Compared to traditional hard drives, these drives have higher performance speeds and without moving parts, are more durable and less susceptible to vibration damage. Other advantages are less energy usage and almost silent operation.
SSDs are available in standard 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch form factors with regular SATA connectors hence they fit perfectly into regular and traditional applications.
With all the positives, there is one drawback ...SSDs are far more expensive than traditional hard drives hence its curtailed use in present computer applications.
Some solid state drives use DRAM for storage. This principle requires a battery backup to keep the data. Another type of SSD more popular in consumer products uses a flash based memory.
Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E500B/AM)
Powered by Samsung V-NAND Technology. Optimized Performance for Everyday Computing.
Enhanced Performance: Sequential Read/Write speeds up to 550MB/s and 520MB/s respectively.
Ideal for mainstream PCs and laptops for personal, gaming and business use.
Hardware/Software Compatibility: Windows 8/Windows 7/Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit), Vista (SP1 and above), XP (SP2 and above), MAC OSX, and Linux.
Included Contents: 2.5" (7mm) SATA III (6Gb/s) SSD & User Manual (All Other Cables, Screws, Brackets Not Included). 5-Year Warranty.
Unlike SSDs that write data to flash memory, traditional mechanical hard drives use a magnetic read/write head to access data on fast spinning metal platters.
Traditional hard drives are marvels of technology compared to the simple principle of these drives. SSDs use a SATA interface similar to the one used by traditional hard drives but stores data on flash modules instead of rotating metallic platters.
SSDs with the absence of moving parts, do not have to wait for drive heads to find and read data on rotating platters hence their random access and read times are extremely fast.
Solid State Drives, as the name implies, are less prone to failure caused by dust, vibration, magnetism and excessive bouncing. Excessive bouncing and external magnetism will damage the read/write head and platters in a magnetic drive but will not affect the flash memory of SSDs.
Unfortunately, with all the advantages compared to traditional hard drives, the current set of SSDs have some disadvantages. Flash memory is far more expensive than magnetic media hence the higher cost of producing these drives.
The average size of SSDs is miniscule in comparison to the size of traditional hard drives. The largest consumer traditional hard drive is 8.0TB compared to 1TB for the SSD.
Another negative is the slower write times compared to a high-end traditional hard drive. The explanation for this is a bit complicated so I will skip it for now.
The flash memory cells used in these drives have a finite number of read/write cycles up to a maximum of approximately 100,000. Fortunately, if the SSD reaches its cycle limit, it does not crash like the traditional hard drive. It just stops 'writing' and only allows read-only, permitting you to access your data.
The future seems bright for SSDs since some hard drive and major flash memory manufacturers will be working towards correcting the minor deficiencies to present a more efficient and competitively priced product.
Apparently, the minor deficiencies and bugs have been cleared up because these drives are now in mainstream production systems. Also, there are a host of different brands easily available on the retail market.
Topping the SSD is the new M.2 Series which was designed for thin and low powered devices such as ultrabooks and tablets. They were smaller than mSATA SSDs which they replaced. M.2s provided superior data transfer rates.
Conclusion
Therefore, if you have a desktop or a laptop with a compatible SATA interface, try one of these to enhance your system's total performance.
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