What is SSD? A new round in the development of high technologies

Technical progress is rapidly developing. There are all new devices that greatly facilitate the life of modern man. This particularly applies to various computer peripherals. Such high-tech devices, which appeared only 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 hard disk operation. NAND-drives are much more common. This type of memory is used both in mobile devices and in ordinary PCs, so this article will deal specifically with NAND-drives.

About what SSD is and how they differ from conventional hard drives, not everyone knows yet. Meanwhile, their main difference is the speed of reading and writing. In this SSD very much ahead of all other media. The structure of the solid state drive is also fundamentally different from the hard drive. If there are moving parts in the latter, then the SSD has a monolithic structure, which ensures a practically noiseless operation of the laptop or tablet. The fact that solid state drives do not have a read head, provides low power consumption and high reading speed, as well as small size and high strength of the device. Another undeniable advantage of SSD is the compatibility of the device with all common interfaces.

Another user, who has learned what SSD is, will seem that the device has practically no flaws. 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 rewriting cycles. This disadvantage is especially strong because of the high cost of the device, which directly depends on its volume.

Many are not only interested in what an SSD is, but also how this device differs from a conventional flash drive. A solid-state drive can be considered a "big brother" of a flash drive. They differ, first of all, by the fact that there is only one flash memory chip in the USB drive, and there are already several flash memory chips in the SSD, and information on them is recorded alternately. Often, to increase the performance of the device, a separate flash memory chip is installed on its PCB . Controllers in solid state drives are also more productive than in USB. This provides the SSD with much longer operation.

Surely users also care about such a question as the lifespan of an SSD. As in the USB-drive, the expiration date of a solid-state drive is measured not by years but by rewriting 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 operational life of the drive and special controllers, through which memory cells are used more or less evenly. As for time, the leading manufacturers of SSD guarantee three years of trouble-free operation of their products. When the SSD ends with a "shelf life", it does not mean that the device is broken. It will not be possible to record new information, but the data already recorded on it will always be available.

Among themselves SSD differ, first of all, in size. As a rule, they are either 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch, but sometimes there are also non-standard 3.5-inch devices. They are usually connected through the eSATA connector. When connecting an SSD via a USB interface, it's 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 unique "hybrids" of a solid-state drive and a conventional hard drive. Such hybrid devices have a high speed and have enough space for data storage.

Most users have not yet learned to trust solid state drives. Having received an answer to the question about what an SSD is, everyone can decide whether they need a new type of drive, or you can do with an old good hard drive.