SSD hard drives are hardware equipment that we do not usually see physically but that are used to store content of all kinds. Without these SSD which for its acronym corresponds to Solid State Disk our devices would need other components to store photos, music, files, documents and more.
Today we want to share with you 5 keys of this SSD hard drive so you can understand it and above all that you know the importance they have within any team today. Without SSDs it would be difficult to store all the information we have today.
Without a doubt we can say that the SSD of our PC or Mac is one of the most important parts of hardware, they are also for the smartphone or even game console. Without them, users could not do anything since the operating systems of any smart device is stored in the internal memory of these disks.
What is an SSD hard drive?
This question has a very technical answer and we can spend a long time explaining the parts of this component but right now we are going to "cut the road" to answer the question in a simple, understandable and fast way.
The SSD disk is the successor to EEPROM memory and allows us to read and write information in a much more productive and efficient way. In SSD memories you can read a lot of information simultaneously and this is a clear advantage in terms of reading speed, something that becomes evident when we compare the boot speed of an operating system installed on a hard drive HDD or an SSD drive. SSD disks are not mechanical so their speed to process information is much higher than the mechanical ones that have limited revolutions to rotate and read the information.
Broadly speaking, we can say that all are advantages with these discs but They also have some drawbacks compared to mechanical hard drives, such as their useful life. SSD disks have less durability due to the use of chips made up of NAND logic gates, but without a doubt there are more advantages than disadvantages that they offer us.
How does an SSD work?
The operation of the SSD disks is a very important part of the use of our equipment. In the case of SSDs, they have a matrix known as a block, the rows that are known as pages. The storage capacity of the SSDs is determined by the number of pages within each block.
To function they require a physical connector and obviously these can vary depending on the type of board to which they are connected. Usually the connection port of the SSD is known for the PCIe. These logically serve to transfer the data from the disk itself to the board and the protocols or communication interface AHCI linked to Serial ATAs, and NVMe associated with PCIe.
To save the information, these disks add floating gate transistors and these can be in two states within the binary system: loaded or unloaded. In order not to complicate things too much, we can say that the loaded state represents number 0, while the downloaded state would represent the 1.
SSD lifespan, which is TRIM
The useful life of SSDs compared to old mechanical HDD disks is, as we mentioned above, their useful life and above all how complicated it is to damage them. SSDs have different types of manufacturing so their life will basically depend on the technology used for their manufacture. We do not want to get into this issue either, but we can say that part of this useful life falls on the cell used. We find single, multiple, triple or quadruple cells. These are decisive and will depend on the chips that are inside each disk.
On the other hand we have the TRIM. This is a technology that allows the number of erasure and writing operations of the SSDs to be reduced dramatically in order to function and the life of the SSDs also depends on this less wear and tear. The fewer actions the album has to do, the better, so the less you do, the longer the album will last. The disks erase or move information from the rows by blocks and within these blocks some cannot be eliminated, so moving them to another location causes the marked data to be reflected within the disk and for subsequent erase / write operations these do not have to go through the process again.
What is achieved with this TRIM is that our disk has a longer life since it considerably reduces operations and this volatile memory is less degraded, yes, memory that wears out over the months and that This wear increases the more operations you carry out.
Each manufacturer adds an important piece of information for the buyer in their discs and these can be seen calmly reflected as: TBW (Terabytes Written), P / E Cycles (Program-Erase Cycle), MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures). The TBW indicates the amount of writing terabytes that can be written, the MTBF indicates the approximate number of hours of life and the P / E Cycles would be the number of erase / write cycles that the SSD allows. Actually, they are approximate figures, nor should you be obsessed with it when buying a disc.
Advantage and disadvantage of having an SSD and not an HDD
In this sense, we can spend many hours discussing the main advantages or disadvantages of each other, but we want to make it more general. In this case the speed of SSDs versus mechanical HDDs is the key point. An SSD disk does not have much of a problem if it falls to the ground, they are much smaller in size and above all have a lower power consumption that our team will surely appreciate.
When we have an old computer with an HDD if we put an SSD disk we will notice Twice as fast to start the operating system, applications, etc, and also we will gain in lightness of the equipment since they weigh much less.
The main disadvantage over HDDs in this case is that they are more expensive. While it is true today SSD disks are accessible to all users and there are them for all budgets, the price is somewhat higher than for HDD disks but it is worth it. Another disadvantage or drawback of these SSDs is undoubtedly the possibility of losing all the content in case of disk failure. Yes this In the old HDD you could try to recover some data from it with a tool but in the SSD it is much more complicated and all information can be lost as it is flash memory.
Storage capacity on SSD disks
Today SSDs have a somewhat limited maximum storage capacity although it is not an insufficient capacity for most users. The usual thing is to run into SSD of 256GB, 512 GB, 1 TB even up to 2 or in rarer cases up to 4 TB. This storage capacity can be affected by the high price of some of them and it will depend a lot on the manufacturer and the quality of this price in the market.
Some firm is known that has SSD disks larger than these previously shown, although it is true that the price of a medium quality 1TB disk can be located in the price range of 200 euros. There are somewhat cheaper models and others much more expensive with the same capacity, that is why it is so important to be clear about the use that we are going to give the SSD we want and above all calculate approximately how much real space we need. The cloud has a lot to say here since it is increasingly common to have a cloud storage plan and this can influence the configuration of a new computer and its internal SSD.
The capacities of the current SSDs are sufficient for the vast majority but surely with the passage of time this storage will have to grow and the prices of SSDs will fall just as they are doing right now. In the beginning these SSDs were available to few users but nowadays it is the most normal thing in the world to have this type of disk installed on your personal computer.