Solid State Drive: Advantages and Disadvantages

First, let's figure out what a solid-state drive is (SSD drive). This memory device is based on memory chips. SSD drives can be based on flash memory or memory, similar to RAM (RAM). Also, the solid state drive contains a control controller. Unlike hard drives, solid state drive does not have moving parts.

Usually such drives are used in compact portable devices: smartphones, communicators, netbooks, laptops. This is due to their smaller size and weight compared to conventional hard drives, as well as lower power consumption.

Solid-state drives have their ownadvantages, and disadvantages in comparison with hard drives. Let's start, perhaps, on the positive side. As already mentioned above, solid-state drives do not have moving parts, and the fewer moving parts, the lower the probability of failure. Also thanks to this SSD drives work silently.

Solid State Drive more resistant to mechanical damage, is less sensitive to external electromagnetic fields and has a wider range of operating temperatures, so it does not need additional cooling.

SSD drives consume less energy, and this increases the battery life of portable devices. The small size and weight of solid-state drives also makes them convenient for use in portable devices.

Speed ​​of reading and writing information often outperforms the bandwidth of the hard drive interface, and the time of reading the files remains stable regardless of the location or fragmentation of files on the disk.

But it has a solid-state drive and its drawbacks - that's why it did not displace conventional hard drives, but is used along with them. The main drawback of SSD drives is the limited number of rewriting cycles. Depending on the type of memory, it can be 10 or 100 thousand times.

The second drawback is compatibility issue of some versions of the Windows operating system. The fact is that most versions of Windows OSwork with solid-state drives in the same way as with conventional hard drives, for example, use the swap mechanism and disk defragmentation. These operations are good for working with a conventional hard drive, but a solid-state drive, on the contrary, wears out and reduces its lifespan.

Therefore, if your laptop or netbook has a solid state drive installed, you either need to disable file operations designed to work with hard disks, or to install the operating system Windows 7: it is specially optimized for working with SSD media.

Another significant drawback of solid-state drives is their high price. Price 1 GB SSD drive above the price of 1 GB HDDmedia (hard disk). At the same time, the cost of solid-state drives increases in proportion to the increase in volume, while the price of traditional hard drives grows more slowly and depends not on the volume, but on the number of plates.

A compromise intermediate between solid-state drives and traditional hard disks is the so-called hybrid hard drives (HHD or H-HDD). Such a medium consists of a hard disk drive (HDD) and a solid-state drive of a small volume.

The solid state drive acts as a cache (intermediate buffer for frequently requestedinformation) and helps to increase the device's performance, its service life, and also reduce power consumption. Like SSD media, hybrid drives are mainly used in portable devices.

Solid state drive for now can not fully replace the usual hard drives, but for use in portable devicesit is very convenient. And since progress does not stand still, perhaps soon we will have to deal with more advanced types of drives - it remains only to wait a little.