Skip to main content

Solid State Drive(SSD)

We’ll make no assumptions here and keep this article on a level that anyone can understand. You might be shopping for a computer and simply wondering what the heck SSD actually means? To begin, SSD stands for Solid State Drive. You’re probably familiar with USB memory sticks - SSD can be thought of as an oversized and more sophisticated version of the humble USB memory stick. Like a memory stick, there are no moving parts to an SSD. Rather, information is stored in microchips.  Conversely, a hard disk drive uses a mechanical arm with a read/write head to move around and read information from the right location on a storage platter. This difference is what makes SSD so much faster. As an analogy, what’s quicker? Having to walk across the room to retrieve a book to get information or simply magically having that book open in front of you when you need it? That’s how an HDD compares to an SSD; it simply requires more physical labor (mechanical movement) to get information.
A typical SSD uses what is called NAND-based flash memory. This is a non-volatile type of memory. What does non-volatile mean you ask? The simple answer is that you can turn off the disk and it won’t “forget” what was stored on it. This is of course an essential characteristic of any type of permanent memory. During the early days of SSD, rumors floated around saying stored data would wear off and be lost after only a few years.  Regardless, that rumor is certainly not true with today’s technology, as you can read and write to an SSD all day long and the data storage integrity will be maintained for well over 200 years. In other words, the data storage life of an SSD can outlive you!
An SSD does not have a mechanical arm to read and write data, it instead relies on an embedded processor (or “brain”) called a controller to perform a bunch of operations related to reading and writing data. The controller is a very important factor in determining the speed of the SSD. Decisions it makes related to how to store, retrieve, cache and clean up data can determine the overall speed of the drive. We won’t get into the nitty-gritty details for the various tasks it performs such as error correction, read and write caching, encryption, and garbage collection to name a few. Yet, suffice to say, good controller technology is often what separates an excellent SSD from a good one. An example of a fast controller today is the SandForce SATA 3.0 (6GB/s) SSD controller that supports burst speeds up to 550MB/s read and write speeds. The next gen SandForce 3700 family of controllers was announced in late 2013, and is quoted to reach a blistering 1,800MB/s read/write sequential speeds as well as 150K/80K random IOPS.
Finally, you may be wondering what an SSD looks like and how easy it is to replace a hard drive with an after-market device. If you look at the images below, you’ll see the top and undersides of a typically-sized 2.5” SSD. The technology is encased inside either a plastic or metal case and looks like nothing more than what a battery might:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Collide Of Continents

The concept of supercontinent was first proposed by the Alfred Wegener (His full name is Alfred-Lothar-Wegener) in the year of 1912. He was born on 1 November 1880. He is a German polar researcher, Geophysicist, and Meteorologist. The reason behind he proposed this concept is he found some fossil's which lived on the earth. In all the continents but the distance between the continents are so long. That is the reason he proposed his concept of continental drift.  This continental drift was controversial and not widely accepted because he did not prove that how the continents are moved due to this reason every not accepted until the 1950's. After tectonic plates was discovered based on this tectonic plates the continents are moved. now we assume that how the modern continents was placed. Alfred-Lothar-Wegener FOSSIL Every 300-500 Million years the supercontinent was formed. In 300 Million years ago one supercontinent was formed it was named as PANGAEA. The word P...
Post a Comment
Read more

Red rain

The Kerala red rain phenomenon was a blood rain event that occurred from 25 July to 23 September 2001, when heavy downpours of red-colored rain fell sporadically on the southern Indian state of Kerala, staining clothes pink. Yellow, green, and black rain was also reported. Coloured rain was also reported in Kerala in 1896 and several times since, most recently in June 2012, and from 15 November 2012 to 27 December 2012 in eastern and north-central provinces of Sri Lanka.                   Following a light microscopy examination in 2001, it was initially thought that the rains were colored by fallout from a hypothetical meteor burst, but a study commissioned by the Government of India concluded that the rains had been colored by airborne spores from a locally prolific terrestrial green alga from the genus Trentepohlia. an international team later identified the exact species as T.annulata...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tectonic Plates

Tectonic plates are pieces of earth's crust and uppermost mantle,together referred to as the lithosphere.The plates are around 100 km (62 mi)thick and consist of two principal material:ocean -crust(also called sima from silicon magnesium) and continental crust (sial from silicon and aluminium).The composition of the two types of crust differs markedly,with basaltic rocks ("mafic") dominating oceanic crust,while continental crust consists principally of lower density granitic rocks. Geologists generally agree that the following tectonic plates exist on the earth's surface with roughly definable boundaries.Tectonic plates are sometimes subdivided into three fairly arbitrary categories: major (or primary) plates,minor (or secondary) plates, and micro (or tertiary) plates. Major plates : These plates comprise the bulk of  the continents and the pacific ocean .A major plate is any plate with an area greater than 20 million km. Minor plates : These smaller ...
Post a Comment
Read more