable number of cycles for accessing memory cells, when choosing it is recommended to pay attention to modern models that use more advanced circuits than in previous generations.
To increase productivity and durability, you need to choose a solution that specifies TRIM command support in the specification.
So that the interface does not turn out to be a “bottleneck”, you should opt for SATA-2 or even SATA-3. The same is true for USB - the higher the version, the better.